A top Obama administration official on Tuesday accused lawmakers in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives of living in a world of “fairy tales and falsehoods” when it comes to energy. [Reuters]

Are coal and oil sands exports raising risks of another major spill? [HuffPo]

Mitch McConnell accused someone else of using something for political gain. He complained. Didn’t offer an alternative. That’s how it always works with him. [The Hill]

Yet another Eastern Kentucky miner has died in an accident. Is it just the cost of doing business? [WYMT]

In Tennessee, the mouth-breather legislators say gay kids who kill themselves just lack proper principles. Once again making Kentucky look really good. [Wonkette]

Kentucky is gunning for Texas on the killing front. In a ruling that could force Kentucky to change the way it carries out executions, a state judge on Wednesday ordered the state to consider using one drug instead of three to put inmates to death. [C-J/AKN]

Eastern Kentucky can’t can’t a break when it comes to weather. Flooding in Rowan County left many roads impassable. [WLEX18]

Did you know? The mouth-breather governor of Mississippi says the Democrats’ one mission in life is to abort children. We’re not Democrats, so we can’t offer much in the form of proof. But we are starting a wire hanger factory. [HuffPo]

Seems the woman the KDP, Beshear and Conway folks are working against in the 19th State Senate District is gaining traction. Much to the dismay of organized labor and a couple blowhards. [The 'Ville Voice]

People freaked out – severely – when news first broke that the postal center in Lexington would close. Now that it’s off the list? There’s been next to no reaction. [H-L]

The people in Cincinnasti wrote a story about Trey Grayson and his family. Something about how they’re just getting started in politics. [Business Courier]

When Mitch McConnell visited Laurel County to survey tornado damage, he didn’t bother mentioning his effort to hold disaster relief hostage last year. [Think Progress]

Americans get wiser with age. Japanese are wise from the start. This is sure to piss a lot of people off. [The Economist]

Thomas Massie has $230,000 (we’re not sure what the exchange rate is for Ameros) to spend in the primary. While he says he wants to run a positive campaign, his folks are already pushing toward a negative race. Will he get into a slap fight with Alecia Webb-Edgington? The world may never know… because no one cares. [WKYT]

Despite the death of the casino bill in the General Assembly in February, Kentucky electronic gambling revenue continues to grow. In March, Kentucky Downs in Franklin posted 19.75 percent increase in wagering on Instant Racing, a slots-like game where players bet on previously run races. [H-L]

Kentucky Retirement Systems continues to burn to the ground while Jack Conway plays pat-a-cake. Guess it’s official. Campaign contributions talk and corruption walks. [Page One]

You would be forgiven for thinking that it would be FUCKING MORONIC for the Right to be all in an uproar because President Ignatius Q. Muslin uses the phrase “freedom of worship” sometimes instead of exclusively saying “freedom of religion.” [Wonkette]

Guess what doesn’t matter in Kentucky. Yep, the Presidential Primary. Yet another wasted Associated Press story. [C-J/AKN]

Police made critical errors early in the Trayvon Martin case. Which means fat wingnuts in Kentucky are going to foam at the mouth again. [HuffPo]

Phillip Bailey unfortunately and unintentionally furthered the myth that Alecia Webb-Edgington missed major votes in Frankfort because the legislature wasn’t originally scheduled to be in session on those days. How innocent of Alecia! But, uh, she scheduled her fundraisers long after those days were posted as “you might have to get your ass to Frankfort”/alternate days in early February. So her excuse falls flat on its ass. Note: Ryan Alessi didn’t mention the alternate date calendar, either. [WFPL & Ryan Alessi]

President Barack Obama and his family celebrated Easter. So you know wingnuts are going crazy trying to claim he’s a Muslin. [Politico]

The National Review has fired columnist John Derbyshire over a web posting in which he wrote that black people are hostile to whites and that white people should stay out of black neighborhoods and away from black crowds. We can think of a ton of folks in Kentucky who should be fired for spouting similar tripe. [Reuters]

Eight days ago, we wondered why he had given up on keeping state employees and the general public up-to-date with his weekly videos. He dropped to once every other week shortly after the election and has completely stopped post-gambling failure.

