Jack Conway Does Not Mind Keeping Guatanamo Terrorists In Kentucky. Watch Video.

Merck's Gardasil For HPV Is CHOKE Full Of Risks, Including Death. Watch Video, And Be Alarmed.

Heal The Black/Blue Divide: Disarm Police, No Vicious Dogs.

Heal the black/blue divide: disarm police, no vicious dogs.
by Larry Webster

I grew up in a county where there was no crime and no police.

I went home once and asked my little sister if anything exciting had happened in town and she said yes, that a Catholic had a wreck on the bridge. She had spotted the plastic saint on the dashboard. It would have taken the nearest cop a couple hours to show up and write up his report, and he probably did not arrive wearing a belt with a stick, a Taser, Mace and a Glock, and he probably did not have a dog with him. He did not ask for backup. He probably did not have military-like training.

We had black people in Owen County. Is it racist to lump them all together and announce that they were all peaceful, hard-working and well-educated people? They lived at or near a town called New Liberty. New Liberty is older than Liberty, and both are west of West Liberty. When segregation tended to keep people of a hue close to each other, police did not feel compelled to start trouble with people of one color who wandered into the territory of people of another color. When blacks, they were colored people then, came to Gratz to play baseball, they came in a caravan of used Buicks and Oldsmobiles. There was safety in a caravan.

So I may not be the person to reform the relations between police and black lives, but will offer a few suggestions anyway.

We need to get those cops out of cars and on foot. We actually got a good start on this, when Ford quit making Crown Victorias. Police went to Chevrolets and couldn’t catch anybody. A good bicycle would be better, and if a cop wants to take somebody to jail, he can call a cab.

We need gun control. More specifically, we need to disarm the police. In England, police do not carry firearms, and thus do not have to use them.

In America, the people who adore weapons and collect them and caress them and spend their time going through Joe Rosenberg catalogs usually end up being police. I have always said that those of us who do not know martial arts never seem to be accosted by gangs of Indonesians carrying bamboo sticks, while those who do always seem to, and likewise, somebody who has devoted his life to thinking about how to use a weapon is far more apt to create in his own mind a need to use one.

We need to get rid of those police dogs. Maybe not antifreeze, but civilized people do not need the symbolism of vicious dogs snarling at the poor.

Police are not soldiers, and we need to quit supplying them with military stuff and training them to see themselves as soldiers. Soldiers need enemies, and police do not.

Judges and juries need to quit pretending they believe what police swear to. No one else in court is allowed to lie routinely. People who have a police car behind them do not weave. Police do not stop people merely because they have a tail light out. Not all those stopped for DUI have the exact same characteristics.

Gov. Bevin just appointed a panel to study criminal law in Kentucky, and just like always, it is 90 percent full of prosecutor/police/punishment-freak types. There are almost no defense attorneys on this panel.

Criminal defense attorneys probably understand the problems in the criminal justice system better than anybody, including judges, but they never get respect enough to be consulted on matters of public policy. It was just such panels and their lack of diversity that recommended us into the mess we are now in, in which everything that is not prohibited is mandatory.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article91425632.html#storylink=cpy

The Rights Of The People In A Banana Republic, Like #Nigeria!

the one thing that distinguishes a banana republic, like #nigeria, from any other, is the right of the people to bear arms.

people in a banana republic have no such universal god given rights, as their government denies it to them, lest the people overthrow them!!

A-Rod Suspended For Doping!

POTUS Barack Obama And The "Economy --- Of Words", That Is!

Scott Jennings | Obama's habit of saying anything is destroying trust

When I was a radio news reporter, a mentor taught me a phrase that I still use today. He used to critique my scripts by reminding me of “the economy of words,” which meant using fewer words to tell a more concise story.

I’ve probably said or thought about “the economy of words” thousands of times since I first heard it. It worked in radio, and it is a superb rule to remember in political and business writing.

Until recently, the phrase meant one thing to me — a reminder to eliminate unnecessary prepositional phrases and to be more active and descriptive in my communications. Less is more.

But I’ve been thinking about it in a different way lately. In an economy, there is a currency that theoretically has value. In the economy of words, the words are the currency.

Our political system is an economy of words. What our leaders say, therefore, should have value.

But some politicians entrusted with printing the political economy’s currency are turning the system on its head. Chief among them is President Barack Obama, who is making a nasty and trust-destroying habit out of saying absolutely anything to fit the moment’s politics.

Last week, President Obama added another log to the flip-flop fire with a statement supporting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s “nuclear option,” which changed the long-standing rules of the Senate and dramatically weakened the rights of the political minority.

