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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blasted House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday after leaks circulated of a plan that House Republicans might offer to end the spending and debt stalemate.“We felt blindsided by the news from the House,” Reid said on the Senate floor in a scathing attack on Boehner and his House GOP members. The Nevada Democrat said “extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives are attempting to torpedo" the negotiations which he and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have been conducting in the past few days. Reid’s torrent of criticism came hours after he and McConnell both said...

Louisville Office -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 601 W. Broadway Room 630 Louisville, KY 40202 Phone: (502) 582-6304 Lexington Office Lexington Office -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 771 Corporate Drive Suite 108 Lexington, KY 40503 Phone: (859) 224-8286 Ft. Wright Office Fort Wright Office -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1885 Dixie Highway Suite 345 Fort Wright, KY 41011 Phone: (859) 578-0188 London Office London Office -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 300 S. Main Street Suite 310 London, KY 40741 Phone: (606) 864-2026 Bowling Green Office Bowling Green Office -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Federal Building 241 E. Main Street, Rm. 102 Bowling Green, KY 42101 Phone: (270) 781-1673 Paducah Office Paducah Office -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Professional Arts Building 2320 Broadway, Suite 100...

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's popularity is taking a dive due to the government shutdown, according to a new Gallup survey released Thursday. The new figures comes as McConnell's GOP primary challenger Matt Bevin is vying to gain the support of a key political organization in Northern Kentucky this week. Overall, Gallup finds McConnell's net approvals are down by 12 percentage points since Congress failed pass a spending bill to keep federal services and programs running. "That divide is related to this and speaking to that issue directly, I think de-funding (Obamacare) is the way to go," says Rick Brueggemann,...

ObamaCare is at the center of a rapidly escalating fight that threatens to shut the government down this fall. [WATCH VIDEO]Senate Republicans, including two members of the leadership, are coalescing around a proposal to block any government funding resolution that includes money for the implementation of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.But such a move is a nonstarter for President Obama and congressional Democrats. Republicans have tried this maneuver in Obama’s first term, only to back off later to the chagrin of Tea Party leaders.This time, GOP lawmakers are emboldened by problems plaguing the administration’s ObamaCare implementation. But that zeal...

Senate leaders attempting to avoid a U.S. debt default remained at loggerheads Sunday and escalated the standoff by reopening the contentious issue of automatic spending cuts... Many Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), oppose retreating from those cuts. That set up a clash that seemed almost as intense as the one that caused budget talks between House Republicans and President Barack Obama to collapse Friday. Senate Democrats have been strengthened by the sidelining, at least for now, of House conservatives, who dropped nearly all their major policy demands only to see Mr. Obama reject their proposal for...

The White House and the Senate are working to squeeze House Republicans into accepting a bipartisan compromise from the upper chamber to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. Any emerging deal, however, will leave ObamaCare largely intact, angering conservatives who have demanded defunding or delaying President Obama’s signature achievement. House Republicans are fuming over the prospect that Senate Democrats and Republicans are working on a plan to jam them with a last-minute deal they would have to accept or risk triggering a federal default. “They are trying to jam us with the Senate and we are not going...

.....The Maryland Health Connection enrolled just more than 1,120 people in the first 10 days — compared with more than 9,000 in Kentucky, which has fewer uninsured, and tens of thousands in California and New York. Other states have had similar problems, and the federal site, which serves 36 states, has been bogged down. But Maryland is now being targeted for criticism by conservatives on Capitol Hill and publications such as the Weekly Standard, which highlighted the fact that consumers could not search Maryland Health Connection to see if their doctors participate in the program. Some Obamacare supporters are also...

Video at link. Andy Mangione, who lives in Louisville, Ky. with his wife Amy and their two boys, is doing the same thing millions of people are doing --trying to figure out how much his insurance will cost under ObamaCare. Before the exchanges opened, his insurance company said his rates would soar. But now that there are subsidies, he's been trying for days to find out how much he would get. "To logically compare plans, I've been calling them every day since October 1st," says Mangione, "several times a day on some occasions. Sometimes enduring 45, 50 minute holds, half...

enate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) are taking the lead on talks to raise the debt limit and reopen the government, according to senators. Reid and McConnell are working off a six-point proposal sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that would fund the government for six months and raise the debt ceiling until Jan. 31, 2014. Senators view discussions between the two leaders as a promising sign of potential bipartisan compromise. “Reid and McConnell are talking now and those discussions continue so I see that as progress,” said Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas)....

