Law Enforcement

Morgan Schadenfreude Is Out-Of-Control

State Rep. C. Wesley Morgan of Richmond, a controversial Kentucky lawmaker who lost to a challenger in the Republican primary on Tuesday, says he is quitting the GOP to throw his support behind the Democratic nominee for his seat in the Nov. 6 election. [John Cheves]

The NFL on Wednesday approved a new policy to intercept national anthem protests before they happen, according to the league. [HuffPo]

Only 12 educators won their races where they were challenged. Unfortunately, despite outsider claims, that means there was no teacher wave in Kentucky. That could come in November, maybe. But only maybe. [C-J/AKN]

Yes, Donald Trump can be indicted as the sitting president. [NY Times]

The 91st district House of Representatives race became one of the most watched races in 2016; in 2018 it’s shaping up to do the same. [Richmond Register]

The Parkland, Florida, school massacre has had little lasting impact on U.S. views on gun control, three months after the shooting deaths of 17 people propelled a national movement by some student survivors, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Wednesday. [Reuters]

Bobby Jack Woods and Ryan Secord will go head to head in the fall for the job of Boyd County sheriff. [Ashland Independent]

We’re looking at you, Matt Bevin. A federal district court judge on Wednesday ruled that Donald Trump can’t block people from viewing his Twitter feed over their political views. [The Hill]

Elwood Caudill Jr. will face Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis this fall after winning the Democratic primary election. [The Morehead News]

As the largest employer in Adams County, Ohio, closes its coal-fired power plants there, politicians and companies have thrown up their hands. Families know that finding work means leaving the place they know. [ProPublica]

Barren County’s voter turnout rate for the 2018 primary was low by several precincts’ individual accounts from early in the day and the total numbers. [Glasgow Daily Times]

Paul Ryan’s last-ditch effort to stop Republican moderates from forcing votes on immigration proposals is running smack into a familiar roadblock: conservative opposition to a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers. [Politico]

As of Tuesday afternoon, 12 reports of vote buying or bribery were reported in Breathitt, Clay, Magoffin, Perry, Wayne and Wolfe counties. Those reports will be investigated by the office of Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear. [H-L]

Alex Jones may start to learn that his actions as the conspiracy-minded host of Infowars have consequences. [HuffPo]

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Amy McGrath Is A Terrible Hypocrite

Prosecutors and congressional investigators have obtained text messages and emails showing that Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was working on a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow far later than Cohen has previously acknowledged. The communications show that, as late as May 2016, around the time Trump was clinching the Republican nomination, Cohen was considering a trip to Russia to meet about the project with high-level government officials, business leaders and bankers. [Ruh Ro]

Amy McGrath is a carpetbagger and a hypocrite. She has the audacity to attack others for Democratic Party ties while being 14 miles up Jonathan Miller’s slimy you-know-what. What a hack. Made worse by her decision to tip-toe around homophobia. It’s a shame she’ll likely win and ultimately lose to Andy Barr. [H-L]

The U.S. delegation in Jerusalem on Monday to celebrate the opening of the new American embassy includes an evangelical Christian pastor who once said Jews “can’t be saved.” [HuffPo]

These jackasses need to be run out of the Commonwealth. The state should take over contract negotiations with the Jefferson County teachers union because previous deals have led to “implicit racial discrimination” in the public school system, a former district official says. [C-J/AKN]

The Trump administration has rolled back protections for transgender prison inmates introduced under former President Barack Obama after some prisoners challenged the policies in court. [Reuters]

Former Madison County deputy jailer Billy E. Bales (no image available), 32, of Berea, has been arrested and served a warrant for first offense third-degree controlled substance trafficking and first-degree official misconduct. [Richmond Register]

He was a small man, one interrogator recalled, and so thin that he would slip in his restraints when the masked CIA guards tipped the waterboard upward to let him breathe. [ProPublica]

Area food pantries and non-profits say they are noticing a striking increase in demand for food for the poor in the area. [Ashland Independent]

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt gave a speech on Tuesday to a mining industry group whose member companies are regulated by his agency. Pruitt’s appearance at the event was closed to the public and the press. [ThinkProgress]

The economic impact of tourism in Rowan County grew to more than $72 million in 2017. [The Morehead News]

The first stage of a multibillion-dollar military-VA digital health program championed by Jared Kushner has been riddled with problems so severe they could have led to patient deaths. [Politico]

Ugh, Julian Carroll is super-gross – an alleged (he was caught on tape!) sexual predator who needs to go. Kentucky may have not been prepared for the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday that struck down a prohibition on state sports gambling, but it didn’t take long for a couple of legislators to react. [Ronnie Ellis]