In 2013, President Obama says the filibuster is a “reckless and relentless tool” used by Republicans to block his nominees.

He was singing a different tune in 2005, though, when he said that “the American people want less partisanship in this town, but everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting, the bitterness, and the gridlock will only get worse.”

President Obama just devalued Sen. Obama’s words.

President Obama’s quest to completely mangle any trust the American people might have had in his words continued over the weekend, as his administration entered into a nuclear deal with Iran.

Earlier this year, making his first visit to Israel as president, Obama said, “The United States stands with Israel because it is in our fundamental security interests to stand with Israel. Our alliance is eternal. It is forever.”

That was in March. In November, Secretary of State John Kerry, last seen getting the equivalent of a diplomatic wedgie from the Russians over Syria, cut a deal with Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says is a “historic mistake” that has made the world “much more dangerous, because the most dangerous regime in the world took a meaningful step toward acquiring the most dangerous weapon in the world.”

The value of Obama’s words is not just dropping with the American people, but with America’s allies abroad.

The granddaddy of Obama’s trust-busters is the now infamous claim that, under his health care law, all Americans can keep their insurance plan if they like it. This was an outrageous lie told to sell a bad bill and bolster a re-election campaign. Dozens of congressional Democrats repeated this lie, dutifully following President Obama’s lead.

We now know, thanks to NBC News, that President Obama wasn’t telling the truth and that his “administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.”

Not only was President Obama wrong, but it seems clear that he purposefully misled people. Now, a year after defeating Mitt Romney, a national survey of 2012 Obama supporters found that nearly one-quarter of them would not have voted for his re-election if they had known the truth about that claim.

President Obama’s job approval ratings are now the lowest of his presidency. In fact, the RealClearPolitics.com average of the eight most recent national job approval surveys shows that just over 40 percent of people approve of Obama versus 55 percent who disapprove. Some surveys have him in the 30s.

But it is more than just his policy decisions or his use of website technology straight out of 1993 that is driving down the president’s numbers. It’s that his words no longer have value and that people just don’t trust him anymore. As the Righteous Brothers would say, the voters have lost that loving feeling.

President Obama was swept into office on soaring rhetoric, the delivery of which was so acclaimed that it gave the words and the man himself more credibility than a relatively untested politician deserves. How ironic that the same president finds his oratorical ability insufficient to assuage the hurt feelings and broken trust millions now feel toward his time in office.

It goes beyond his policy decisions. Words matter. They have value, unless you repeatedly use them duplicitously. Eventually, that practice catches up with you. It caught up with President Obama a full three years before he leaves office, which is going to make for a politically long and lonely second term in the White House.

Scott Jennings is a partner in RunSwitch Public Relations, and former deputy White House political director under President George W. Bush. He was a staff member on Mitch McConnell’s ‘02 and ‘08 re-election campaigns. His column appears every third Wednesday. He can be reached at scott@runswitchpr.com.

Editor's comment: I found out RATHER QUICKLY during his first term that POTUS in not trustworthy and i abandoned hope for change. He promised better, and we got screwed.

But then again who is the one politician who can be trusted -- really?!

One Man Crying In The Wilderness In A Banana Republic!

Fighter of Corruption in Nigeria Considers Next Steps

ABUJA, Nigeria — THE cash was handed over in large sacks containing $15 million in $100 bills, bags so heavy that the stoop-shouldered civil servant needed help carrying them.

Enlarge This Image

Afolabi Sotunde for The New York Times

Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s anticorruption commissioner, on Friday. 

James Ibori, the governor of an oil-rich state in southern Nigeria, was so desperate to escape prosecution on corruption charges that he tried to pay off the civil servant, Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s anticorruption commissioner. Mr. Ribadu accepted the money, but it was all a ruse.

A bespectacled former police officer with the no-nonsense style of a G-man, Mr. Ribadu did not keep the money, a remarkable act in a nation where corruption is endemic. Instead he deposited it in a government bank vault, evidence of Mr. Ibori’s many misdeeds, and in 2007 Mr. Ibori was arrested. Ultimately the charges did not stick — the governor was acquitted by a Nigerian court. He was eventually convicted of money laundering and conspiracy to defraud in Britain, where he had stashed a hefty chunk of the hundreds of millions of dollars of oil money he was believed to have embezzled.

The outcome of the case is in many ways an emblem of Mr. Ribadu’s career as a corruption fighter in Nigeria, a country Colin L. Powell once called a nation of “marvelous scammers”: a string of partial victories against a seemingly unbeatable foe.

These days Mr. Ribadu sits at home in a government-issue villa in this prefab 1980s-era capital, ruminating on his next move.