Via RCP. Wait, wait, wait — before you start shaking your first at him, isn’t his point here oddly simpatico with what tea partiers say every day about Beltway squishes like King himself? It all depends on what benchmark you use to define “Republican.” The Republican establishment of the past 10 years has been fiercely interventionist, willing to bend on civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism, and happy to back new entitlement programs like Medicare Part D so long as their guy’s in the White House. Rand Paul, by contrast, tilts towards isolationism, wants to sue the NSA...

WASHINGTON — The stalemate between Republicans and Democrats over health care and the budget showed no signs of ending Tuesday as Kentucky Republicans insisted nothing will change until President Barack Obama is willing to compromise. As Obama made clear through the day that he will not negotiate over the looming debt limit or any budget talks that include changes to his health care law, Republicans like U.S. Rep. Andy Barr warned that nothing will change until Obama changes his tune. "Nothing will happen if the president refuses to negotiate," Barr told the Herald-Leader Tuesday. Blasting the refusal by Democrats to...

Glenn Beck told his audience on Monday that the following morning on his radio program, he will reveal the name of a Republican lawmaker who said anyone who stands with FreedomWorks or the Senate Conservatives Fund is a “traitor” to the Senate.

Kentucky authorities believe that a woman was eaten by dozens of her pet wolf-dogs after she died. The Ohio County Sheriff’s Office told WFIE-TV that when they conducted a welfare check on 67-year-old Patricia Ritz, they found a human skull and jawbone as 50 hybrid wolf-dogs roamed her Fordsville property. Officials believe they are the remains of Ritz. WHAS-TV reports that neighbors called authorities after she wasn’t seen for more than a week. She reportedly told her neighbors that she wasn’t feeling well recently. Ohio County Animal Control came to Ritz’s property in an effort to gather up the dogs,...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Andy and Amy Mangione of Louisville, Kentucky say their health insurance nearly tripled overnight from $333 a month to $965 due to Obamacare. "When I saw the letter when I came home from work, it said 'your action required, benefit changes, act now.' Of course, I opened it immediately," said Andy Mangione. Andy Mangione told Fox News veteran reporter Jim Angle that nothing had changed about the health of his wife, himself, or their two boys. "This is a high deductible plan where I'm assuming a lot of risk for my health insurance for my family," Mangione told Fox News....

Sen. Rand Paul conceded Saturday that congressional Republicans have little chance of stopping Obamacare. “We probably can’t defeat or get rid of Obamacare,” the Kentucky senator told reporters at a gathering of Michigan Republicans, according to the Associated Press. Paul acknowledged that time is running out for Congress to pass a government funding bill, however he said House Republicans’ efforts to defund Obamacare in its government funding bill could lead to a compromise. ~~snip~~ Reid has said any bill defunding Obamacare would be dead on arrival, and Sen. John McCain said Thursday that it was “not rational” to think the...

My first night in Louisville, Jim showed me his guns. The born-and-bred Kentucky boy stores them in a hulking safe with a keypad lock, hidden inside a walk-in closet. Over 5 feet tall and almost 4 feet wide, it easily holds Jim's collection of pistols, rifles and handguns, with room to spare. Lining the back of the door is a leather organizer with more guns snugly tucked in its pockets. One by one, Jim pulled out gun after gun, explaining the provenance of each one. There was his grandfather's Browning SA .22, an antique handgun of gray polished metal. I...

The modern-day tulip tree, state tree of Indiana as well as Kentucky and Tennessee, can trace its lineage back to the time of the dinosaurs, according to newly published research by an Indiana University paleobotanist and a Russian botanist. The tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipfera, has been considered part of the magnolia family. But David Dilcher of Indiana University Bloomington and Mikhail S. Romanov of the N.V. Tsitsin Main Botanical Garden in Moscow show that it is closely related to fossil plant specimens from the Lower Cretaceous period. Their findings suggest the tulip tree line diverged from magnolias more than 100...

The first eight-plus months of 2013 have convinced us of one thing: Rand Paul acts and the rest of the potential 2016 Republican presidential field reacts. On drones, Paul led a 13-hour-long filibuster that drew Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (among others) to the floor in support. On Syria, Paul was out front in his opposition to a military strike — a position that 30 of his Senate Republican colleagues shared as of this writing. Those 30 include both Rubio,who voted against the use-of-force resolution in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. ... Below are our rankings...