One of the largest contributions to Donald Trump’s inaugural committee in 2016 appears to have been orchestrated by a set of powerful conservative legal activists who have since been put in the driver’s seat of the administration’s push to select and nominate federal judges. [McClatchy]

A judge has ruled that the Kentucky House of Representatives violated the state’s Open Meetings Act with a closed-door conference in August where lawmakers from both parties huddled to discuss their plans to deal with the state’s pension crisis. [John Cheves]

Just in case you’re wondering why the far-right end timers are going bananas lately… [HuffPo]

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Eric Conn Deserves To Rot In Prison

Missing files motivated the leak – by law enforcement – of Michael Cohen’s financial records. The release occurred after it was discovered that additional suspicious transactions disappeared from a government database. [New Yorker]

Former Eastern Kentucky disability attorney Eric C. Conn plans to plead guilty to charges that he escaped to Central America before he was to be sentenced in a massive fraud case. [H-L]

The public was appalled. The family was hurt. But the White House likely won’t apologize for an aide’s cutting comment that Arizona Sen. John McCain’s opposition to Gina Haspel heading the CIA didn’t matter because “he’s dying anyway.” [HuffPo]

The release of a long-awaited special investigation into how Louisville police handled the Explorer Scout sex abuse scandal is being delayed because Mayor Greg Fischer’s office says it could hurt related criminal and civil cases. [C-J/AKN]

These child marriage statistics are nightmarishly bad for Kentucky. [Frontline]

Only two Republican candidates will be seeking citizens’ votes in the Madison County Sheriff’s race during May’s primary election. The winner of the Republican nomination will face unopposed Madison County Sheriff Mike Coyle-D, in the November general election. [Richmond Register]

Two U.S. fighter jets intercepted two Russian bombers in international airspace off the coast of Alaska on Friday. [Reuters]

Another month and half to two months could pass before Federal Emergency Management Agency money starts coming in to repair damage caused by February’s flooding. [Ashland Independent]

In the coming weeks, the U.S. Department of Energy will select a new team to run Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb and one of the government’s most important nuclear weapons facilities. [ProPublica]

About 100 people sang and clapped as part of the “Poor People’s Campaign” in Frankfort Monday, saying poverty has worsened in the 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for a campaign against poverty. [Ronnie Ellis]

In the past six months, the Trump administration has moved to expel more than 300,000 Central Americans and Haitians living and working legally in the United States, disregarding senior U.S. diplomats who warned that mass deportations could destabilize the region and trigger a new surge of illegal immigration. The warnings were transmitted to top State Department officials last year in a series of embassy cables. [WaPo]

The T.J. Regional Health Board of Directors announced Monday afternoon they chose not to renew the contract of the organization’s CEO, Bud Wethington. [Glasgow Daily Times]

In a wide-ranging interview with NPR, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly shared some rather racist views to justify the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy on illegal border crossings. [ThinkProgress]

On May 6, 1988, a woman’s partially decomposed body was found in a field 18 miles south of Owenton. Kentucky State Police think she was murdered, and 30 years later, they still hope to figure out who she was. [H-L]

One of Donald Trump’s top foreign policy priorities became a reality on Monday as the U.S. embassy in Israel officially relocated to Jerusalem, while only a few miles away in Gaza, Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinian protesters and wounded hundreds more. [HuffPo]

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UofL Still A Festering Pustule Of Awful

A Kentucky sheriff told his deputy to shoot a man without provocation, then did not provide first aid or call an ambulance as the man bled to death on the floor of his apartment, according to a federal wrongful death lawsuit filed by the man’s children and estate. [H-L]

Right now in the U.S., people with disabilities can be stripped of their right to vote in 39 states and the District of Columbia. [HuffPo]

Three former University of Louisville Foundation officials have filed a countersuit against the foundation, seeking to have it pay their legal fees in its own lawsuit against them over the management of its finances. [C-J/AKN]

Jared Kushner’s ethics disclosure filing misstated the financials on two Brooklyn loans, the latest in a long series of errors and omissions on the form. [ProPublica]

With the primary election less than two weeks away and campaigning season in full swing, Madison County’s 65,000 plus voters will soon select whom they want to see in November’s general election. [Richmond Register]

Failure to stop business-as-usual global warming will deliver a severe economic blow to Southern states, a recent paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond finds. [ThinkProgress]

The Morehead State Board of Regents heard from the Health Care Task Force during Thursday’s work session. [The Morehead News]

Criminals used drones to disrupt the monitoring of a hostage situation, says the FBI. A top FBI official told a drone conference in Denver that criminals deliberately flew several small drones to block the rescue team’s view of an unfolding situation. [BBC]

