Free Republic

The booing was nearly as loud as the cheering when Bill Clinton stepped to the microphone in this remote mountain hamlet deep in the depressed heart of coal country. In the audience at the local elementary school Thursday night was a sizable contingent of coal miners and their families, many wearing helmets and T-shirts declaring their support for Donald Trump. […] The event here was Bill Clinton’s fourth in a long day of campaigning across Kentucky, where his wife faces a similar backlash in next week’s primary. …

The lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is on full display in Kentucky at this hour. Local media is reporting there will potentially be a very small crowd for Bill Clinton in Owensboro this morning. While campaigns like to show off massive lines of people clamoring to get in the doors, the Clinton campaign will likely be doing their best to ignore this one. 44 News’ Amanda Chodnicki tweeted this video of the handful of fans waiting outside the Winchester Center. Her video shows 21 people waiting in line. Chodnicki interviewed some in the line and “they were confused...

Hillary Clinton is anxious to compete in the Democratic primary in Kentucky, particularly after suffering a humiliating loss in West Virginia. Now she is relying on the golden voice of Morgan Freeman, to help turn out black voters in the state. In a new, minute-long ad, Clinton begins by telling voters of what she calls “systemic racism” in the United States. “We have to face up to the hard truths of injustice and systemic racism,” she says, recalling the wrongs suffered by African American voters in the justice system and at the hands of police officers.

Illustration: Tara Jacoby Pope Lick Train Trestle Some say the terrifying being that haunts the Pope Lick train trestle in Louisville, Kentucky is a half-man, half-goat. Others say he’s an escaped circus animal that was mutated into a monster by a lightning strike on the tracks; still others say he was a farmer who once had intimate relations with a local goat. Whatever his origin story, one thing’s for certain: the Goatman of Pope Lick has just claimed his latest victim. Last week, an Ohio couple sought to investigate the Pope Lick Goatman for themselves. A woman named Roquel Bain, 26, from...

I haven't found yet our usual FR Derby thread. I will start one,even though the race is a mere 5 hour away.

I'm off on a two week vacation to a part of Kentucky where they've heard of whiskey and muzzle loading rifles - but not the internet. So bye bye FR, and I'll see you later in May.......

Hillary Clinton apologized on Monday for saying in March that she would put coal miners and coal companies “out of business” as part of a transition to alternative energy sources. The Democratic front-runner and former secretary of state called the prior remark a “misstatement” as she campaigned in Kentucky, ahead of the state’s Democratic primary on May 17, CBS News reported. The small group discussion took place in what was once one of the country’s top coal producing counties, as protesters gathered outside. “What I said was totally out of context from what I meant,” Clinton said. “It was a...

LA CENTER, KY (KFVS) - An earthquake near La Center, Kentucky was felt in parts of Illinois and Missouri early on Sunday morning. According to the National Weather Service in Paducah and the USGS, a magnitude 3.5 was recorded about 8.7 miles north of La Center and 24.2 miles west of Paducah. It happened around 1:12 a.m. and had a depth of about 8.3 miles. The quake was felt in Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee. The furthest the quake was reportedly felt was in Miller, Mo. which is 267 miles away from the epicenter.

“Well, I think it would be a bad idea to put little girls in a bathroom with grown men,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told CNN on Thursday. But the senator also made it clear that the issue is not one of major national importance, as far as he is concerned: “All I can say is that the only bathroom I can control is in my office, and you can use the bathroom in my office without bringing your birth certificate.” …

Ted Cruz’s team knew that Donald Trump would run away with his native New York Tuesday. And they expect he’ll win the lion’s share of delegates at stake next week when a slate of northeastern states votes. So they’ve spent the last two weeks looking ahead, quietly laying the groundwork for a kitchen-sink campaign in a state they can’t afford to let Trump win: Indiana. The Hoosier State doesn’t vote until May 3, and Cruz certainly isn’t ignoring the contests in between. He spent time this week in both Maryland and Pennsylvania, the two states his campaign is confident will...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/editorials/2015/10/06/editorial-ted-cruz-wrong-syrian-refugees/73486846/

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he is "increasingly optimistic" that voting at the Republican National Convention in July will go to a second ballot, seeming to suggest he does not want to see Donald Trump become the nominee. The Kentucky Republican has studiously sought to remain neutral in public, although he has on occasion condemned Trump's remarks and reportedly told senators in private earlier this year that down-ballot Republicans might drop Trump "like a hot rock." McConnell's comments on WHAS-TV in Louisville over the weekend gave additional insight into his thinking. McConnell explained the convention process...