<p>WASHINGTON — It was bound to happen eventually. Two tea party allies angling for president can’t agree on everything, and Tuesday, a gaping foreign policy schism came into focus as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul went out of his way to critique Sen. Ted Cruz’s approach to Syria.</p>

WASHINGTON — Sen. Rand Paul was in the middle of one of his trademark takedowns of the “right-wing hawks” in his party who “have never met a war they didn’t want to get involved in,” when he suddenly paused and began grinning. “There was a funny article the other day in Mother Jones — did you see it? About one of my colleagues?” he asked. He was trying to do the polite, senatorial thing by not mentioning his “colleague” by name. But when his vague prompt was met with a blank look during an interview with BuzzFeed, he scrapped the...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said Wednesday he considers his views on foreign policy to be “somewhere in between” the poles of libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and hawkish GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.). “I agree with Rand Paul that we should not intervene militarily in Syria, because it’s not in defense of our U.S. national security interests,” said Cruz during a question-and-answer session following a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. But, Cruz added, he also agrees “with John McCain that if Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons that we...

U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid will hold a luncheon benefiting Alison Lundergan Grimes’ campaign in U.S. Senate race against Reid’s Republican counterpart, Kentucky U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell. Reid will hold the hour-long luncheon in Las Vegas on Friday, Oct. 11. The event is being organized by Seachlight Leadership Fund, which Reid founded in 1997. Tickets for the event range from $1,000 for a guest and $5,000 for a PAC co-host, according to the fundraising notice published on the progressive site ActBlue.com. Calls to the Grimes campaign and Searchlight Leadership Fund to see if Grimes will attend the event were...

In August, as Senate Republicans argued among themselves over budget strategies, their ostensible leader, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell (R), stayed on the sidelines. Worried that bold stands might hurt his re-election chances, the Senate Minority Leader was too afraid to take a stand. In September, as GOP lawmakers have argued among themselves over U.S. policy in Syria, McConnell has again been afraid to lead. Yesterday, the Minority Leader didn’t even want to be on the Senate floor for fear he might have to take a position on the issue of the day. This morning, after carefully waiting for his pollsters to...

In a secret meeting on Tuesday morning, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) hosted a bipartisan group of senators and House members in the Capitol’s basement. According to several participants, the lawmakers plotted ways to stop the use of U.S. military force in Syria. Since the diplomatic situation is fluid, there was no final consensus on how best to combat the administration, but potential legislative maneuvers, press appearances, and letters were discussed. Several undecided members asked questions. Aides say Paul planned the gathering over a week ago, and the list of attendees grew by the day. He is pleased, especially, by...

<p>Washington (CNN) - The top Republican in the Senate says he'll oppose a resolution to authorize U.S. military action against Syria.</p> <p>"I will be voting against this resolution. Our vital national security risk is clearly not at play," said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky Tuesday.</p>

Republican Senate primary challengers are looking to use Syria as wedge to gain traction in their bids to unseat GOP incumbents. [WATCH VIDEO] Against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), nearly every primary challenger has come out early and loud in opposition to military engagement in Syria. And nearly every senator facing a contested primary — aside from Graham, who has expressed support — is still undecided, a week after President Obama said he’d go to Congress for approval. The vote is one that could provide some much-needed...

Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday he would not filibuster the president's request to launch strikes against Syria but that he would insist Barack Obama abide by Congress's demands if it votes to prohibit military intervention in the civil war. The Kentucky Republican told "Fox News Sunday" a filibuster would only delay a vote authorizing use of force. "I will insist there is full debate on this and I will insist that I get an amendment and my amendment will say that the vote is binding -- that the president cannot, if we vote him down, decide to go to war...

Mention the name James Best, and the first Best character that comes to most people’s mind is Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on the long-running hit TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard". But there is much more to know about this still active 87-year-young actor, accomplished artist, author, college professor, and songwriting guitarist.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s rival in the Kentucky Republican primary said the incumbent’s reluctance to take a stand on President Obama’s push for military strikes against Syria underscores the lack of leadership he has shown on multiple fronts. Matt Bevin, a wealthy Louisville businessman running to oust Mr. McConnell, said Thursday on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” that he “adamantly” opposes military action. “We have absolutely no business being there,” Mr. Bevin said. “What would be the purpose? We have made it clear that we don’t intend for there to be regime change, and yet we going to launch missiles...

