Free Republic

The Human Rights Commission in Lexington, Kentucky has a chilling message for Christian business owners who refuse service to LGBT organizations: leave your religion at home. “It would be safe to do so, yes,” Executive Director Raymond Sexton told me. “Or in this case you can find yourself two years down the road and you’re still involved in a legal battle because you did not do so.” On Tuesday, a Lexington Human Rights Commission hearing examiner issued a recommended ruling that the owner of a T-shirt company violated a local ordinance against sexual-orientation discrimination. You can read the ruling by...

<p>James O’Keefe has turned his talents towards the Senate midterm elections, secretly interviewing supporters and volunteers of the Alison Grimes campaign, the Democratic opponent to Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.</p> <p>In the latest undercover video, investigators secretly filmed a Harvey Weinstein fundraiser, speaking with one individual who insists that Grimes will "fuck" the coal industry after she is elected.</p>

Just how deceptive is Alison Grimes' campaign commercial attacking Senator Mitch McConnell for supposedly being "anti-coal?" So deceptive that even fact checker Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post has awarded it four Pinocchios for extreme mendacity. To make matters worse for Grimes, this four Pinocchios award comes at the same time that James O'Keefe's Project Veritas released two videos showing Grimes campaign workers and a big financial backer stating on hidden camera that Grimes is only pretending to support the coal industry in order to get elected. First up, let us look at the Alision Grimes 4 Pinocchio campaign commercial:

I woke up this morning to a seeming tidal wave of polling news for the midterm elections, all of which is bad for Republicans if the cable talking heads are to be believed. At the top of the list of trumpeted GOP disasters in the making was a new poll out of Kentucky which suddenly showed Alison Lundergan Grimes with a two point lead over Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. After two polls in his favor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has slipped behind Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes in his re-election bid, according to the latest Bluegrass Poll.Grimes, Kentucky’s...

Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Alison Grimes has vehemently and repeatedly claimed to oppose President Obama’s coal and environmental policies in what has become an increasingly significant campaign issue. A team of investigative journalists, led by Project Veritas Action’s founder James O’Keefe, went undercover in multiple Grimes campaign offices to determine if her opposition to the core principles of her own political party is genuine or an intentional deception.

U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes is lying about her support for the state’s coal industry according to Kentucky Democrats, including members of her campaign team, who were captured on a hidden camera video. The video, produced by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, shows five employees of the Grimes campaign and local Democratic Party affiliates speculating that the Democratic challenger to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) is only professing her support for the industry out of political expediency. “If we can get her elected do you think she is going to do the right thing and she’s gonna try...

Consistent: The topline results — Republicans are ahead. Inconsistent: The margins. NPR measures Obama’s job approval at (41/56) in states with contested Senate races, and an abysmal (29/67) among independents. But on the generic Senate ballot, the GOP leads by just three, fueled by a 16-point advantage among those aforementioned independents: In case you’re curious, NPR’s partisan sample is a reasonable, if slightly generous, D+4. Fox News’ pollster included two more states in their survey, but excluded Alaska. Results: Unless I’m missing something glaringly obvious (Fox’s poll sample is D+0, in line with 2010), I can’t quite wrap my...

Two patients in Kentucky with Ebola-like symptoms have been quarantined for examination. After the first case of Ebola was diagnosed in the US, doctors say they don't want to take any risks even though the two patients in Kentucky tested negative for the infection. "The business of detecting it and finding out what it is, we're in good shape. If we get cases we need to be working more closely with the hospitals to see how we will manage individual cases," said Dr. Rice Leach, commissioner of health at the Fayette County Health Department. " But where did you get...

Democrats in Washington are taking a risky bet by quadrupling their investment in Alison Lundergan Grimes, a young and largely unproven challenger, who is running against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). Spending a fresh $1.4 million on a statewide TV ad bashing McConnell is a gamble for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), which has six vulnerable incumbents and a long-held Democratic seat in Iowa to defend. In Kentucky, Democrats are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Recent polls show that Grimes is trailing McConnell by an average of 5 points. Massively boosting party spending on...

A Democratic candidate for state House has been indicted for failing to report sexual abuse against a child while serving as director of the Bluegrass ChalleNGe Academy at Fort Knox. A federal grand jury indicted John Wayne Smith, who’s running against Rep. Michael Meredith in the 19th House District, and six other employees at the academy Sept. 25, one of whom was charged with sexual misconduct with three female students between Feb. 8, 2013, and Aug. 7, 2013, and threatening one of the victims from reporting him to authorities. Smith, who resigned from Bluegrass ChalleNGe Academy Dec. 31, is accused...

