Free Republic

Friend Campaign Unveils Its New Website (PIKEVILLE, KY) Pike District Judge Kelsey E. Friend, Jr. officially launched his campaign's website today. "This website gives me an opportunity to communicate directly with voters," Friend said. "Ultimately, I believe that informed citizens will be able to make the best decision when they head to the polls on November 7th." The website can be found online at: Friend for Judge

Isaac Bashevis Singer fled Nazi Europe in 1935 and came to this country. He married my grandmother, who had escaped from Hitler's Germany in 1940. He went on to become a lauded author and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978. His family -- those who stayed behind -- were killed in the concentration camps.

FRANKFORT - For the first time in the state hiring inquiry, investigators moved into Lt. Gov. Steve Pence's office as they served a search warrant on his chief of staff. Attorney general's office investigators removed a computer from Stephen Huffman's office this morning. At the same time, Transportation Cabinet personnel employee Missy McCray went before the special grand jury investigating the hiring practices of Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration. McCray also testified last summer, just before several transportation officials were indicted for violating state merit laws, which say rank-and-file state workers must be hired based on qualifications, not politics. McCray later...

LEXINGTON, Ky. Some University of Kentucky students are planning to start a Muslim sorority that will stress sisterhood and community service among its members.

As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.

Severe Weather Alert from the National Weather Service .../O.NEW.KWNS.TO.A.0761.050830T1755Z-050831T0100Z/ KY . KENTUCKY COUNTIES INCLUDED ARE BELL BREATHITT CLAY FLOYD HARLAN JOHNSON KNOTT KNOX LAWRENCE LESLIE LETCHER MAGOFFIN MARTIN OWSLEY PERRY PIKE A TORNADO WATCH MEANS CONDITIONS ARE FAVORABLE FOR TORNADOES IN AND CLOSE TO THE WATCH AREA. PERSONS IN THESE AREAS SHOULD BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THREATENING WEATHER CONDITIONS AND LISTEN FOR LATER STATEMENTS AND POSSIBLE WARNINGS....

FRANKFORT - Attorney general's investigators, armed with search warrants, confiscated boxes of documents from the Capitol offices of two key aides to Gov. Ernie Fletcher yesterday as part of a widening investigation of Transportation Cabinet hiring practices. The team of investigators targeted Richard Murgatroyd, Fletcher's deputy chief of staff who last year served as second in command of the Transportation Cabinet, and Dave Disponett, the governor's unpaid political adviser and treasurer of the state Republican Party.

PIKEVILLE - On Pikeville College's Internet site, Jermaine Hampton is listed as a member of the school's football team: a 6-foot-4, 264-pound defensive lineman and tight end from Naples, Fla. Hampton, who is on partial scholarship, also is on a different sort of list: the Kentucky sex offender registry. But that information is not posted on the college's Web site or anywhere on the private Eastern Kentucky campus because school officials decided to keep quiet about Hampton's past.

AMSTERDAM - Paul Hiltemann had already noticed a darkening mood in the Netherlands. He runs an agency for people wanting to emigrate and his client list had surged. But he was still taken aback in November when a Dutch filmmaker was shot and his throat was slit, execution style, on an Amsterdam street. In the weeks that followed, Mr. Hiltemann was inundated by e-mail messages and telephone calls. "There was a big panic," he said, "a flood of people saying they wanted to leave the country." Leave this stable and prosperous corner of Europe? Leave this land with its generous...

On February 22nd, the future of property rights in America will be at stake as the Supreme Court begins oral arguments in the case of Kelo v. New London. The central question at issue is: should the government be able to use its power of eminent domain to seize property from one private party and transfer it to another? The seven property owners on the side of Kelo are the last remaining of more than 70 families whose homes and businesses were targeted for demolition several years ago by the city of New London, Connecticut, to make room for a...

Many current or former Senators and Representatives appear to have taken illegal Congressional salary payments during the current Congress, prior to the October recess. The chronically absent list is well-represented by candidates who ran for higher office, including those who ran for President or Vice President: Senators John Edwards (D-NC), Bob Graham (D-FL), John Kerry (D-MA), and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), and Congressmen Richard Gephardt (D-MO) and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). Senate candidates Brad Carson (D-OK), Mac Collins (R-GA), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Pete Deutsch (D-FL), Joseph Hoeffel (D-PA), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Chris John (D-LA), Denise Majette (D-GA), George Nethercutt (R-WA), and Patrick...