Commentary
Homelessness isn’t a crime and does not belong in House Bill 5
The Lexington Street Voice Council hosted a luncheon at the Capitol Annex for Kentucky legislators on Feb. 7 to give the lawmakers the opportunity to see them as the people they are, to hear their stories and understand the reasons they are experiencing homelessness.? More than 65 legislators shared a meal with men and women […]
School vouchers hurting students’ academic performance, several studies show
A few? weeks ago at the Capitol in Frankfort, a lobbying group called EdChoice Kentucky, Inc. organized a rally in favor of changing the state’s Constitution to funnel taxpayer money into private religious schools.?? Most of the people who showed up were students from Catholic and Christian schools who were bused in for the occasion. […]
On Ukraine aid, McConnell acted on principle, not politics
When the Senate voted 70-29 Tuesday to send more aid to Ukraine, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell was in the majority of senators — but in the minority of his own party. It was an important marker for the nation’s longest-serving Senate leader. For most of his career, the Kentuckian has been known for his use […]
The monsters we create: Republicans and their battle against the zombie apocalypse
You can tell a lot about a people from the monsters they use to frighten themselves. During the height of the Red Scare, Americans feared a communist conspiracy taking over the world — converting their friends and neighbors, staffing U.S. institutions with secret enemies. So their entertainment was filled with extraterrestrials who could mimic humans. […]
Senate should save Kentucky from another incarceration binge
FRANKFORT — A couple of demented provisions in House Republicans’ sweeping rewrite of Kentucky’s criminal code — jailing the homeless and unleashing vigilante justice on suspected shoplifters — are bad enough in themselves. They also seem to be the shiny new objects distracting from other, far-reaching questions about House Bill 5. Kentuckians deserve answers, but […]
I remember thinking, ‘They will never let this happen again!’ I was wrong.
On an ordinary day, in an ordinary town, in an ordinary school, in an ordinary class, an extraordinary, horrifying — and sadly, uniquely-American — tragedy occurred.? I was 17 when my former classmate entered our English class on a cold, but sunny, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and shot and killed our teacher and the […]
Kentuckians deserve to see this surplus used wisely, not set aside
It’s that time of every-other-year again: Kentucky’s General Assembly is working on the state’s budget. Advocates, policy analysts, lobbyists and constituents will fill the halls of Frankfort until mid-April, working to see their priorities get funded. What’s different this year is that there’s more than enough to go around – an unprecedented $3.7 billion budget […]
One of America’s last aluminum smelters just closed. Let’s rescue Kentucky’s from that fate.
Since Ford Motor Co. announced a series of major electric vehicle battery plants, anchored in Kentucky and Tennessee, regional leaders have touted Western Kentucky as fertile ground for a clean energy supply chain. Yet a critical material essential to battery production and electric vehicles — aluminum — is slipping away and is at risk of […]
Biden is running against a second ‘Lost Cause’ myth
This commentary has been republished from The Conversation. In the blur of breaking news, one of President Joe Biden’s first speeches of the 2024 campaign was given in South Carolina and has already been mostly forgotten in the ongoing coverage of the state’s democratic primary on Feb. 3, 2024. We should pay it more attention. […]
Willie Francis and the immorality of second — and all — executions
Kay Ivey is the governor of Alabama. According to the Almanac of American Politics (2024), Ms. Ivey is 79 years old, Republican, Baptist, single, graduated from Auburn University, and has a long record of public service beginning with being the “reading clerk” in Alabama’s House of Representatives. She was reelected in 2022 with 67% of […]
McConnell meets another legacy moment
When Mitch McConnell kept the Supreme Court from going liberal, then worked with Donald Trump to remake it and other federal courts in the image of the Federalist Society and big-money political contributors, that looked like the primary legacy of McConnell’s decades in the Senate. Then Trump falsely contested his 2020 defeat, inspiring the deadly […]
The political battle of the sexes
A cold war between men and women has been reshaping the political world for most of this century. Americans may be aware of it like never before, though, for a silly reason: The political battle of the sexes recently bled over into the world of entertainment. Anybody with the slightest exposure to pop culture knows […]