At 53, he has been celebrated inside Nigeria and beyond for his five-year tenure as chief of the anticorruption unit, beginning in 2003.

In that time he built the unit, called the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, into Nigeria’s largest anticorruption agency, with over 1,200 employees in six offices across Nigeria. He successfully prosecuted in 2005 Tafa Balogun, an inspector general of police who had resigned. Mr. Balogun pleaded guilty to failing to declare his assets. Mr. Ribadu arrested Mr. Ibori, the former governor of Delta State, in December 2007. He prosecuted 10 prominent national public figures, including nine governors.

His reputation gained luster only after he was forced from office in 2008 and into exile after what he said were assassination attempts, after he tried to prosecute corrupt politicians. He was appointed a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington and was also a senior fellow at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford.

He returned to Nigeria to run for president in 2011, but came nowhere near victory, and since then has struggled to find a place in Nigerian public life. He continues to investigate graft, but with a less prominent platform. His report pointing out large-scale corruption and waste in the country’s oil industry, which was published last year, was ignored by the government that commissioned it.

“One of my very big disappointments,” Mr. Ribadu said intently in an interview here.

Still, he remains a unique figure, prominent in the political opposition and often named as a possible future candidate for office.

“For the generality of the people, he is a dogged anticorruption crusader,” said Femi Falana, a prominent Nigeria human rights lawyer. “For the corrupt elements that constitute the political class, they fear him.”

Since Mr. Ribadu’s abrupt ouster as head of the anticorruption agency, “there is a feeling that the war on corruption is a lost battle,” Mr. Falana said.

THE anticorruption fight appears to be on sabbatical in the garden of Mr. Ribadu’s home here.

“Most people you will have encountered will want to ‘settle’ you,” the soft-spoken Mr. Ribadu said in an interview in the garden, using a Nigerian term for a bribe. “Up to my last day at work, people were trying to bribe me. That is the shocking thing.”

Mr. Ribadu began his career as a street police officer in some of Lagos’s rougher neighborhoods, eventually rising to become the chief prosecutor for the Nigerian police. He speaks with a piercing intensity, sometimes clenching a fist to punctuate a point. He grew up deep in Nigeria’s northern hinterland in the town of Yola. It was a devout Muslim household and a “refuge against pain and injustice” that succored persecuted lepers, he wrote in his autobiography.

His father was a member of Parliament in the days before independence and later a minister in Nigeria’s first government. He did not die wealthy, a fact noted by Mr. Ribadu as proof of his integrity and a sharp contrast to the “obscene value of aggrandizement that has suffocated our national life,” as he put it in his book.

But his reputation is not entirely unblemished. Some critics have accused his office of selectively prosecuting enemies of the man who appointed him, Olusegun Obasanjo, the president at the time. Indeed, before the national elections in 2007, Mr. Ribadu’s office published a list of 135 “corrupt” candidates it said should not be allowed to run for office. None of Mr. Obasanjo’s close allies were on it, noted Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group. Other critics said that the agency used the country’s gruesome prisons to obtain guilty pleas from defendants seeking to avoid long trials and long stays in fetid, overcrowded cells.

Human Rights Watch said in August 2011 that Mr. Ribadu’s “legacy was tarnished” by such evidence.

Detractors also point to his modest tally, when it was all over, as chairman of the corruption commission: only two convictions.

Yet even the critics call these a watershed, demonstrating to Nigerians that the powerful could be brought down merely because they had stolen large sums of money.

It “was a profoundly important moment” when Nigeria’s top police official, Mr. Balogun, was taken to court in handcuffs in 2005 to answer for his $150 million in ill-gotten assets, Human Rights Watch said in a 2011 report that was otherwise critical of Mr. Ribadu’s record.

That feat, and the subsequent conviction of another oil-state governor for stealing $55 million — since pardoned by the current president, Goodluck Jonathan — contributed to Mr. Ribadu’s reputation for incorruptibility.

He remains a rare figure in Nigerian political life: a public man whose reputation for personal probity remains relatively intact. No one has credibly accused him of stealing or taking bribes. Chickens roam his lawn, his six children romp on the grounds and watch cartoons inside, and there is no elaborate security detail guarding him — a sharp contrast to the normal accouterments of Nigerian senior officials.

IT remains to be seen if Mr. Ribadu’s incorruptible image can vault him into politics. After announcing a bid for the presidency to much fanfare last time around, Mr. Ribadu finished a very distant third. The jockeying is now underway in Nigeria for the 2015 presidential election, a high-stakes game on which billions ride in this oil-producing nation, and Mr. Ribadu is not ruling out a new candidacy.

