Law Enforcement

Neo-Nazis Are Apparently Cowards Now

Surprise! The racists are cowards. White nationalist groups might hold a flash demonstration in Lexington to protest moving two Confederate statues from the lawn of the former Fayette County courthouse instead of a publicly announced rally, according to an organizer. [H-L]

When Avaye Armstrong got pregnant almost two years ago, she had a job waiting tables at a Buffalo Wild Wings. She enjoyed the work and it paid well on game nights. Armstrong, her daughter and her boyfriend were living with his mother at the time, not far from the restaurant. [HuffPo]

Are you effing kidding!? Just bulldoze it. Rip it up. It’s pointless to have a traffic circle there. [C-J/AKN]

The relationship between Dingust Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has disintegrated to the point that they have not spoken to each other in weeks, and Mr. McConnell has privately expressed uncertainty that Mr. Trump will be able to salvage his administration after a series of summer crises. [NY Times]

Way to go, Laurel County! A man has been arrested in Laurel County after deputies say he was naked and walking around an elementary school while high on Drugs. [WKYT]

Donald Trump is still racist as all hell and Republicans like Scott Jennings still own him. They created him, they own him. [The Hill]

The Boyd County Jailer, Joe Burchett, needs to go. He is the problem. [Ashland Independent]

Analysts tracking Russian influence operations find a feedback loop between Kremlin propaganda and far-right memes. [ProPublica]

Poor Whitney Westerfield has been lied to again. He believes he’s going to have an easy time winning the Office of Attorney General. Unfortunately for him, he’s not quite as slick as he’d like to believe. [Richmond Register]

Yes, Donald Trump is absolutely running scared. He knows the press is guaranteeing neither he nor his family (or staffers) will ever have a shred of credibility. [WaPo]

It didn’t last all that long but for a minute and 42 seconds Monday the stars aligned and the world seemed in tune here. [Ronnie Ellis]

Donald Trump’s approval rating has hit a new low following a week in which a majority of voters believe he did more to divide the country than unite it. [Politicrow]

A Franklin Circuit Court judge on Tuesday asked attorneys for the state why Kentucky should not make medical marijuana available to patients who believe it might help them, given that “we’ve pretty much decriminalized” the drug around much of the nation and even in parts of the state. [H-L]

Donald Trump’s administration has dissolved a federal panel of scientists and other experts tasked with helping create and implement new policy based on the latest climate change research findings. [HuffPo]

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Do You Prefer Nazi Or Russian Commie Trump? Spoiler Alert: They’re The Same

***Care about the future of Kentucky? Help us cover FOIA and open records request fees relating to Matt Bevin and Jamie Comer.*** [CLICK HERE]

State Rep. C. Wesley Morgan failed to pay property taxes on his $350,000 houseboat for more than a decade, denying school districts and local governments thousands of dollars each year, according to public records and interviews with officials. [H-L]

A veteran international prosecutor announced she plans to quit the United Nations commission investigating human rights abuses in Syria because of the international community’s inaction when it comes to the bloodshed in the country. [HuffPo]

Another racist jackass is dead. Sonny Landham, a famed movie actor in the 1970s and 1980s who later attempted several runs for office in Kentucky, has died at age 76, according to the Associated Press. [C-J/AKN]

Sonia K. is a Holocaust survivor who was forced to live in the Warsaw Ghetto before being taken to Madjanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and Malchow concentration camps. [CNN]

Trump is correct that there is a lot of historical revision surrounding what we teach about slavery and the Civil War. But the revisionism is in the opposite direction of what Trump and Bevin claim. [Ronnie Ellis]

More civilians were killed and wounded in Kabul during in the first six months of 2017 than in war-ravaged Helmand, according to a United Nations midyear report on civilian casualties that showed deaths and injuries in Afghanistan remained near record levels documented last year. [WSJ]

The last time Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear and attorneys for Republican Gov. Matt Bevin squared off before the state Supreme Court on the question of a governor’s power over public universities, Beshear won. [More Ronnie Ellis]

