When Black leaders proceeded from Selma to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1965 to demonstrate for voting rights, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched beside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “I felt my legs were praying,” he said.

For more than a half-century, the moon has orbited the Earth without a close human witness, its pitted, rocky surface unexplored, its far side unexamined, its mysteries left fallow.

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, it’s obvious to state money and politics have been going steady for quite some time now. At root is taxpayers’ money and how it’s used. U.S. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) has recently released his ninth edition of “Federal Fumbles.” As usual, it takes an Oklahoman to point out and beg for some common sense when it comes to responsible spending.

His grandparents and mother were born in Selma, Alabama, the site of the violence of the 1965 civil rights march that led to the Voting Rights Act. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, where within 30 yards of his house six Black active-duty soldiers went off to Vietnam, including one of his childhood heroes – a young man who one day quietly slipped off to war. He went to college in Oxford, Ohio, where eight years earlier the legendary civil rights figure John Lewis had trained the Mississippi Freedom Summer civil rights volunteers, three of whom were murdered.