The odds are against him: The governing People’s Democratic Party, or P.D.P., with oceans of cash and a network of influential state governors, is arrayed against Mr. Ribadu, who has not much besides the news media and a handful of good-government boosters on his side.

But Mr. Ribadu is convinced his moment will arrive. Seven governors from the governing party have recently quit to form a splinter group. Mr. Jonathan’s party faces many problems, like an Islamist rebellion in the north and potentially plummeting revenues from oil after the United States, Nigeria’s biggest customer, cut imports from the country in half from 2011 to the first half of 2012.

The defections have noticeably rattled Mr. Jonathan’s government.

“It’s an implosion of the ruling party that has been in charge for 15 years, promoting corruption, selfishness, incompetence,” Mr. Ribadu said, leaning forward in his garden. “It’s gotten to the point where it’s just like a group of gangsters.”

#USSenateDemocrats Go Nuclear!

i used to wonder why my #gop party sometimes acted like the #taliban until #democrats dropped the #nuclearbomb on the #ussenate floo, so now i should wonder no more!

#Floriduh

Louisville Courier-Journal Pens More Editorial About Kentucky's "Gestapo".

The reckless conduct of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services continues to astonish in cases where its employees appear to be running roughshod over some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged citizens of this state.

Twice in recent months, judges have rightly rejected the efforts by cabinet lawyers to wriggle out of findings that the agency is in contempt of court for violating the law or ignoring court orders.

Just last week, a state Court of Appeals panel refused to lift a contempt of court finding from Fayette Family Court against cabinet officials for not following the law in a case where they were seeking to terminate parents’ rights and permanently remove two children from their custody.

That follows the refusal in September of a federal judge in Lexington to lift a year-old contempt order against the cabinet for its handling of litigation over Medicaid coverage in which the judge repeated his frustration over the cabinet’s failure to help some of the state’s poorest and sickest Medicaid patients secure adequate health coverage.

But the details of one family’s case from Northern Kentucky, as alleged in a federal lawsuit pending against two cabinet social service officials, are even more stunning, indicating a willingness by cabinet employees to violate rights of families, ignore the law and rely on outlandish allegations of child abuse so fantastic they were promptly rejected by a judge.

Yet, that particular family’s nightmare dragged on for more than a year as a Boone County man fought to clear his name, as outlined recently by reporter Jim Hannah in the Cincinnati Enquirer, an affiliate of The Courier-Journal.

The story details the plight of Kenneth Lalley, awarded sole custody of his four children after a divorce, who was stunned when a social worker showed up at his door late at night on April 10, 2012, seeking to take all four of his children from him based on allegations of abuse.

The evidence? Claims from his teenage son who was then hospitalized for severe mental illness that he had been sexually abused multiple times not only by his father but by Boone Family Court Judge Linda Bramlage who had presided over the father’s contentious divorce from the teen’s mother.

The claims included bizarre allegations that the father and the judge assaulted the boy together on multiple occasions and frequently wandered around the house in front of him nude.

The youth later would admit he made the claims up hoping he could return to live with his mother.

Yet, with only cursory investigation of these claims, the worker removed the children from Mr. Lalley that night, without the required order signed by a judge, the father’s lawsuit claims.

Two days later, a cabinet social worker took the unsupported abuse allegations to Judge Bramlage, the same family court judge who presided over the divorce, but who had no idea she had been falsely accused of abuse. The worker asked her to sign an order authorizing the state to remove the children from their father—concealing from Judge Bramlage that she was one of those accused of the abuse, according to the father’s lawsuit.

A different judge took over the case, decided that no abuse had occurred and ordered three of the children returned to the father. The teenage son remains hospitalized.

Yet the cabinet for months afterwards refused to remove Mr. Lalley from an internal register it keeps of child abusers—only recently notifying his lawyer, Shane Sidebottom of Covington, it had done so after it apparently was shamed by Mr. Hannah’s news story Nov. 3.

The actions of the cabinet employees in this case appear as inexplicable as the determination of top officials to defend them.

“We are very supportive of these staff and are confident that court proceedings will demonstrate that their focus, as always, has been to protect the children,” a cabinet spokeswoman said.

We’ll see.

The cabinet isn’t faring too too well in court these days. Cabinet Secretary Audrey Tayse Haynes and Gov. Steve Beshear need to find out why its cases keep going so wrong and why citizens suffer.

Wanna read more? Go here.

CBS' 60 Minutes And Lara Logan Leads With A "Correction" About Dylan Davis' Scam Account Of His Heroics In Benghazi We Reported Here. CBS Was Hoodwinked! Watch "Apology"!!