A U.S. appeals court on Friday limited the ability of police to seize cell phones from homes of people suspected of crimes, ruling the prevelance of mobile devices did not mean police could assume a suspect had one when requesting a search warrant. [Reuters]

Rowan County taxpayers will notice a decrease in their school tax rate when they receive their property taxes this year. [The Morehead News]

More than a decade ago, I chatted with Asian-American seniors at Hunter College High School in New York City about their college admission prospects. [ProPublica]

The jailer there, Joe Burchett, ought to be promptly investigated by state and federal authorites(sic). I’ve been hearing a lot about him for quite a while and it’s beyond time. First responders rushed to the Boyd County Detention Center Saturday night after maximum security inmates set a mattress ablaze, severely damaging the interior of the jail and forcing officials to relocate all 270 detainees, police said. [Ashland Independent]

As early as March 2016, a low-level Trump campaign aide claimed none other than the president of Russia was trying to meet then-candidate Donald Trump and his campaign. [WaPo]

Valarie Honeycutt Spears has been sitting on her hands as these things have unfolded for a long time. She’s also intentionally ignored mega scandals (like Montgomery County) that cost school districts tens of millions of dollars on top of everything else. She ought to be removed from covering education – just as Toni Konz was being pushed out just before she jumped ship and moved to WDRB. [H-L]

Chants of “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA” echoed throughout the French Quarter on Saturday as thousands of people marched in a peaceful ― but loud ― protest against racism and white supremacy. [HuffPo]

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If You Support The Second Amendment, You Should Support Responsible Gun Ownership, No Excuses

If it’s a crime to let kids ingest your meth or your pills, it should be a crime to let them get a hold of a loaded gun. Recklessly storing a gun where children could find and use it would be a crime in Kentucky under a bill that state Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, pre-filed this month for the 2018 legislative session. [H-L]

Donald Trump issued an explosive statement against “Radical Islamic Terror” just hours after an attack in Barcelona, Spain, on Thursday left at least 13 people dead. Earlier this week, Trump said he needed to get all “the facts” before singling out hate groups for condemnation after violent protests sparked by a white supremacist rally left one woman dead in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday. [HuffPo]

You can thank Matt Bevin for allowing this to occur. GE Appliances is moving the Zoneline hotel air-conditioner production from Louisville to a Tennessee factory complex where the company also will produce upscale Monogram refrigerators and freezers. [C-J/AKN]

Allies who spend too long in Donald Trump’s doghouse usually get sent away for good. Chief strategist Steve Bannon is trying to forestall that fate. [BuzzFart]

Is a hospital liable for “negligently” credentialing a physician previously licensed by the state medical licensure board and who is not on the hospital’s staff when that doctor is sued for malpractice? That was the question before Kentucky’s highest court Thursday as attorneys for Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital and a woman who successfully sued her neurosurgeon for malpractice after he performed surgery at the hospital. [Ronnie Ellis]

Pressure is mounting on Trump to dump his controversial chief strategist Stephen Bannon after this weekend’s racial violence in Charlottesville, Va., provoked widespread anger at the nationalist wing of Trump’s White House. [The Hill]

The folks running Barren County are up to no good and you should be paying attention. The rehiring of elected officials is shady business. [Glasgow Daily Times]

More than a dozen high technology companies and the biggest wireless operator in the United States, Verizon Communications Inc, have called on the U.S. Supreme Court to make it harder for government officials to access individuals’ sensitive cellphone data. [Reuters]

If you’re wondering what’s wrong with Kentucky’s educational system? It’s because schools are closing for things like this instead of using them as teaching opportunities. You can complain all you want about this opinion but not everyone can afford to take their children to a prime viewing location and not everyone can afford childcare. [Ashland Independent]

Einstein argued that what we understand as gravity is, in fact, from the curvature of space and time — a hotly debated notion among physicists at the time. Then came the solar eclipse of 1919 — more than six minutes of darkness along a path that stretched from South America to Africa and changed the course of Einstein’s life. [WaPo]

The Rowan County Sheriff’s Office has been awarded its second, five-year accreditation through the Kentucky Association of Chiefs of Police (KACP). [The Morehead News]