A new use-of-force resolution for Syria sets a 60-day deadline, with one 30-day extension possible, for President Barack Obama to launch military strikes against the regime of Syria President Bashar Assad — and it will also bar the involvement of U.S. ground forces in Syria. Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were also involved in the discussions over the revised resolution.

Will New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul finally bury the hatchet after their apparent feud?The Daily Caller has learned that Christie has been invited to join Paul when the libertarian-leaning Republican travels to New Jersey for a campaign appearance next month.Paul is heading to Clark, N.J., on Sept. 13 to campaign for Steve Lonegan, the Republican nominee in the state for the U.S. Senate. Lonegan, a former mayor, is running against Booker, the Democratic mayor of Newark.A spokesman for Lonegan confirmed to TheDC on Monday that Paul will attend the ”Victory and Liberty Rally.” The campaign event is being...

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A central question Congress is wrestling with over the current proposed immigration legislation is whether the 11 million immigrants already in the United States illegally should get a path to citizenship. And surprisingly, the answer from a small but growing number of House Republicans is “yes,” just as long as it’s not the “special” path advocated by Democrats and passed by the Senate. … Many House Republicans say people who illegally crossed the border or overstayed their visas should not be rewarded with a special, tailor-made solution that awards them a prize of American citizenship, especially when millions are waiting...

As Kathleen Fox with The Paducah Sun reported, an art teacher at a Kentucky High School set up an exhibit where students were supposed to stand on an American flag while they wrote how they felt about it. Art teacher Shand Stamper at McCracken High School in Paducah set a music stand with paper to write on on top of the flag so that students could contemplate their feelings and then note them. Michael Ceglinski, the principal, stated that Stamper had erred, and continued that the display had not received approval by the administrators or the school.

Thanks to Republican Senators Rand Paul (of Kentucky) and Mike Lee (of Utah), we might finally get on Syria what we were denied on Libya: a real debate among the American people’s representatives over congressional authorization of President Obama’s unilateral war-making in the Middle East. The Washington Examiner reports that Senators Paul and Lee have joined with two counterparts, Democrats Chris Murphy (of Connecticut) and Tom Udall (of New Mexico), in offering legislation that would block direct or indirect aid for military or paramilitary operations in Syria. The bill, which is posted on Paul’s website, is called the “Protecting Americans...

<p>Good afternoon, everybody. Ten days ago, the world watched in horror as men, women and children were massacred in Syria in the worst chemical weapons attack of the 21st century. Yesterday the United States presented a powerful case that the Syrian government was responsible for this attack on its own people.</p>

In his Saturday Playbook email, Politico’s Mike Allen defended GOP establishment Senators like Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Lamar Alexander and others facing Tea Party challengers as up against nothing more than an “expensive headache” they will defeat. Allen, a denizen of D.C. political establishment, highlighted two news stories to make his point: One from the New York Times, and the other from the Associated Press. The New York Times’ Jennifer Steinhauser reported with Jonathan Weisman on the front page of the Gray Lady on Saturday that “[d]espite their careful efforts, some of the best-known and most influential Republicans...

~ McConnell said he expects a lot of gender-based attacks coming from Alison Lundergan Grimes, the secretary of state and frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. But he said that isn’t what the 2014 election should be about. “What you are going to see by my opponent obviously is the Barack Obama playbook to try to divide people with gender based attacks. We have seen that all too often and some of it has started already,” McConnell told the crowd. “But look, this campaign is about what kind of America do we want to have and what kind of Kentucky do...

By Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow In Constitutional Sudies and Editor-In-Chief, Cato Supreme Court Review As we head into a potential government shutdown over the funding of Obamacare, the iconoclastic junior senator from Texas — love him or hate him — continues to stride across the national stage. With his presidential aspirations as big as everything in his home state, by now many know what has never been a secret: Ted Cruz was born in Canada. (Full disclosure: I’m Canadian myself, with a green card. Also, Cruz has been a friend since his days representing Texas before the Supreme Court.) But...

