The boy had been badly beaten, with bruising to his abdominal area. X-rays showed separation to the bowel in the abdominal cavity. Paramedics said when they arrived to transport him to the hospital, the infant’s limbs had turned blue and he couldn’t lift his head.

Now facing a homicide complaint is the boy’s mother, who is 14 years old. The father? He’s 15. The girl told police she lost her temper and threw the baby into his crib.

Oklahoma’s high rates of teen pregnancies and unwed mothers contribute to any number of other social ills. This is an example of that to the nth degree.

Classen School of Advanced Studies and Harding Charter Preparatory High School both made the list. The website’s criteria for rankings include schools’ test scores, reputations with recruiting colleges, faculty quality and student satisfaction surveys.

Classen is a public, magnet high school. Students apply/audition and must pass that screening process to attend. At Harding, a charter school, TheBestSchools.org notes, “Despite Harding’s excellent reputation and rankings, there are no requirements as to which students can attend. There are no tuition fees or entry tests required.”

Uninformed critics like to claim charter schools’ achievements are based on “cherry picking” students. Harding’s success disproves that claim. And while both schools deserve praise, it’s worth noting that Classen, with its student-screening process, ranked 36th nationally. Harding ranked 23rd.

That economic freedom is still there, but it’s slipping. The United States is now No. 10 in the world in the 2013 Index of Economic Freedom, an annual ranking compiled since 1995 by the Heritage Foundation in partnership with The Wall Street Journal. The United States was ninth last year, and has seen its economic freedom slip for five straight years.

The Heritage index considers countries’ rule of law, open markets, regulatory efficiency and limited government. The United States fared poorly in regulatory efficiency — gee, what a surprise under the Obama administration! — with declines in business freedom, monetary freedom and labor freedom. Increased government spending hurt our cause as well.

Heritage, a conservative think tank, said entrepreneurial growth in America “is stifled by ever-more-bloated government and a trend toward cronyism that erodes the rule of law.” Getting back toward the top of the economic freedom rankings will take significant policy reforms, “particularly in reducing size of government, overhauling the tax system, transforming costly entitlement programs and streamlining regulations.”

With Barack Obama in the Oval Office for another term, that climb is going to have to wait.

The OSSAA member schools voted a few years ago to punish private schools by requiring their teams to move up one class if they reach the final eight in any sport three out of five years. This stemmed largely from schools such as Heritage Hall and Bishop McGuinness in Oklahoma City winning state titles in football.

Proponents of the rule change said something needed to be done to counter the advantages private schools have by being able to control their enrollment. Those advantages never seemed to be an issue when those schools weren’t as successful.

Certainly Carl Albert’s football team didn’t seem to have any issue with those private school advantages last weekend when the Titans walloped McGuinness in the Class 5A semifinals. If they beat Tulsa East Central on Saturday night, the Titans will win their 11th state championship. Clinton is playing for its 16th state title on Saturday afternoon in Class 4A.

Outrage? There is none. Nor should there be. Carl Albert and Clinton have built tremendous programs. Success — of all kinds — should be applauded, not demonized. And so we say, congratulations and good luck!

The Santa Ysabel Resort and Casino near San Diego is seeking to enter into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. American Indian tribes are considered sovereign nations and not included among entities that can file Chapter 11 under existing law, but they are not specifically excluded, either.

Case law is virtually nonexistent. A tribal enterprise in Minnesota filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2008, but that business wasn’t located on tribal land. The mere possibility that tribal-owned businesses could file for bankruptcy has caused banks to restructure $1.7 billion in debt owed by tribes, according to a recent Fitch Ratings report.

In addition to non-gambling tribal businesses, there are well over 100 casinos in Oklahoma that are tribal-owned entities on Indian land, so the outcome of the California case could have ripple effects across the Sooner State.

Operators of the halfway house wanted to relocate from SE 51 and Interstate 35 to a Baptist church whose property is for sale. The church’s pastor was to serve as chaplain to the halfway house.

But the council on Monday voted 5-0 against the idea, in front of a full house in council chambers. The vote wasn’t a surprise. Previously the city’s planning commission had unanimously rejected the plan, after hearing from an overflow crowd that spoke against it.

“I’m sorry for the people who are incarcerated,” one longtime Del City resident said at the council meeting. “But a residential area is no place for a facility like that.” The question becomes, what area is?

He oversees a program that trains church members — “anywhere from Boise City to Broken Bow, from Altus to Miami” — to help after disasters. His roster of volunteers stands at about 5,000.

The Red Cross and Salvation Army are easy to spot following disasters. Keeping a lower profile are Southern Baptists who do everything from cook meals to wash clothes to help flood victims remove mud from their homes.

An Oklahoma laundry team recently spent two weeks in Fort Collins, Colo., helping those affected by fires there. They work in a 32-foot trailer, built following Hurricane Katrina, that houses five washers and six dryers.

Porter expected he could be asked to help with meals in Colorado Springs. The Oklahoma BGC has 17 mobile kitchens. The largest can turn out 25,000 meals per day, with 35 to 40 people working; the other units can do 3,000 to 5,000 meals per day.