There was nothing haphazard about the violence that erupted today in this bucolic town in Virginia’s heartland. [ProPublica]

These Nazis should tread lightly because there are a ton of people in the mountains ready to make them wish they’d never been born. [H-L]

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Turd Burglar) offered some blunt comments about Donald Trump on Thursday in the wake of the president’s widely criticized response to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. [HuffPo]

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David James Shouldn’t Get A Free Pass For His Hypocritical, Dumb, Self-Hating Homophobia But Everyone’s Afraid To Call Him Out

The city of Lexington spent more than $21,000 to pay the legal bills of a horse farm owner, raising questions from some Lexington council members and the chairman of the board that oversees Fayette County’s farmland preservation program. [H-L]

White women have always played a role in propping up white supremacy and toxic masculinity. But we’re not allowed to talk about that with Louisville liberals because everyone immediately melts down into some rant about sexism. [HuffPo]

Wondering why Kentucky’s education system is so backward and things always go the wrong way – like in Montgomery County? Here’s a look. [C-J/AKN]

A group of Democrats implored the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee to reverse course and authorize an investigation into whether any of the hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from Deutsche Bank to President Trump were connected to Russia. [WaPo]

Why is no one talking about how David James (essed any downlow dee lately, David, you Julian Carroll-style self-hating bigot? Or chased any “big gals” on AOL message boards?) is dumb enough to think this could help him in a bid for mayor? Poop rolls down hill and it starts with Greg Fischer, not the chief. [WFPL]

In a sign that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election will remain a continuing distraction for the White House, the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is in talks with the West Wing about interviewing current and former senior administration officials, including the recently ousted White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, according to three people briefed on the discussions. [NY Times]

New information broke Friday in a three-year-old Richmond cold case — the murder of Karen Rollins Simpson and Avery “Boochie” Evans in their Valley Street home. Richmond Police are now asking for the public’s help in locating a young man who was seen the morning before the bodies were found. [Richmond Register]

Federal prosecutors have lots of ways to intensify pressure on the people they’re investigating, from early morning FBI raids to leaning on relatives of those under government scrutiny. But even by those measures, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in last year’s presidential election is moving with unusual speed and assertiveness, according to half a dozen legal experts following the probe. [NPR]

Infrastructure, customer service, capital and long-term strategic plans. Each of these topics are on the agenda for new City Manager Michael Graese, 51, who is now approaching his second full week on the job. The Daily Independent sat down with the former Army colonel this week and talked about his first impressions and what is already on the agenda. [Ashland Independent]

Did anyone really think this woman had the guts to stand up for anything? It’s all about money for her. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao is unlikely to resign over President Trump’s public criticism of her husband Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Grandmother), say allies, GOP strategists and former Cabinet members. [The Hill]

People who live in Appalachia are dying sooner than two decades ago, and the region has a higher infant death rate compared to the rest of the nation. A new study blames both largely on the region’s high smoking rate, as well as its other bad health habits. [The Morehead News]

State police and National Guardsmen watched passively for hours as self-proclaimed Nazis engaged in street battles with counter-protesters. [ProPublica]

A doctor accused of improperly prescribing pain pills at an Eastern Kentucky clinic won’t have to serve additional time in jail. [H-L]

Months before Donald Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury,” before North Korea claimed to be planning a mid-August attack on Guam and well before Trump tweeted that the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” to strike, officials in Hawaii began organizing guidelines for civilians in case of a nuclear attack on the islands. [HuffPo]

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McConnell Doesn’t Have Guts To Fight Back

A former chief regional Social Security judge was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison for scheming to retaliate against an employee who blew the whistle on alleged fraud by Floyd County disability lawyer Eric Conn. [H-L]

Donald Trump on Thursday lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Granny) over Republicans’ latest failed attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. [HuffPo]

A lawsuit challenging Gov. Matt Bevin’s controversial restructuring of state education boards can move forward, a judge ruled Wednesday. [C-J/AKN]