Board members of the Barren County Economic Authority and Rep. Steve Riley, R-Glasgow, voiced their concerns Friday about a recent publication that labeled Glasgow as the poorest town in Kentucky. [Glasgow Daily Times]

Even some of the world’s richest people may get duped, according to newly unsealed documents in a lawsuit filed on behalf of investors in the failing blood-testing company Theranos. High-profile investors who collectively lost hundreds of millions of dollars included Walmart’s Walton family, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, as well as Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education and her relatives. [NY Times]

Maybe instead of constantly arresting addicts… we could do something like help get them clean? [Ashland Independent]

Quit acting like Sarah Huckabee Sanders has anything resembling credibility. The West Wing shouting match was so loud that more than a dozen staffers heard it. [WaPo]

Henry McKenna, a relatively untouted mid-priced bourbon, recently won Best Bourbon at the 2018 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. [Janet Patton]

A Sikh Canadian politician said he was subjected to inappropriate security screening at an American airport last year — which prompted the Canadian government to contact U.S. authorities for an explanation. [HuffPo]

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Who’ll Win? Carpetbagger Or Rich Guy?

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Ugh, Lexington is going to elect a carpetbagger or an out-of-touch rich guy instead of Reggie. [H-L]

Sounds like Kentucky, doesn’t it? Michigan Republicans are pushing a new, Donald Trump-inspired bill that would require Medicaid recipients in the state’s mostly black cities to work to keep their health benefits, but exempt some of the state’s rural white residents from the same requirement. [HuffPo]

Wayne Lewis, like Matt Bevin, is a con artist. The Kentucky Department of Education won’t tell you that the original plan was for the state to offer assistance to Jefferson County Public Schools rather than take it over and strip the elected school board of power. [C-J/AKN]

A robotic geologist armed with a hammer and quake monitor rocketed toward Mars on Saturday, aiming to land on the red planet and explore its mysterious insides. [AP]

Two weeks after Madison County Attorney Jud Patterson announced plans to start a new home incarceration program to help decrease the jail population, the first step in a possible expansion of the habitually overcrowded facility was taken by magistrates. [Richmond Register]

Matt Wender’s vision for Fayette County begins with the New River Gorge. Whitewater rafters, hikers and mountain bikers congregate there every summer. Craft beer and artisan pizza are helping his home emerge as an outdoor tourism hub. [ProPublica]

A Rowan County resident has filed a motion to challenge “the good faith of a candidate” running in the Primary Election on Tuesday, May 22. The “good faith” motion states King challenges Kim Barker-Tabor, current Rowan County Circuit Court Clerk and running for the seat later this month, of her candidacy for election in the primary, more specifically the date of her citizenship and residency in Rowan County. [The Morehead News]

One of the nation’s largest anti-LGBTQ organizations claims that it’s been treated unfairly because of its homophobic, transphobic, and other derogatory positions. [ThinkProgress]

Barren and 38 other Kentucky counties will receive money to be used for economic development because of Kentucky House Bill 114, which Matt Bevin signed into law in April. [Glasgow Daily Times]

The jobless rate looks like old times but the economy doesn’t. The last time the unemployment rate fell below the 4 percent threshold was in 2000, during a period of frenetic activity remembered as the dot-com boom. [NY Times]

The Fairview Board of Education on Friday chose a new superintendent following two marathon days of interviews. [Ashland Independent]

The abrupt ouster and reinstatement of the U.S. House chaplain are exposing tensions among House Republicans about the role of a vocal Jesuit Catholic priest in Congress in the era of Pope Francis. [WaPo]

A woman who said she gave birth in a jail cell without medical attention has filed a federal lawsuit against staffers with the Franklin County Regional Jail. [H-L]

A new “faith-based” adoption law signed by Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin on Friday is raising red flags for LGBTQ groups. [HuffPo]

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Embarrassing: Bevin’s Loony Projection

Somebody is projecting and his name is Matt Bevin. Matt Bevin went after a Kentucky judge Tuesday, the day after that judge ruled against Bevin’s procedural motion in a lawsuit over Kentucky’s new pension law. [H-L]

An interim memorial for the 49 people killed in the 2016 Pulse nightclub attack opened to the public Tuesday in Orlando, Florida. [HuffPo]

Battling brain cancer at his family ranch in Arizona, 81-year-old Sen. John McCain has been sharing his hopes for the future of the country and reflections on his political life with friends who visit. For former Vice President Joe Biden, McCain’s message was a simple one: don’t “walk away” from politics, Biden told The New York Times, describing his conversation with the Arizona Republican. [CBS News]

While Louisville frantically tries to rescue residents from heroin, fentanyl and pain pills, another drug is creeping back to prominence. Crystal meth. [C-J/AKN]