Update, 11/26: sory is false; CBS suspends Lara Logan and her producer for false reporting! Read More here.

GREEDY AT&T On CIA Payroll For Spying!

CIA paying AT&T to provide call records - NY Times

The CIA is paying AT&T more than $10 million a year to provide phone records for overseas counter-terrorism investigations, the New York Times reported, quoting government officials.

The No. 2 U.S. mobile service provider is cooperating under a voluntary contract, not under subpoenas or court orders compelling the company to participate, the paper said. (r.reuters.com/juk54v)

AT&T did not confirm or deny the report but said payments from governments were routine for lawful data.

The report comes amid widespread political uproar after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents describing how the U.S. government collects far more internet and telephone data than previously known.

Under the AT&T arrangement, the CIA supplies phone numbers of overseas terrorism suspects and AT&T searches its database to provide call records that may help identify foreign associates, the paper said.

Most of the call logs provided by AT&T involve foreign-to-foreign calls, the paper said.

AT&T does not disclose the identity of the Americans calling from the United States, and masks their phone numbers when it produces the records, the paper said, quoting the officials.

AT&T said all government data requests were handled in a lawful and proper manner.

"We ensure that we maintain customer information in compliance with the laws of the United States and other countries where information may be maintained," AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said in an emailed statement.

"Like all telecom providers, we routinely charge governments for producing the information provided."

(To read more, check out Reuters)

Rand Paul Seeks To Retool His Craft After Plagiarism Fiasco.

The questions about Paul's writings, starting with disclosures that some of his speeches had borrowed from Wikipedia, threatened to undercut his relatively newfound status as an intellectually rooted libertarian Republican vying to lead his party into the post-Obama, post-Bush era. They were of a sort that caused Joe Biden to drop his Democratic primary campaign in 1988, when, as a young senator, he used words from a speech by Neil Kinnock, then the Labour Party leader in Britain, without attribution. (He also admitted plagiarizing a law review article for a law school paper.)

Paul's handling of the disclosures was being watched by his Senate colleagues and by strategists and potential donors to a 2016 national run. Some said they viewed it as a test of whether he could cope with the intensity of a campaign and the presidency itself.

"I think when you have a high visibility in America politically, you've got to understand that you undergo scrutiny that you don't even as a senator," said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican Party's presidential nominee in 2008 and a frequent sparring partner of Paul. He added that he was hesitant to judge the political fallout Paul could face until he knew "how much there is of it."

Paul, when asked if he thought the accusations could turn off some presidential supporters, indicated the degree of what he termed "unfair criticism" might factor into whether he decides to run.

"It's also what people hate about politics, and it's why, frankly, members of my family are not too interested in politics, period, or wanting me to do more of this," he said. "To tell you the truth, people can think what they want, I can go back to being a doctor any time, if they're tired of me. I'll go back to being a doctor, and I'll be perfectly content."

On a day when one potential rival for the Republican nomination, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, won re-election, Paul was fending off a new disclosure that came Monday night, this one served up by BuzzFeed. The site reported that an op-ed article Paul wrote for The Washington Times in September on mandatory minimum prison sentences appeared to have copied language from an essay that had been published in the magazine The Week.

That article, written by Dan Stewart, an editor for the magazine, included this sentence: "America now jails a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country, including China and Iran, at the staggering cost of $80 billion a year." It was posted on the Web on Sept. 14.

On Sept. 20, Paul wrote this: "America now jails a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country, including China and Iran, at the staggering cost of $80 billion a year."

The Washington Times said Tuesday it was canceling Paul's column by mutual agreement.

Paul made it clear that he took that example more seriously than the previous disclosures. The first of those came last week on the MSNBC show of Rachel Maddow. She highlighted a speech from last Monday that used parts of the Wikipedia description of the 1990s movie Gattaca. which was based on a science fiction future in which societal standing is determined through DNA testing.

On Tuesday, Paul argued that that did not technically represent plagiarism. "Trying to say someone commits plagiarism, you're saying that someone is dishonest," he said. "And, well, it would be dishonest if I tried to say, 'Oh, I had this great idea for a movie, and this is my idea, and this is a story I wrote in college called Gattaca."

Paul said the unattributed passages of his Washington Times article were the result of life at the speed of a newly minted national political figure, and that the article had been adapted from a speech, which was one of the reasons it was not vetted.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/11/06/2914965/rand-paul-to-retool-office-after.html#storylink=cpy

Corrupt Grayson County Sheriff's Detective, Terry Blanton, Sentence To One Year In Prison For Stealing Drugs, Etc., From Evidence Locker. Watch.

Watch below: You can read more here.

