From an article in today's Oklahoman about the state Republican convention held yesterday:

Former House budget director to head state GOP

By Michael McNutt
The Oklahoman

Sights set on getting a Republican win in special Senate election

Oklahoma Republicans elected Tom Daxon, a former state auditor and inspector who once ran for governor, to head their party Saturday.

Daxon said he will focus immediately on next month's special Senate election in southwest Oklahoma trying to get a Republican to win that seat for the first time and then work on portraying Democratic Gov. Brad Henry as a liberal.

"Brad Henry has masqueraded as a moderate conservative: He is not a conservative, he is not a moderate," Daxon said.

Daxon said a GOP victory in the Senate District 38 race would start the momentum for Republicans to take over the state Senate in November, which has never occurred in the state's 99-year history. Term limits put eight Democratic-controlled seats up for election in November. Democrats now control the Senate, 25-22.

Daxon avoided a possible runoff by receiving 60 percent of the vote, said outgoing GOP Chairman Gary Jones, who is stepping down to run for the state auditor position.

Others seeking the GOP position were state Rep. Doug Miller of Norman and former state Rep. Forrest Claunch of Midwest City.

Daxon, 58, resigned last month as budget director of the state House of Representatives to seek the GOP chairmanship. His campaigning across the state for the position helped Daxon secure the victory, several Republicans said.

Hmm…is it just possible that the Oklahoman, long the water-carrier for Oklahoma's radical GOP faction, might have left out some relevant information?

From Frosty Troy's "Fridays with Frosty" commentary on KOSU-FM, April 21, 2006:

Ted Riley, KOSU: Frosty, the US Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued an opinion that could hurt two Oklahomans with some high name recognition.

Frosty Troy: Absolutely. Now I know why Tom Daxon resigned as Finance Director of the Oklahoma House of Representatives a few days ago. It was at the same time that a three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Daxon did, indeed, sexually harass an employee of the Corporation Commission when he was general administrator there. And, by the way, he fired her. And he lost that job too.

The Circuit Court found that Daxon harassed Pamela D. Fye. When she complained to Corporation Commissioner chairman Denise Bode, Bode did not follow up on the case, according to the court ruling. The court also held that another employee, Karen DePue, was harassed by Daxon. The court opinion said DePue reported that Daxon said he was viewing pornography on his home computer, and it had aroused him, and he told her - he compared her to the women that he had viewed. That's a direct quotation from the opinion, by the way.

Pamela Fye was fired by Daxon because she refused to go into "salacious" - and this is the court's word - "salacious detail" about a previous sexual harassment case involving a previous general administrator. Fye sued Daxon, Bode, and the Commission, and they lost in the District Court, and they appealed because they said they were immune from prosecution. By the way, the three panel judges from the Tenth Circuit said no, they're not.

You know, ironically, Tom Daxon is now a candidate for chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, and Denise Bode is running at mid-term for the Republican nomination for Congress. Go figure.

You can listen to the 1:42 excerpt of the commentary here (it's an enclosure for people reading via RSS).

Don't feel bad if you missed this - according to Google News, no Oklahoma news outlet reported that a leading candidate for (and now, winner of) the Oklahoma GOP party leadership lost an appeal to avoid a sexual harassment lawsuit, one in which his boss and a leading GOP candidate for Congress is also named. Not one.

Well, OK, one. An AP story about the ruling, complete with quotes from Daxon and Bode defending their actionqs (something Frosty, obviously, left out) is on the Web sites of KCTV-5 (CBS, Kansas City), and a much shorter version is on the Web site of KTEN-10 (NBC), technically in Denison, TX, but with studios, offices, and audiences in Ada and Ardrmore. Nothing from Oklahoma City or Tulsa, though. (The Tulsa World is behind a pay firewall, so if it appeared in that paper, I wouldn't know.)

But isn't it just amazing how the Oklahoman can prepare an entire story about Tom Daxon's new position, one in which he'll be supporting Denise Bode for Congress (or another GOP nominee, but his choice is fairly clear), without mentioning the Tenth US Circuit Court of Appeal's ruling from just two days earlier?

That's just amazing, isn't it?