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Fun fact: ethics don’t actually exist in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Three former state agriculture employees agreed Monday to pay a total of $15,500 in fines to settle ethics charges that stemmed from their employment under former Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer. [H-L]

Here’s a finding that shouldn’t be all that surprising: Since 1991, roughly 97 percent of all published scientific papers that take a position on the question agree that humans are warming the planet. [WaPo]

June 11 promises to be a historic day for residents of Grayson. Voters in all or parts of seven city precincts will go to the polls to cast “yes” or “no” ballots on a single question: “Are you in favor of the sale of alcoholic beverages within the city limits of Grayson?” [Ashland Independent]

Pro-tip to Ellen Williams: You can’t “disagree” that coal kills the environment. You can love it because it creates a handful of jobs but you can’t disagree with reality. That’s almost as bad as Jonathan Miller’s blanket praise for corrupt folks in Frankfort. [RPK Dishonesty]

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday appeared to defend the Obama administration’s controversial leak investigation into the Associated Press — an inquiry that sparked outrage after the Department of Justice subpoenaed personal and work telephone records for at least 20 of the news organization’s reporters and editors. [HuffPo]

How exactly is this news? Like them or hate them, nearly all major PR firms have clients that oppose each other. That’s why firewalls exist. Do you think Power Creative has issues having two different employees handling two different clients? What about Creative Alliance or Red7e? Of course not. Beyond silly. It’s like Insight/Time Warner accepting ad revenue in support of legislation while paying lobbyists to oppose that legislation. [CN|2]

On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — the GOP leader in the senate — distanced himself from Republican efforts to portray the Obama administration’s response to the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic issue in Benghazi, Libya as a Watergate-level scandal that should result in impeachment. [Think Progress]

House Speaker Greg Stumbo has offered a Senate redistricting plan in hopes of speeding up what has become a drawn-out process. The Prestonsburg Democrat said Monday that delaying legislative redistricting makes it more likely that judges will step in to realign political boundaries in the state. [WTVQ]

The top Republican and Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs are demanding more details from defense Secretary Chuck Hagel about lost Army field records from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the subject of a ProPublica investigation last year. [ProPublica]

Three former employees of Richie Farmer’s agriculture department have agreed to settlements with the Executive Branch Ethics Commission, accepting reprimands and fines. [Ronnie Ellis]

The president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press on Sunday called the government’s secret seizure of two months of reporters’ phone records “unconstitutional” and said the news cooperative had not ruled out legal action against the Justice Department. [HuffPo]

Officials in Louisville and some surrounding counties have begun a campaign for a regional sewer commission and a new, large treatment plant, perhaps on the Salt River south of Louisville near the Ohio River. Meanwhile, corruption is rampant and your rates continue to skyrocket to pay for mind-blowing swaps that other states have jumped on but Kentucky ignores. [C-J/AKN]

An Owsley County man died Saturday and a second man was shot after the two allegedly got into an argument involving an all-terrain vehicle. [H-L]

Your hospital may be hazardous to your health. An interactive investigation into patient harm. [ProPublica]

With U.S. Sen. Rand Paul edging ever closer to a presidential run in 2016, the question we hear more and more is, “Can he still run for reelection as Senator if he runs for president?” [Joe Gerth]

The decades-old fight over genetically modified food has reached a fever pitch in Washington. [The Hill]

Kentucky House Speaker Greg Stumbo on Monday filed an answer to a federal court action seeking to compel state legislative redistricting. [Lane Report]

Six years ago, the FBI took on a challenge: To review what it called cold-case killings from the civil rights era. The investigation into 112 cases from the 1950s and 1960s is winding down, and civil rights activists are weighing the FBI’s efforts. [NPR]

The people who live near Highlands Park, just off of Georgetown Road, say they’ve always felt safe letting their kids play there, but they say that sense of safety is gone after a man exposed himself to a teenage girl near the park. [WKYT]

The 4% of GDP deficit forecast for 2013 is even more remarkable when one notes that the figure for 2012 was 7%. That’s a breathtaking pace of fiscal consolidation. CBO reckons that the deficit will continue to fall and will drop to 2.1% of GDP in 2015. [The Economist]

