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McConnell says GOP control of the U.S. Senate would protect the filibuster
LEXINGTON — Republican Mitch McConnell said it’s important for his party to retake the U.S. Senate in November to protect the filibuster. Speaking to a Commerce Lexington luncheon, McConnell said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “just this week is talking about getting rid of the filibuster. What that does is to say to any given […]
You call that conservative?
FRANKFORT — Picture this: You pull an item off a store shelf that has no price tag. Do you assume it’s free? If you said yes, you might have a future in the Kentucky General Assembly, where some members seem astonished ?— offended, even —that actual money is needed to pay for new programs they […]
On the trail of J.D. Vance’s Kentucky mountain roots
JACKSON — In the 24 hours after J.D. Vance became Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s running mate, Stephen Bowling, director of the Breathitt County Public Library, fielded more than a dozen calls from news media outlets large and small. The place that Vance in his best-selling memoir wrote “would always have my heart” is back […]
Kentucky auditor, cabinet clash over access to child abuse database as new law takes effect
FRANKFORT — The legislature last year moved responsibility for a watchdog office and child support enforcement from the Beshear administration to Republican officeholders.? Barely out of the gate, one of the transitions is stumbling over a disagreement about access to a child abuse database.? Republican Auditor of Public Accounts Allison Ball on Tuesday sent what […]
Same basic crime. Why such different reactions?
Donald Trump was an extraordinary politician even before becoming the only former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. Trump’s crime, however, is not extraordinary. It’s basically the same thing that landed former Kentucky Democratic Party chair Jerry Lundergan in prison. Both Lundergan and Trump concealed political spending that by law should have been […]
McConnell says Biden should let Ukraine use US weapons across Russian border
FRANKFORT — U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that President Joe Biden should allow Ukraine to use U.S. weapons to launch attacks inside Russia. McConnell said he’s “consistently argued” with the administration that its restriction against Ukraine launching U.S. weapons across the border into Russia “doesn’t make any sense at all.” “I think […]
Bettye Lee Mastin, journalist who championed historic preservation, dies at 97
Bettye Lee Mastin, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and champion of historic preservation in the Bluegrass, died May 8. She was 97. Mastin said her mother encouraged her to write every day and that when she graduated from high school in Jessamine County she wanted to be a poet. A professor […]
‘Wanting to be free does not insinuate violence’
LEXINGTON — History has a way of vindicating student protests — civil rights, Vietnam, apartheid — but it can take a while. I was thinking about this while trudging up Woodland Avenue on a sunny afternoon last week to a pro-Palestinian rally at the University of Kentucky.? Along the way I passed a group of […]
Privacy worries a smokescreen for hiding the public’s business
FRANKFORT — Long before there were text messages, email, cell phones or computers small enough to slip into a purse? — back in the Neolithic when public records were created on IBM Selectric typewriters — the Kentucky Open Records Act protected personal privacy. The Kentucky Open Records Act still protects personal privacy. No one is […]
Veto of mass incarceration bill gives Kentucky supermajority a shot at redemption
FRANKFORT — As I sort through the remains of this session, I keep returning to something I’ve heard said, only half-jokingly, about Kentucky: We waited until after the Civil War to join the Confederacy. It feels like the legislature is doing it again. White grievance and white supremacy animated this session. Republicans were out to […]
Kentucky Senate approves two-year state budget 36-1
A nearly unanimous Senate on Wednesday night approved a state budget for the next two years before the document was publicly available on the legislature’s web site. The compromise budget, which by Thursday morning was posted on the legislature’s site, emerged from a House-Senate free conference committee on Tuesday. It increases funding for the basic […]
Amendment allowing public money for nonpublic schools breezes out of Senate committee
A constitutional amendment that could pave the way for charter schools and publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools in Kentucky is one step closer to going on the November ballot. The Senate Education Committee voted 11-2 in favor of House Bill 2 during a special meeting Thursday afternoon. Kentucky Education Association President Eddie Campbell […]