Kentucky U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s campaign is hammering his Democratic opponent for skipping work as secretary of state in a new television ad released Tuesday. The spot, titled “Absences,” is scheduled to air statewide and further ingrains a common theme for McConnell by linking Alison Lundergan Grimes with Democratic President Barack Obama, a highly unpopular figure in Kentucky. The ad features video of Grimes telling The Courier-Journal’s editorial board in 2011 that she would serve her four-year term if elected secretary of state. “Sound familiar?” a narrator asks. The ad then switches to a clip of Obama on NBC’s “Meet...

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - The person who shot a student at Fern Creek High School fled the building, but a suspect was captured about three hours later, according to Louisville Metro Police. One shot was fired inside a third-floor classroom at about 1 p.m. at the school at 9100 Fern Creek Road. The student was rushed to a hospital and was being treated for injuries that were not life-threatening. The parents of that student were notified and the family was reunited at a hospital, police said. [SLIDESHOW: Student shot at Fern Creek Traditional High School] It is not known what...

I probably would have missed this story were it not for Maggie Gallagher at The Corner. It seems that the good people on the appeal board considering a case at Atherton High School (part of the Jefferson County public school system) have determined that you can use the girls’ bathrooms, locker room and showers if you say you’re a girl. No physical required. A transgender teenager, who was born male but identifies as a female, can continue to use a women’s restroom and locker room at a Jefferson County Public School. In a 5-to-1 vote, an appeal board upheld...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Several business-related associations stand against a Metro Council proposal to raise the minimum wage. In a joint statement, they say it "exceeds Council authority" and is "bad policy." The statement - sent to media outlets today - was signed by nearly 20 groups including the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, the Kentucky Restaurant Association, and Greater Louisville, Inc. In it, they say an increase would put local businesses at a competitive disadvantage and lead to job losses. The proposal would raise the wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour over a three-year period. Last week, Louisville Mayor...

Two potential presidential candidates come to a conservative Christian cattle call.Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, two Tea Party senators in the hunt for the White House, find themselves in a nearly identical position these days. Both sons of celebrated conservative leaders, they regularly speak at the same events, criticize the same Democratic President with a similar message of back-to-basics constitutionalism, and poll nationally at about 10% among Republicans in the way-too-early 2016 polls. But on Friday, as conservative Christians gathered in Washington for the Values Voter Summit, their differences were far more apparent than their similarities. Paul stood behind the...

Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is trailing incumbent Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the highly competitive Kentucky U.S. Senate race, is claiming in a new television ad that her support for the Gang of Eight "immigration reform" legislation, which McConnell voted against, is "not amnesty." And she's relying on the words of Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to drive that point home in the commercial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7x_WSCRVXQ

the 25 biggest systems by assets averaged a 7.45% return from 2004 to 2013, but liabilities tripled over the same period leaving them facing a $2 trillion shortfall as investment returns can’t keep up with ballooning obligations. The top 25 funds account for 40% of the entire US public pension system with Illinois, Kentucky, Connecticut, and Louisiana at the top of the 'most underfunded' list. .... the New York-based credit rater’s calculation of liabilities tripled in the eight years through 2012, ... liabilities are crowding out spending for services, roads and schools.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes released a web ad Wednesday, countering an attack ad from a pro-McConnell group last week that said she supports amnesty for undocumented immigrants. Grimes’ spot, titled “Say Anything,” features Republican U.S. Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina speaking in favor of an immigration reform bill that passed the Senate, without McConnell’s support, last year. The legislation ultimately died in the House. “This is not amnesty,” McCain says in the spot, taken from an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” The online ad can be viewed here: The ad comes...

Russia on Tuesday accused the West of ignoring its warnings about the growing terrorist threat in Syria, and claimed that the moderate rebel front – the one the Obama administration wants to arm as part of its anti-ISIS strategy – “no longer exists.”The remarks by Russia’s ambassador in Geneva Alexey Borodavkin came during a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which was discussing the most recent report by a U.N.-mandated independent commission of inquiry into the conflict.The report, released late last month and roughly covering the first half of this year, recorded atrocities by the Assad regime and by...

The Senate approved a continuing resolution for the budget which included a provision authorizing President Obama to arm and train Syrian rebels for the purpose of combating Islamic State terrorists. The legislation passed 78-22. Of the 22 Senators that voted no, here are the 12 Republicans that voted against the provision: John Barrasso (WY) Tom Coburn (OK) Michael Crapo (ID) Ted Cruz (TX) Mike Enzi (WY) Dean Heller (NV) Mike Lee (UT) Jim Moran (KS) Rand Paul (KY) James Risch (ID) Pat Roberts (KS) Jeff Sessions (AL)