American Legion Post 43 in Greenup County was charged with two counts of selling alcohol in a dry territory and two counts of promoting gambling in the second degree, according to a release from the Public Protection Cabinet’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) and the Department of Charitable Gaming. [Ashland Independent]

President Barack Obama comes out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll. [CNN]

The memorial is a great idea. But that $130,000 could probably be spent at the Salato Wildlife Education Center in a much better way… maybe in making sure all the wildlife doesn’t die all the time. [H-L]

During the summer of 2010, the dozen or so accountants and tax agents of Group 7822 of the Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati got a directive from their manager. A growing number of organizations identifying themselves as part of the Tea Party had begun applying for tax exemptions, the manager said, advising the workers to be on the lookout for them and other groups planning to get involved in elections. [NY Times]

During the trial of former Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer the federal government plans to raise instances of alleged misconduct by Farmer outside of the specific crimes charged in Farmer’s indictment. [Richie Funtimes]

As you know, Rand Paul is an expert at everything – especially appearing on television – so here he is talking to Candy Crawdad:

You are welcome.

Since so many of you missed Mitch McConnell’s appearance on Meet the Press, here it is:

We’re typically big fans of any organization opposing Mitch McConnell. But this bunch is the worst of the worst:

On Saturday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gave the commencement speech at Kentucky’s Murray State University. A group of students is opposed to McConnell’s address, pointing to his record voting against support for higher education. Recall that McConnell, for example, opposed a student loan overhaul that removed big banks as a middleman in federal student lending.

They started a petition that has 913 signatures and held demonstrations on campus against the pick. I talked to Murray State senior and political science major Devin Griggs, one of the organizers against McConnell who is starting a new progressive student group called CORE — Campus Organization for Racer Empowerment (the Racer is the mascot of the school).

“McConnell’s voting record is completely anti higher education, anti education in general,” explained Griggs in his opposition to McConnell’s commencement address. CORE not only campaigned against McConnell’s address, but will also work to change the Board of Regents policy in the future regarding speakers.

CORE will be asking every Board of Regents member to in the future make sure that no public official Democrat or Republican can be featured as a commencement speaker to ensure that the event is not politicized.

They go into states, run a couple dinky ads, raise a bunch of cash and leave the state, never investing in the state or working to accomplish a goal other than raising money to pay themselves.

Beyond playing pat-a-cake with McConnell, the group attempted to mess around in the campaign against Paul Ryan. When it tried spending money in the district for its usual fundraising effort, it demanded that the campaign against Ryan pony up its database (this is confirmed by two of that campaign’s officials) – a violation of federal election law.

PCCC is attempting to do the same thing in Kentucky and would be wise to stop attempting to screw things up for those working to actually accomplish something.

This week President Barack Obama discussed building a rising, thriving middle class:

The Fayette County Public Schools plan to slash work days for 42 directors of the district’s family resource centers next year because of continued government funding reductions. [H-L]

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on Thursday cast doubt on the criteria used to decide the 2000 Bush v. Gore case that ultimately delivered the presidency to George W. Bush. [HuffPo]

It’s been a hellacious several days for the Obama administration, what with boiling controversies at the Internal Revenue Service over its special treatment of tea party groups, at the Justice Department over the seizure of Associated Press reporters’ phone records, and at the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency over how the facts behind last year’s fatal attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, were portrayed to the public and Congress. [C-J/AKN]

The IRS division responsible for flagging Tea Party groups has long been an agency afterthought, beset by mismanagement, financial constraints and an unwillingness to spell out just what it expects from social welfare nonprofits, former officials and experts say. [ProPublica]

Mitch McConnell said Sunday on Meet the Press with David Gregory that he was wrong earlier in his career to be suspicious of not-for-profit groups with political operations like those targeted by the IRS. [CN|2]

When the Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda placed a bounty on her husband’s head, Mary Feierstein learned of it from a friend who called and said, “You must be a mess!” U.S. Ambassador Gerald Feierstein was thousands of miles (km) away at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, without his wife and family on what is called an “unaccompanied” posting. [Reuters]