In between bowls of chicken poodle soup and deciding to provide air cover for al-Qaeda in Syria, our Dear Leader, Barack Hussein Obama, found time to meet with mayors from our crumbling major cities. From Justin Sink of The Hill: *** "President Obama told a collection of big-city mayors Tuesday at the White House that he would continue to use executive actions to combat gun violence plaguing major cities. In the meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder and the mayors of 18 cities from across the nation, Obama discussed commonly applicable strategies to reduce youth violence. 'He also vowed to...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said on Laura Ingraham’s radio program that House Speaker John Boehner’s speakership is in jeopardy if any form of amnesty, such as the Senate's immigration reform bill, becomes law. “I’m worried about conference,” Paul said Friday, according to Roll Call. “The only way to avoid a problem with conference is for the speaker of the House to say we are not going to conference, and we will not allow a vote on anything coming out of conference that resembles the Senate bill, and if there were a much more limited bill that emphasizes border security first,...

Louisville, KY - Republican U.S. Senate candidate Matt Bevin called on House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to take the lead in defunding Obamacare instead of caving to President Obama. Bevin’s latest call comes on the heels of Speaker Boehner’s decision to pass a short-term government funding bill at the end of September in order to avoid the fight over defunding Obamacare altogether. For weeks, Matt Bevin has joined true conservatives like Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee in calling on Mitch McConnell to lead the fight to defund Obamacare. Instead, Sen. McConnell has actively...

Obamacare opponents are planning a defunding rally for the first day lawmakers return from August recess and just three weeks before millions can start enrolling in coverage. Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, who have been leading calls in the Senate to defund the law in any spending bills, will headline the Sept. 10 Exempt America from Obamacare event, organized by Tea Party Patriots and For America, along with other conservative groups.

Kentucky students to first lady Michelle Obama: Your food ‘tastes like vomit’ The Daily Caller 1 hour ago EducationSchool district Students in a rural Kentucky county — and their parents — are the latest to join a growing national chorus of scorn for the healthy school lunches touted by first lady Michelle Obama. “They say it tastes like vomit,” said Harlan County Public Schools board member Myra Mosley at a contentious board meeting last week, reports The Harlan Daily Enterprise. The growing body of USDA meal regulations implemented by the Department of Agriculture under the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of...

House Democrats moved Thursday to implement reforms to guard against sexual harassment in the Capitol even as more details — including names of other legislators — raised more questions about relationships between staffers and lawmakers. One lawmaker — Rep. Reginald Meeks, who witnessed one of the incidents of assault — said on the House floor Thursday that legislators must move swiftly to change a “culture” that gives a “wink and a nod” to harassing behavior. The behavior of Rep. John Arnold, D-Sturgis, remains at the center of the scandal. Detailed complaints to the Legislative Ethics Commission by two legislative staff...

Original headline: Alison Lundergan Grimes… or Grinch? Kentucky Senate candidate blames donut burger for soaring health care costs Grimes, a Democrat vying to replace Mitch McConnell, blamed an indulgent American diet in her explanation for why Kentuckians need Obamacare. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes was a buzz kill this week at the Kentucky State Fair. The 34-year-old Democrat blamed the best of American cuisine for rising health care costs, speaking to the press at the "Grannies for Grimes" event in Louisville. "You just have to look over to the right where you see the donut burger, the chili cheese-steak and...

With another presidential cycle starting in just two years, battle lines are being drawn - not between the two parties, but within the Republican Party itself. Interestingly the differences being aired this summer seem less about ideology than approach: Whether compromise with Democrats is ever okay; even more broadly whether government can or even should try to solve problems through policy or lawmaking. So while most Americans reflexively say they want "something done" there's plenty of difference in defining what that means, and these debates have huge potential to shape the GOP's brand in 2014 and certainly in 2016....

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. (AP) — A central Kentucky theater owner who trained pilots during the Vietnam War is refusing to show the nation's top movie, "The Butler" because one of the stars is Jane Fonda who was an outspoken opponent of the conflict.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0vNAtrT_yg

I am not sure I would have released the internal polling Mitch McConnell just released in Kentucky. He has it McConnell 68 and Matt Bevin at 21% That superficially sounds good. But consider that this outperforms both Marco Rubio against Charlie Crist at this point in 2009 and Ted Cruz against David Dewhurst at this point in 2011. Likewise, consider that Matt Bevin’s name identification in Kentucky is minimal, while Mitch McConnell is the Senate Republican Leader. In other words, a third of Kentucky Republicans either have no opinion or want a generic Republican against Mitch McConnell and two-thirds want...