Kentucky State Supreme Court Justice Will T. Scott, Is Among Those Targeted By Eastern Kentucky Disabilities Lawyer Eic C. Conn's Con!

State Supreme Court justice says he didn't ask E. Ky. lawyer Eric C. Conn for campaign money

Kia Hampton, Miss Kentucky 
USA 2011, was hired by Conn 
as his public relations 
director for $70,000 a year.

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In early 2012, Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Will T. Scott repeatedly drove to the Floyd County office of disability benefits lawyer Eric C. Conn, which is a chain of interconnected trailers along U.S. 23, fronted by a one-ton, 19-foot-tall statue of Abraham Lincoln.

Scott, who represents Eastern Kentucky on the high court, was on his way to raising $332,390 for a bruising re-election battle that fall. Conn was a multi-millionaire facing at least two federal investigations and a fraud lawsuit for allegedly rigging medical records and steering hundreds of his check-seeking clients to a judge who improperly approved their claims. A U.S. Senate committee spent five hours last week criticizing Conn's law practice at a nationally televised hearing.

The men thought they could be useful to each other.

Scott put Conn on his campaign committee and talked with him and two other lawyers in Conn's firm about money that they could raise for him, according to Scott himself and one of the other lawyers, David Hicks, who later spoke with investigators for the state attorney general's office.

In an interview last week, Scott said Conn initially approached him, not vice versa.
"They kept calling me and asking me, 'Please come by, we'd love to see you, we want to support you,'" Scott said. "I cannot turn my back on the people of Kentucky when I'm running for election."
After that conversation, Conn gave Scott's campaign $1,000, the maximum allowed by state law. So did one of Conn's lawyers, John Earl Hunt.

Then Conn tried to funnel $10,000 more to the campaign through $1,000 money orders under the names of 10 of his office employees. Conn got the money from a safe-deposit box at a Prestonsburg bank where he kept about $250,000 in cash, one of his employees, who accompanied him, told investigators.

The payments were coordinated by Kia Hampton, Miss Kentucky USA 2011, Hampton told investigators. Conn had hired Hampton for $70,000 a year as his public relations director and leader of his "Conn Girls," attractive young women who starred in his television commercials and public events.
"Mr. Will T. Scott, let me first say that (it) is an honor to be able to participate in your campaign," Hampton emailed Scott on Jan. 6, 2012. "Us at the Eric C. Conn law firm are very excited. Looking forward to meeting you next week!"
"Thanks, Kia. I'm just Will T.," Scott replied. "When I get over my sickness, tell Eric and John and all I'll stop by for a chat. I'd be embarrassed to get around them with my cough now."

Hampton told investigators that Scott came to Conn's office and gave her a batch of campaign envelopes to be used for donations. (Hampton added that she didn't know who Scott was, but she was instructed to help him.) Scott confirmed last week that he dropped off his campaign envelopes. They were pre-addressed to "Scott for Supreme Court" at the same post office box he lists as his Pikeville address on the court's website.

The Kentucky Code of Judicial Conduct, approved by the Supreme Court, prohibits judges and judicial candidates from soliciting campaign funds in person. The court has argued that, more than most politicians, judges are in a unique position to pressure people who might appear before them — especially lawyers. Judges and judicial candidates must appoint committees to request money on their behalf, keeping an arm's length between them and potential donors.

But Scott said he wasn't asking anyone at the Conn law office for money — he simply wanted their help raising money, and that's an important distinction.
"I don't go up and ask people for money, and I don't take money from people," Scott said.
Scott soon returned the donations to the Conn office employees at their individual homes. He explained in his signed letters that he could not accept money orders, only personal checks, and he invited them to attend an upcoming Pikeville campaign reception that would raise $53,425 for him.

Conn tried to get some employees to write personal checks to Scott's campaign using the returned money, but instead they kept it. Conn already had fired several of the workers — his office had a high turnover rate, employees told investigators — and he didn't try to retrieve the money from them. The scheme appeared to fizzle at that point.

Last week, Scott said he returned the money orders because he was suspicious. It seemed unlikely that 10 of Conn's employees, some of whom probably did not earn large salaries, simultaneously would give him $1,000 each, the justice said. He also removed Conn from his campaign committee, he said. In March 2012, after the attorney general's investigators questioned him about the money orders, Scott returned Conn's own donation.
"Every action on my part was honorable and professional," Scott said last week. "Had he been on the up-and-up, I would have been glad to keep him on the committee."

Giving campaign money under someone else's name — a "straw donation" — is illegal in Kentucky.
Thanks to a whistle-blower in Conn's office, a woman who was supposed to be one of the straw donors, the attorney general began to investigate. Conn soon faced a Class D felony charge in Franklin Circuit Court, punishable by up to five years in prison and the automatic suspension of his law license.