An Owsley County man was killed in a shootout on Saturday night near Booneville. A second man was also injured in the shooting. [WLEX18]

Eighty thousand years ago the Earth began to cool, marking the start of the last Ice Age. Experts are still discovering how the big freeze affected the giant mammals which prowled its dramatically changing landscape. Scientists are helping to uncover the secrets of giant Ice Age beasts like the sabretooth cat – by foraging in crates of dirt which were collected during the building of a car park. [BBC]

Originally scheduled for 2014, the reconstruction of Exit 95 on Interstate 75 won’t take place until 2017, Madison Judge/Executive Kent Clark told a joint meeting of the Richmond and Berea chambers of commerce Friday. [Richmond Register]

The guarding of U.S. diplomatic outposts like the consulate Benghazi in Libya should be treated like Baghdad with more military force, Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the Kentucky Republican said his focus isn’t on the Benghazi talking points, but on not guarding the outpost more heavily. So maybe Republicans should stop voting against funding measures. [Politico]

They worked for nearly a year, meeting with residents and experts across Kentucky, eventually releasing a 450-page book that made 54 recommendations for changing the state tax code — and for boosting revenue by a projected $659 million. But the recommendations from Gov. Steve Beshear’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Tax Reform have been gathering dust — largely ignored by the legislature and shelved by Beshear’s administration until the 2014 General Assembly. [C-J/AKN]

Republicans like this guy aren’t taken seriously because they continually spout off crazy things. Suggesting that there’s going to be a modern day Hitler invasion is borderline. [HuffPo]

Who let the dogs out? An eastern Kentucky sheriff says it was an intoxicated neighbor. [H-L]

A bill introduced Friday calls on the federal government to craft a national strategy for dealing with the public health effects of climate change. [The Hill]

Former Kentucky Democratic Party Chairman Bill Garmer said Friday he is considering running for the U.S. Senate next year if Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes declines to enter the race against Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell. [PEE ALERT]

Naturally, Republicans are split on a media shield law amid outrage over the Associated Press records seizure. [HuffPo]

The House and Senate agriculture committees have drafted farm bills that do not include provisions to legalize industrial hemp production. The hemp provision has broad bipartisan support among Kentucky state and federal officials and enjoys considerable bipartisan backing in Congress. [C-J/AKN]

The scandals they’re presently touting, bad as two of them are, aren’t even the worst of Team Obama’s transgressions. [The Atlantic]

Everybody is askeerd because the prostitutes are just cold taking over in Winchester. [WKYT]

Veteran BBC investigative reporter Tom Mangold got an email out of the blue one day from a woman in Mayfield, Kentucky, asking him for help to find the murderers of a teenage girl. Intrigued, he flew out to meet her soon afterwards, and stumbled into an extraordinary story. [BBC]

The concept seemed perfect: Have a dinner train depart from downtown Lexington, take passengers on a little excursion to Frankfort or Midway, feed them prime rib or scallops along the way, then shuttle them back. But those plans announced in 2010 never came to fruition. Now the stillborn dinner-train idea is at the crux of a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Lexington. [H-L]

The Internal Revenue Service took a bipartisan drubbing Friday morning over its targeting of conservative political groups, even as its acting director apologized and denied the activity was partisan. [HuffPo]

Twice at Tuesday night’s city commission meeting, Commissioner Laura King accused Mayor Jim Barnes of lying. She also said the mayor “likes to discriminate against women.” [Richmond Register]

Americans felt better about their economic and financial prospects in early May as consumer sentiment rose to the highest level in nearly six years, an encouraging sign after other recent data had suggested broader U.S. growth is cooling. [Reuters]

Wondering why animal control agencies can’t have nice things in Kentucky? It’s because of crap like this in Oldham County. [WDRB]

It’s sad that Republicans fabricated those smoking gun emails they maybe illegally leaked and forgot to add a smoking gun. [Wonkette]

We keep hearing the 56th District special election is going to involve Woodford Memorial Hospital funtimes. This could turn into some fun. [Deep Special Election Funtimes]

Here’s part of his KET interview with Bill Goodman:

Long story short: he believes immigration reform is necessary so unbelievably low, unlivable wages can continue to be payed for extremely difficult labor.