Here’s a look:

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Nothing since.

Politics trump personal connections with the general public, obviously.

Us too, since his office last year demanded that all state employees watch them each week.

Here’s a look at the last video his office released:

CLICK TO ENLARGE

We’re guessing he’s been a little bitter since gambling failed. Again.

FRANKFORT — With a casino-gambling bill beat and legislative redistricting struck down by the state Supreme Court — one after the other in a dramatic 24 hours last Thursday and Friday — the 2012 session left a conflicted February in its rearview mirror this week and entered its last full month, accelerating. Only 21 working days remain of this year’s 60-day session. They promise to be busy.

Since no one expects gambling to be revisited this year, and redistricting possible but a long shot at this late date, just one of an original triumvirate of what some saw as potential session-defining issues – a budget of near-unprecedented challenge – remains clearly unresolved.

But between now and a final budget vote, other big issues are now emerging from the redistricting/gambling penumbra. An anti-meth bill, ‘pill mill’ legislation, the future status of Pikeville University, and raising the state’s dropout age could each or all strike sparks. And it’s not unheard-of for a hitherto-unremarked issue to explode into March headlines. A legislative session has its predictable rhythms, but has its surprises too.

This week, drug-related bills saw significant committee action in both chambers.

Read the rest after the jump…

What may be the most publicly and expensively lobbied issue of this session was scaled back in a Senate committee Thursday. Originally and controversially, the proposal (in the form of Senate Bill 50) would have required a doctor’s prescription for cold and allergy medicines containing pseudoephedrine, a precursor ingredient used to cook illegal methamphetamine.

Meth, as everyone colloquially calls it, is Kentucky’s signature drug scourge, and a devastating one in some primarily rural parts of the state.

Under current law, buyers must show identification to purchase OTC decongestants like Claritin D or Mucinex DM. But many law enforcement officials say that restriction has had little effect on the overall meth problem.

Still, just like last session when the prescription-only proposal was raised and failed, opposition has been fierce. A well-heeled industry group, saying it speaks for average families, has gone on the airwaves in a big way, contending this year’s bill would punish law-abiding Kentuckians with colds or allergies, who’d have to get a doctor’s appointment, spend extra money, and take time off work just to get a simple bottle of decongestant pills for their sniffles.

This week – after the original bill was withdrawn — a Senate committee passed out a new but closely related measure, Senate Bill 3, that would drop the prescription requirement but place monthly and cumulative yearly limits on just how much pseudoephedrine could be purchased. Like the original bill, it exempts liquid and gel medicines, since they’re not normally used to make meth.

Amended on the Senate floor this morning to raise the committee-determined limits somewhat, the bill passed. Now it goes to the House.

House and Senate committees this week also separately took up legislation dealing with ‘pill mills.’ This is a relatively new problem in terms of headlines and public attention although it’s long been know that prescription-drug abuse is epidemic in the Commonwealth — mostly pain pills, and most notably in Eastern Kentucky, where law enforcement says more than 70 percent of crime connects in some way with prescription-drug abuse.

Legislation has been introduced in both chambers to crack down on those operations, where prescriptions are dispensed with little or no physical examination, and few questions asked. The underlying problem is ease of access. It’s just not that hard for addicts to get powerful painkillers if they know where to go. And ‘where to go’ too often is the friendly neighborhood pill mill, frequently owned and operated by non-physicians, many from out of state and largely there just to generate profits. Law enforcement says that’s where most problems occur.

Among the regulatory proposals on the table (there are differences in the bills) are expanded use of the state’s KASPAR electronic monitoring system for prescription drugs, and requiring pain clinics be owned by licensed medical practitioners (with the exception of licensed hospitals and pharmacies).

House Bill 4 passed out of that chamber’s Judiciary Committee this week. Senate Bill 2, a separate but similar pill-mill measure, was discussed but not voted on by the Senate’s own Judiciary panel Thursday. The bill’s sponsor said he may seek committee approval next week. Given how the overall issue is trending in both chambers, supporters have expressed confidence some form of pill-mill regulation with make it through the Legislature this session.