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has lost two of her top aides, key departures that come at a time of growing international tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. Haley’s Chief of Staff Steven Groves resigned, as did her communications director Jonathan Wachtel. [Bloomberg]

James Comer, R-Paid For An Abortion & Lied About It While Attacking His Victim Again, was slated to travel to Israel this week as part of a Congressional delegation to attend a seminar on foreign policy and national security issues both countries are facing. [Glasgow Daily Times]

When millions of Americans turn their faces skyward to witness the nation’s first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in a century, many will reach for specially designed sunglasses, but experts caution the public to stay clear of unsafe counterfeits. [Reuters]

Narcan is a powerful drug that can yank an overdose patient back from the claws of death, and local residents can learn how to use it to save a life Friday at The Neighborhood in Ashland. [Ashland Independent]

The Matthew Shepard Foundation has been trying to learn more about why so many victims of potential hate crimes — more than 50 percent annually according to the feds — don’t file complaints with the authorities. [ProPublica]

An on-going Madison County Drug Task Force investigation resulted in officers seizing a total of 1.6 pounds of heroin, 14 grams of methamphetamine, 3.8 ounce of marijuana and eight Ecstasy tablets. [Richmond Register]

It’s basically the opposite of a major government infrastructure program. Government spending on transportation and other public works is in decline as federal funding stagnates and state and local governments tighten their belts. [NY Times]

The Trump administration’s top health official backed away from a presidential commission’s proposal to declare a national public health emergency to address the opioid crisis. [WFPL]

On Saturday, Donald Trump tweeted his gratitude to a social-media super-fan, ­Nicole Mincey, magnifying her praise of him to his 35 million followers. Here’s the problem: There is no evidence the Twitter feed belongs to someone named Nicole Mincey. And the account, according to experts, bears a lot of signs of a Russia-backed disinformation campaign. [WaPo]

Placing much of the blame on smoking, a study chronicling the ongoing health crisis in Appalachia has concluded that the 13-state region suffers from a growing disparity in infant mortality and life expectancy, two key indicators of “a nation’s health and well-being.” [H-L]

Washington and Moscow have over decades established mechanisms to prevent crises from spinning out of control, from hotlines to satellites and over-flights that allow the nuclear-armed adversaries to track each other’s military deployments. [HuffPo]

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Come On, Bulleit, Purge The Homophobia

Yep, it’s definitely time to throw out any Bulleit bourbon or rye products you’ve got in your homes or businesses. Homophobia is a disease and it should be eradicated. So when businesses like this pull clearly homophobic stunts? You’ve gotta show them that they’re not worth buying. Probably time to also ditch anything else Diageo makes. Pro-tip: If it wasn’t about homophobia? They would have been able to get out in front of it instead of flailing so badly. This is a gigantic corporation we’re talking about with a skilled PR team. They sucked this badly at it because they’re being dishonest. [H-L]

The beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency has been clouded by an ever-evolving scandal around potential collusion between his campaign and Russia. All told, there are five investigations into the matter, and from what we can tell publicly, none appears close to reaching a conclusion. [HuffPo]

Yes, there’s homophobia in the bourbon industry. There’s extreme homophobia in almost every industry in Kentucky. If you don’t live somewhere like Louisville, it’s still dangerous to be yourself in the Commonwealth. [C-J/AKN]

Government employees are growing increasingly willing to criticize or defy the White House and Donald Trump’s top appointees. [The Hill]

The late philanthropist Nancy McClellan willed $50,000 to the Boyd County Animal Shelter, and the fiscal court plans to combine the gift with county and Ashland city funding to replace it. [Ashland Independent]

Wells Fargo & Co will pay the U.S. government $108 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit claiming it charged military veterans hidden fees to refinance their mortgages, and concealed the fees when applying for federal loan guarantees. [Reuters]

Margie Patton admits she was caught off guard when Harold “Hal” Heers stopped her one day back in 2008 to tell her he wanted to help the Barren River Animal Welfare Association expand the animal shelter. [Glasgow Daily Times]