Last month, Attorney General Jack Conway dropped the charge to a misdemeanor in exchange for Conn's guilty plea. Conn received a year in jail, conditionally discharged for two years. That means he did no time and kept his law license.
"Our office believes that the charge and the penalty in this case were appropriate considering the facts," Conway spokesman Daniel Kemp wrote in a prepared statement last week.
Scott was not charged because "there is no evidence Justice Scott was involved in the scheme, and once he received the attempted donation, he returned the money orders in question," Kemp wrote.

It's unclear why Conn risked so much to assist Scott. Conn refused to talk to the attorney general's investigators about the case. He referred the Lexington Herald-Leader last week to his attorney, Kent Wicker, who said, "That matter is closed as far as Mr. Conn is concerned, and we don't have any further comment on it."

Typically, Conn practices before administrative law judges at the Social Security Administration, where Scott holds no power. Scott had, at the end of 2011, written an important Supreme Court decision making it easier for black-lung cases to proceed through the workers compensation system, and Conn's firm has represented coal miners claiming damages from black lung disease. But Scott said Conn expressed no interest in that to him.

Melinda Martin, who was Conn's Social Security case supervisor, told investigators her boss was motivated by concern for his law license. The Supreme Court and its independent arm, the Kentucky Bar Association, can move to disbar attorneys for violations of ethics rules. Conn knew he faced multiple probes into the ethics of his disability benefits work.
"She said that Conn had told her they needed to be very nice to Scott because Scott could take his law license in a second," investigators wrote in their report.

Even without Conn's money, Scott managed to raise several hundred thousand dollars and soundly defeat his challenger, Kentucky Court of Appeals Judge Janet Stumbo, in the fall election.

Kentucky Disabilities Lawyer Eric C. Conn's Con.

Conn story: What does it take? Lawyer not disciplined in Ky. despite over a decade of issues, reports

Kentucky lawyer Eric Conn
invoked his right not to testify
when he appeared Monday
before a Senate committee in
Washington, D.C.

Lawyer not disciplined in Ky. despite over a decade of issues, reports

Last Monday, the U.S. Senate's Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released a report on a two-year staff investigation titled, "How Some Legal, Medical, and Judicial Professionals Abused Social Security Disability Programs for the Country's Most Vulnerable: A Case Study of the Conn Law Firm."

Released in concert with a five-hour hearing that day on its findings, the lengthy, detailed report into the workings of the Eric C. Conn law firm in Stanville, Ky., reads like an Elmore Leonard novel.
There are secret lists, pre-paid cell phones, buxom beauties, tons of cash, thousands of pounds of shredded documents, "whore doctors" who sign diagnoses cut and pasted from the Internet, secret surveillance and manufactured evidence to discredit a whistle blower, Conn law-firm computer hard drives destroyed with hammers and scorched grass in the back yard where computers were burned.

The day of the Senate hearing, Herald-Leader reporter John Cheves asked Thomas Glover, chief bar counsel at the Kentucky Bar Association, about the status of Conn's license to practice law in Kentucky. "If what is being said is true, that could affect his license. It's too early to say," Glover responded.

We'd be inclined to agree if Monday had been the first time the slightest whiff of corruption arose from the doublewides that house Conn's thriving practice.

But, in fact, Conn's record is so dicey that, among all the other questions his story gives rise to, one that begs to be answered is this: What does it take to lose your license to practice law in Kentucky?
Conn, a military veteran, opened his law practice in Stanville in 1993. In the early years he practiced before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. He switched to Social Security disability after he gave up his right to practice before the Veterans Claims Court in 2002, in the wake of an investigation into professional misconduct.

Under the agreement Conn avoided further investigation but also gave up the right to ever be readmitted to appear before that court.

Conn was the subject of another investigation in 2011, this one by the Wall Street Journal, which published a story that May about the relationship between Conn and David B. Daugherty, an administrative law judge in the Huntington, W. Va. Social Security Office of Disability Adjudication and Review. The judge handled a huge volume of appeals, many filed by Conn, and granted benefits in almost every case.

The article reported that staffers and other judges had complained about the relationship between Conn and Daughterty, and that the Social Security Inspector General's Office allegedly had begun an investigation.

Last year, Conn was charged with a felony violation of Kentucky's campaign-finance laws for illegally funneling contributions to the successful 2012 re-election campaign of Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Will T. Scott. Conn pled guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge.
Sunday night, just before the Senate hearing, CBS' 60 Minutes broadcast its damning account of the Conn-Daugherty relationship.