When former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. traveled to Senator John McCain’s Arizona ranch last Sunday to spend a few hours with his ailing friend, the two reminisced about the “crazy senators” they had served with, the overseas trips they took together for decades and the friendship Mr. McCain forged with Mr. Biden’s two sons. But the conversation on the sun-splashed deck off Mr. McCain’s bedroom was not all nostalgia. [NY Times]

Kentucky is among the many states considered by the National Safety Council to be “lagging” in handling the opioid crisis. [Richmond Register]

The Drug Enforcement Administration said Friday that it had immediately suspended opioid sales by a wholesale distributor, accusing a Louisiana company of failing to report unusually large shipments of narcotics to independent drugstores “with questionable need for the drugs.” [WaPo]

The Greenup County Board of Education took the first formal step toward enacting a utility tax Monday and made plans for a public hearing on the levy. [Ashland Independent]

The US Navy has said it will re-establish its Second Fleet, as Russia becomes more assertive. [BBC]

A budget totaling slightly more than $1.26 million was approved Monday by the Cave City Tourist and Convention Commission. [Glasgow Daily Times]

Former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, who could take command at EPA if Pruitt leaves, is “like Mike Pence is to Trump,“ says one person who has worked with him. [Politico]

State lawmakers from Louisville agree that the city’s public school system needs to improve, but disagree along party lines over whether the state should intervene in the management of the district. [WFPL]

The Department of Homeland Security ended temporary deportation protection for 57,000 Honduran immigrants on Friday, forcing them to either find another legal way to stay in the country or pack up their lives and leave. [ThinkProgress]

Montgomery County’s about to pay out another settlement.. A middle school chorus teacher who lost his job after disclosing that he is bisexual has filed a discrimination suit in federal court against the Montgomery County Board of Education. [H-L]

If you think this is bad, you’ll be horrified when you find out that organizations like PETA and the HSUS push massive euthanasia programs. A U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory is under fire after an investigation revealed it has been breeding kittens for research purposes and then killing them when they’re no longer needed. [HuffPo]

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The Republican Party of Kentucky’s Assault On Education Hits Raceland

Republican Senate candidate Don Blankenship stepped up his unconventional attacks on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday with a new ad that accuses him of creating “millions of jobs for China people.” [H-L]

Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal. People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal. [The Guardian]

Louisville prosecutors want probation revoked for the leader of a white nationalist group who repeatedly pushed a woman at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Louisville in 2016. [C-J/AKN]

Surprise! Republicans are still massive homophobes. The Kansas Legislature on Friday approved a bill that allows faith-based adoption agencies to turn away gay and lesbian couples based on religious beliefs, and the state’s governor said he would sign it. [Reuters]

The Attorney General issued an opinion Thursday stating the Eastern Kentucky University Board of Regents violated the Open Meetings Act in discussing multiple potential layoffs in a session closed to the public. [Richmond Register]

Jared Kushner’s ethics disclosure filing misstated the financials on two Brooklyn loans, the latest in a long series of errors and omissions on the form. [ProPublica]

The board of directors for Barren County’s special ambulance service taxing district has decided it will not pay – at least for April – the typical portion Barren-Metcalfe County Emergency Medical Services bills it for its deficit. [Glasgow Daily Times]

Donald Trump knew about a six-figure payment that Michael D. Cohen, his personal lawyer, made to a pornographic film actress several months before he denied any knowledge of it to reporters aboard Air Force One in April, according to two people familiar with the arrangement. [NY Times]

The Henderson School Board unanimously voted a century ago to ban the teaching of German in city schools, which was just the tip of the spear in the community’s case of anti-German hysteria at the time. [Frank Boyett]

A prominent Southern Baptist leader whose comments about spousal abuse set off a firestorm last week said in an interview Friday that he couldn’t “apologize for what I didn’t do wrong.” [WaPo]

The state budget crunch and changes in reciprocal enrollment agreements have taken their toll in Raceland-Worthington schools, where a number of staffers will be laid off at the end of the school year. [Ashland Independent]

Donald Trump harkened back to the racist attack he made on Mexican immigrants on the first day of his campaign in the summer of 2015 during a speech at the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention Friday. [ThinkProgress]

Becky Mullins’ heart broke two decades ago when the 2- and 3-year-old sisters for whom she cared as a foster mother were ordered back to their biological parents, where they had been abused until the state of Kentucky removed them. [John Cheves]

There were reasons to suspect the serial murderer and rapist known as the “Golden State Killer” worked as a cop. He knew to conceal his identity, wearing ski masks and gloves, ordering his victims not to look at him, disguising his voice in a whisper. [HuffPo]

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