Rex Tillerson is resisting the pleas of State Department officials to spend nearly $80 million allocated by Congress for fighting terrorist propaganda and Russian disinformation. [Politico]

A Clearfield woman has been arrested after police say she was trafficking both heroin and opiates, along with putting seven people in serious harm after exposing them to an extremely poisonous, deadly illicit drug. [The Morehead News]

Senators Tom Cotton and Ben Sasse have already been to Iowa this year, Gov. John Kasich is eyeing a return visit to New Hampshire, and Mike Pence’s schedule is so full of political events that Republicans joke that he is acting more like a second-term vice president hoping to clear the field than a No. 2 sworn in a little over six months ago. [NY Times]

This is the problem. Instead of leaving it up to sex offenders to report their location, we should be keeping track of them. [Richmond Register]

Afghan officials worry about widespread reports that Donald Trump threatened to fire Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the highly regarded U.S. military commander in the war-torn country. They’re also fretting over Trump’s delay in choosing a new military and political strategy. [WaPo]

What do you expect? After years and years of New Nazis/New Republicans screaming about poor people being on the take, pregnant women and women with children feel ashamed. The wingnuts fighting to end abortion but refusing to help women and children after babies are born are also a huge part of the problem. [H-L]

The Trump administration is actively advancing an agenda heralded by white nationalists, and its attempts to animate African Americans as a means to this end are becoming clearer with time. [HuffPo]

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Bevin: So Weak He Hides From Critics

Churchill Downs Inc. is turning up the heat on its Big Fish Games division, with the launch in June of a new game called Cooking Craze, that company officials said is already doing better than its popular Gummy Drop was at this stage. [Janet Patton]

The U.S. government ordered family members of employees at its embassy in Venezuela to leave on Thursday as a political crisis deepened ahead of a controversial vote critics contend will end democracy in the oil-rich country. [HuffPo]

Only elected cowards hide from their constituents. The ACLU of Kentucky is asking Matt Bevin to stop blocking constituents from his official social media pages and to open those internet forums to the hundreds of people currently prohibited from engaging him on those accounts. [C-J/AKN]

Donald Trump’s sudden decision to ban transgender personnel from serving in the military has alarmed some senior military officers who were caught off guard by it. [Reuters]

Surprise! Republicans want to kill broadband expansion. In part because they’re dumb as rocks, in part because they don’t want to do anything that may help their fellow man join the 21st Century. [WFPL]

Internal talking points from Donald Trump’s spy chief reveal tensions between Trump and the intelligence community. [ProPublica]

Across the Appalachia Mountains and through the small, rural towns of Kentucky, opioid addiction has become an epidemic, claiming lives and raising taxes in some communities as it wreaks its havoc on communities, children and first responders. [Richmond Register]

The Center for Biological Diversity sued the Trump administration on Wednesday for failing to provide public records about meetings between the Department of the Interior and energy industry executives. The meetings were reportedly about reversing the Obama administration’s rule on coal leasing on federal public lands. [ThinkProgress]

How many people have to die? Potent opioids sold by dealers who profit from the disease of addiction are poisoning Boyd County. [Ashland Independent]

Amid the fall-out from Donald Trump’s announcement on Twitter that transgender people will not be able to serve in the US military, one statistic has been frequently raised to draw attention to the comparatively small estimated costs of transgender healthcare. It refers to the amount the Pentagon spends on erectile dysfunction medication annually: about $84m (£63m), according to the Military Times newspaper. [BBC]

The lawsuit brought in Barren Circuit Court by a former spokeswoman for the Glasgow Police Department against the City of Glasgow was dismissed Friday morning by Judge John T. Alexander. [Glasgow Daily Times]

An Obama-era program that created savings accounts to help more people put away money for retirement is being shut down by the Treasury Department. [NY Times]

A Scott County company wants to decrease garbage in the Central Kentucky Landfill in Georgetown by sifting through household trash for recyclable materials. [H-L]

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James Risen is leaving The New York Times after nearly two decades, a distinguished run that included standout reporting on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration’s bogus case for invading Iraq, and rampant government surveillance. [HuffPo]

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