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin signed a bill Wednesday that removes the names and titles of county clerks from marriage licenses, giving legal "finality" to the religious accommodation that Rowan County clerk Kim Davis was looking for. Davis, who made headlines when she spent over five days in jail last September for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses with her name and title on them because of her Christian beliefs, had called on the state's then-Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear to create a religious accommodation allowing her to drop her name and title from marriage certificates that her office issued. The accommodation,...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has decided he may want some help from Washington after all to stop Trump. But alas, his entreaties to his Senate colleagues aren't going very well. Cruz is facing varied and dynamic obstacles in his quest to build support on the Hill. Some senators are stubbornly nursing grudges against the freshman senator's 2013 government shutdown gambit or any other number of slights and affronts he committed as a freshman senator that made him deeply unpopular. Other senators endorsed candidates who already dropped out of the race and are unwilling to repeat that mistake with Donald Trump...

Ted Cruz stands by his claim that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is a liar arguing, “Every word I said there was true and accurate.” In a town hall on MSNBC hosted by the moderator of “Meet the Press” Chuck Todd on Thursday, Todd asked Cruz, “You called Senate Majority Leader a liar on the Senate floor. That has not sat well with your colleagues. Do you regret calling him a ‘liar’ on the Senate floor?” “You know, Washington is an amazing place,” Cruz said. “When somebody stands up and lies to you, and someone else points out that they...

A federal judge said Tuesday that the Confederate emblem on the Mississippi flag is "anti-American" because it represents those who fought to leave the United States. But U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves is not yet saying whether he will fully consider a lawsuit that seeks to eliminate the flag as a state symbol. Reeves heard more than three hours of arguments about motions in the lawsuit that Carlos Moore, an African-American attorney from Grenada, Mississippi, filed against the state. Moore is asking Reeves to declare the flag an unconstitutional relic of slavery.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley told Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland to his face Tuesday that the Senate won’t consider his nomination. Over breakfast, the Iowa Republican “explained why the Senate won’t be moving forward during this hyper-partisan election year,” his office said. The statement added that Mr. Grassley “thanked Judge Garland for his service,” and that their 70-minute meeting in the Senate dining room was “cordial and pleasant.” Both men arrived early for the meeting and avoided journalists later. Mr. Grassley and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are blocking Judge Garland’s nomination, saying voters should have a role in...

Investigators identified nearly 2,000 cases of potentially phony disability claims stemming from a massive Social Security fraud scheme, but three years after the scam was first exposed, the government says it’s still struggling to stop the payments. Only slightly more than 300 cases have been disqualified, and Social Security is still “in the process of effectuating those terminations,” the agency told The Washington Times just days after the accused ringleader and two lead accomplices were indicted on federal fraud charges. Despite three investigations into suspicions of massive fraud, Social Security officials say they are assuming all of the applications are...

This is probably just the right balance for Ted Cruz: Senior Republicans have been asking Cruz to apologize to [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell so they can unite behind his bid to defeat Donald Trump. But Cruz did offer some kind words for McConnell Thursday. “Now I will tell you this, I am happy to praise Mitch McConnell and praise him effusively for his stand, along with (Senate Judiciary Chairman) Chuck Grassley, saying we are not going to hold hearings on a replacement” to the Supreme Court, Cruz told Bash. “Mitch McConnell’s doing the right thing, Chuck Grassley’s doing the right thing,...

Every election cycle, U.S. Congressman Thomas Massie said he is “extorted” by the Republican Party to pay $300,000 for his committee assignments. “I call it extortion, they call it assessments,” he said. These “assessments,” essentially dues to the Republican party, are fundraised through political action committees and lobbyists as a price to pay for committee positions, Massie told a crowd of about 25 during a recent coffee and pizza forum in Flatwoods. He told them, “I can’t go and do a fundraiser and raise $300,000 and stand up in front of people and tell them, ‘Well, you know what? It’s...