The entire operation is funded through offerings from the state’s 1,800 Southern Baptist churches. A former pastor, Porter said the ministry is a perfect outlet for many looking to contribute to the church in some way.

“Maybe they can’t sing. Maybe they can’t teach a Bible class,” he said. “But when they realize they can do something with their hands — running a chain saw or preparing food in a convection oven — they see they can make an eternal difference in someone’s life.” Amen.

A couple of points. As mentioned, there must be a number of unhappy campers in the Democratic cloakroom because Pelosi is still leading their parade — even more than were willing to oppose her publicly. (On the flip side, it’s amazing that a guy like Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly, who eked out an 800-vote victory in November over an opponent he beat by 12 percentage points in 2008, still voted for Pelosi.)

As for Boren and others who defied her, wow! The old adage says you don’t take on the king (or queen, as it were) unless you’re sure you can knock ‘em off the throne. Pelosi’s still there. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle those awkward situations in the House elevators. Seriously, keep an eye on Boren and the others to see if Pelosi follows through with another old saying: Don’t get mad, get even.

According to Politico, former approps chairman Jerry Lewis of California wants another swing at the job. But that would require waiving the party’s term-limits rules. Lewis is known around Washington as the consummate appropriator — which is to say, the kind of insider who generally fared poorly in congressional elections earlier this month. Lots of Republicans and tea partiers want someone else to chair the committee, someone who will hold the line on earmarks and overall spending. After all, both were major themes in the just-concluded campaign.

But if not Lewis, who? Kentucky’s Harold Rogers would be next in line, but he, too, is a long-time committee member — whose commitment to spending restraint is automatically suspect. Politico reports Rogers is vowing allegiance to an earmarks ban and other reforms. And, big surprise, Rogers has been saying that waiving the term-limits rule would be a big mistake. It’ll be interesting to see how the leadership race pans out — Boehner will play a huge role — and whether fiscal hawks like Arizona’s Jeff Flake land spots on the committee. Certainly, both questions will be watched carefully by voters expecting change, not more of the same old, same old.

Robinson writes the charges against Rangel range from “the technical all the way to the trivial” and that the congressman didn’t gain monetarily from any of his alleged transgressions. That’s certainly debatable. Rangel allegedly failed to declare rental income from vacation property in the Caribbean — the kind of omission that lands regular people in jail. No big deal, Robinson writes, because Rangel paid back what he owed in taxes, penalties and interest. As for allegedly using his official House letterhead to raise money for a college program bearing his name, Rangel is guilty only of padding his ego, not his pocket, Robinson writes. Move along, nothing to see here, seems to be the columnist’s attitude. Really?

So much for the crusading columnist, actively comforting the afflicted/afflicting the comforted, eh? Never mind the symptoms of entitlement and privilege wafting from Rangel’s ethics file. Hard to imagine Robinson, paid to propound liberal positions in The Post, giving such a wide berth to any of Rangel’s conservative colleagues.

The president of the United States throwing out the first pitch of the Major League  Baseball season truly is a rite of spring. President Barack Obama was the hurler-in-chief before Monday’s Washington Nationals-Philadelphia Phillies game, continuing a tradition apparently begun by President William H. Taft in 1910. Obama reportedly spent some time practicing his pitch. (No one wants to get on a mound in front of 40,000 people and dribble one into the catcher.) The president strode to the Nationals Park mound in a red Nationals jacket, to cheers and some boos. Toeing the pitching rubber, Obama pulled out a Chicago White Sox cap and put it on his head, to more boos. All in good fun. As for his toss, Obama’s left-handed offering sailed high and wide to the left, but Nats infielder Ryan Zimmerman still was able to flag it down. Mission accomplished!

Sort of under the radar is quite a bit of evidence that the House of Representatives is where Democrats will have their problems. The House originally passed its health care bill in November with just five votes to spare (220-215), and Democratic and Republican sources say Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have that margin anymore. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., tells The Hill newspaper 15 to 20 Democrats don’t like the current compromise for various reasons. Stupak’s chief complaint is the bill’s abortion-funding language, which is more lenient than what was in the original House version. He and a number of fellow anti-abortion Democrats appear unlikely to vote yes this time around.

Obviously, a swing of 15 or more Democratic votes in the House is a monumental problem for Obama and the majority’s leadership. The vote in November snagged one GOP vote, and no one expects any of the other Republicans to change their minds. As things unfold, smart money says to keep an eye on the House.

Whoa! “The most difficult circumstances in the history of the presidency?” Things were tough in January 2009, but tougher than Abraham Lincoln in March 1861, with the nation coming apart and headed for civil war? Tougher than Franklin Roosevelt in March 1933, with the country already mired in the Great Depression?

Probably just a slip of the tongue by Hildebrand, or maybe he wasn’t a big history guy in college. Or maybe, too, it’s the kind of political messaging people like him get paid to put out there, lowering the bar for a president who’s first year didn’t send off too many bottle rockets — the first step in a revisionist look at BHO as, dare we say, a historical figure?