Of course, this year as always, final action on the budget awaits session’s end. In those last days, House and Senate action on a two-year spending plan usually brings the winter’s work to a weary late-hours climax, with time running out and the process (usually) prevailing against sleeplessness.

Any year, writing a budget is a massive undertaking. But that truism especially applies in 2012. Early on, the governor proposed spending cuts of 8.4 percent for most state agencies to close a wide gap between projected outlays and anticipated revenues — this on top of cut after cut in an era of seeming unending shortfalls.

Some $19.5 billion in General Fund dollars is there for budgeting this year. With a few specified exceptions (including SEEK funding for schools, Corrections, and Medicaid) most state operations are on the table for cuts. Budget review subcommittees have been deep in the weeds on specifics in recent weeks, taking agency testimony and parsing every dollar, and getting a proposal ready for the House to debate, amend, pass and send to the Senate, which will debate, amend, and pass its own version. It’s a complex dance that always ends up in a conference committee, with lights in the Capitol burning late into the night.

It’s expected the full House will take up its version of the budget next week.

And finally, just to get you quickly up to speed on another issue: Last Friday afternoon, after press time for this column and after deliberating for only four hours, the Kentucky Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling that struck down the Legislature’s redistricting plan for itself.

That ruling – in response to an appeal brought by the Legislative Research Commission after a Franklin Circuit Court nixed the plan earlier — means this year’s legislative races will be run under existing district lines.

The court said the new lines were unconstitutional in part because they split too many counties in drawing new population-equal districts.

Surely you find it highly entertaining that Republicans in Warshington are now screaming about energy programs they used to wholeheartedly support. [HuffPo]

Just like that, teabagger Phil Moffett withdrew from the 32nd District State House race. [SoS]

Time Warner has taken over Insight Communications. So when should we start bending over? [FOX41]

President Barack Obama’s re-election team is hitting back at the Koch Brothers and the teabaggers. The very folks who hijacked the tea party. [WaPo]

Mitch McConnell says President Barack Obama is imposing his own idea of fairness on the American people. So what exactly is it Mitch McConnell is trying to do? [The Hill]

Anyone else notice that Papaw pushed the announcement of this up a couple weeks just a few hours after Jack Brammer started calling about that tax check box? [WTVQ]

Steve Beshear needs to move on from the horsey gambling issue this legislative session. He’s proved, what, four times that he’s incapable? Time to leave those dead horses alone. [BGDN]

It only took a couple years for Shae Hopkins to start talking out of her rear end. It’s a shame she’s doing so with our tax dollars. There’s not a soul in Kentucky who believes Hal Rogers is the KET savior. [KET]

What do Republican Presidential candidates say about the national foreclosure crisis? Little to nothing, obviously. [Pro Publica]

NASCAR’s racing fortunes are stalling after years of growth. Could this spell less than great news for the Kentucky Speedway? [The Economist]

Jack Conway is supposed to testify before the U.S. Congressional subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade regarding prescription drug abuse tomorrow at 10:00 A.M. The testimony is called “Prescription Drug Diversion: Combating the Scourge.” [Watch It Live]

We love that Steve Beshear and a handful of those bitter over horsey gambling are trying to blame David Williams for “killing” it.

Never mind that it was, you know, everyone else in the state who did so.

Primarily progressive Democrats who don’t believe in constitutionally guaranteeing right of ownership to five corporations for the sole purpose of enriching those corporations. Progressive Democrats who support gambling 100% and want full-on casinos all over, even.

Never mind that KDRP and Damon Thayer just spent a year going around the state proclaiming that David possesses neither the political power to get anything done nor the ability to get Democrats to vote against anything.

But David makes a good scapegoat/devil, we guess?

And the Democrats who worked against the effort do not.

The Department of Commerce yesterday announced that Adair County is getting $1.6 million for the Adair County Water District to build a sludge conditioning system. Morgan County is getting $626,000 to construct a bridge. Somehow, the Adair County thing is supposed to retain 1,450 jobs and retain 20. The Morgan County bit is supposed to retain 65 jobs, though, uh, no one who uses the bridge has a job and relies, for the most part, on “disability.” [White House]

Newt Gingrich once met a transvestite. He’s obviously more than a little obsessed. [HuffPo]

This isn’t the first time a state government official has done something shady with corporate money outside the country and it won’t be the last. [John Cheves]

Steve Beshear named the new head of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission and everyone blinked. [The Lane Report]

It’s not that Greg Stumbo doesn’t want to be drawing new legislative maps this year, it’s that he can’t draw new maps. No legislator wants to work with leadership to make it happen at this point. [WFPL]

John David Dyche kinda got this one right. Steve Beshear’s second term effectively ended last Thursday, 74 days after it began, when the state Senate rejected a constitutional amendment permitting casino gambling. The measure did not muster a majority, much less the two-thirds approval needed to put it on November’s ballot. [C-J/AKN]

Of course this formerly closet case guy did all that junk. He’s a mouth-breather and favorite of the teabaggers. They always support what they say they’re against: like drunk driving, bankruptcy, prostitution and dirty gay sex. [Wonkette]

Maybe shoplifting is going up in Perry County and other areas of Eastern Kentucky because nobody has any money anymore? And because everybody is snorting about 50 Oxycontins a day? [WKYT]

High corporate taxes are an absolute myth but you knew that already. [HuffPo]

Just check the damn box, Jane Beshear. And teach your spokesgirl how to handle a bad situation. You should have said, “Oh, whoops! Our tax preparer overlooked this! We’ll fix it – this is the perfect opportunity for everyone else to double check their own taxes.” But, nope, Kerri had to come out of the gate spinning. Instead, we’re forced to look at the fact that you had your tax preparer check the political party contribution box but not this one. [Jack Brammer]

Florida legislators tried to take a page out of the Republican playbook in Kentucky on the drug testing front. Naturally, as legislators, they didn’t feel they needed to be tested for drugs. [Wonkette]

What? You mean climate change could have a role in the stability of civilization? And the mouth-breathers are their own worst enemy? You don’t say. [HuffPo]

You know, if you’re the governor or first lady and you hold a presser telling the public they should do something? It’d be a good idea for you to also be doing that something. Especially if you’ve been called out about it in the past. Would also be a good idea for you not to have your spokesperson spin through her teeth when it’s brought up again. [Kentucky Is Screwed]

Once again, Kentucky gets the shaft from Frankfort. Why kill the hemp bill? It could be one of a few major economic booms for the Commonwealth. [FMIKY]

Western Kentucky University needs to get a fucking grip. [H-L]

Speaking of Western Kentucky… how many people are sick over this latest school shooting? All we heard all day long were references to Michael Carneal What a disaster [HuffPo]

You know Kentucky needs a bit of an infrastructure improvement program when an entire city suffers a power outage because of a fire. [WKYT]

Tomorrow, Congressman John Yarmuth will meet with representatives from Kentucky Educational Television in Washington. At least one of Kentucky’s electeds in the nation’s capital cares about the Commonwealth. [Press Release]

Read this. It’s one of the many reasons you should support people in Syria standing up against oppression and corruption. [Mother Jones]

Don’t act surprised that child safety is not always a priority for social workers in domestic violence cases. This is Kentucky. You know how it is. [WLEX18]

As Steve Beshear spends the remaining thousand or however many days in his (likely super-lame duck) term complaining that David Williams ruined gambling for him? Remember that even Democrats are calling him out for the shenanigans of being disconnected. [Page One]

Bill Goodman will discuss gambling again on this program tonight. Despite what guests will say, it’s now a dead issue in this session. It will remain a dead issue until Steve Beshear stops pushing something that only supports a single industry. [KET]

For all the hype we spout about being the Horse Capital of the World; our Kentucky thoroughbred as being the “crotch rockets” — in motorcycle vernacular — of the Sport of Kings, the 21 – 16 Senate rejection of expanded gaming to bolster our horse industry had “gig the Governor”[as in stick ‘em one more time] written all over it. Many see it as being a cynical vote based on politics and personality, not one based on prudent public policy. One has to ask the obvious question: Who was doing the counting for the Governor?!

Really, why can’t Papaw get someone with at least a little bit of political savvy to count votes for him?

Surely he knows someone who can talk to Democrats every once in a while.