So, the current count is: dismissed from one federal court; charged with a felony in Kentucky pled down to a misdemeanor; the subject of a painstaking and devastating investigation by a Senate committee as well as a major story by a well-respected publication, and another by television's longest-running investigative news program.

And it's too early to say if this could affect his license?

The Kentucky Supreme Court makes the rules that govern legal discipline in the state. Those rules require a shroud of secrecy that prevents the public from knowing if the KBA has looked into Conn — or any attorney — and administered only a private slap on the wrist, or has simply not looked at all.

The rules protect lawyers who are unjustly accused or who made a mistake, were warned, and held to the straight and narrow ever after.

But this long, messy story makes it seem the system is equally, if not more, likely to protect lawyers who step over the ethical edge knowing few will be the wiser.

Read Senate report on Conn Law Firm at Kentucky.com/opinion.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/10/12/2873768/conn-story-what-does-it-take-lawyer.html#storylink=cpy

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Kentucky Legislature Reaches In House To Appoint Acting Director For LRC -- This Way They Can Continue Their Dilly Dallying!

Kentucky lawmakers name acting director for troubled Legislative Research Commission

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FRANKFORT — With the Kentucky General Assembly in the throes of a sexual harassment scandal, legislative leaders selected a woman Wednesday to be acting director of the Legislative Research Commission and authorized a performance audit of the support agency.

Marcia Seiler, director of the legislature's Office of Education Accountability, will be acting director until a replacement is found for Robert Sherman, who resigned last month after he said his office had thoroughly investigated two female staffers' complaints of sexual harassment by a Western Kentucky lawmaker and implemented protective measures for them.

Sherman is under investigation by Kentucky State Police for shredding documents in his Capitol office two days after resigning. He has said the documents had nothing to do with the harassment claims.

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, recommended to fellow legislative leaders at their meeting Wednesday that Seiler be named acting director. All leaders agreed with Stivers.
Sherman had named Robert Jenkins, one of four LRC deputy directors, to fulfill his duties until legislators acted.

The legislative branch budget for this year is $53.8 million. Of that, $18.9 million is for the General Assembly and $34.9 million is for the LRC.

A total of 380 people work for the LRC — 320 in non-partisan positions and 60 in partisan posts. During legislative sessions, as many as 250 additional people are hired for the LRC.

Stivers said Seiler, a lawyer from Louisville, would stay in her current position while directing the full LRC without any increase in salary. Seiler's annual salary is $121,200; Sherman was making $195,000 a year.

When asked whether she was interested in becoming permanent director of the LRC, Seiler said she was "only focusing on being acting director at this time."

House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said he didn't know Seiler but had heard good things about her.
Legislative leaders also authorized the National Conference of State Legislatures to help find a permanent replacement for Sherman. Stivers said that process could take six to eight months.

Jay Hartz, deputy chief of staff for Senate Republicans, will work with the national conference to find a permanent LRC director and on the performance audit of the entire LRC, Stivers said.
Stumbo said he didn't know how much the audit would cost.

He said the review should include "a general audit of everything," including an evaluation of pay for LRC employees.

The issue of pay was mentioned in a sexual harassment lawsuit that staffers Cassaundra Cooper and Yolanda Costner filed Tuesday in Franklin Circuit Court against former Rep. John Arnold Jr., D-Sturgis.

In addition to Arnold, the women named as defendants the state, Stumbo in his official capacity, and the LRC. Arnold recently resigned from the legislature and has denied any wrongdoing.
In their lawsuit, the two women contend they were paid for 37.5 hours a week even when they worked overtime.

Another LRC staffer, Nicole Cusic, has sued Democratic state Rep. Will Coursey of Symsonia, the LRC and Sherman, claiming she was retaliated against when she was moved to another office against her will after she complained to Coursey about what she said was his inappropriate behavior with a legislative intern. Coursey denies the allegations.

It Is Day 3 Of The Federal Government Shutdown, And The Sky Has Refused To Fall Down!

Yep!

Kentucky Legislative Sex Harrassment Scandals Spur Lawsuits.

Three legislative staffers file lawsuits related to sexual harassment scandal

• Story Photos:
• 

  

FRANKFORT — An attorney representing three legislative staffers filed two lawsuits Tuesday alleging sexual harassment by lawmakers and unfair retaliation in a scandal that has rocked the Kentucky General Assembly.

In one lawsuit, two female legislative staffers — Yolanda Costner and Cassaundra Cooper — accused former state Rep. John Arnold Jr., D-Sturgis, of sexual harassment. In addition to Arnold, they named as defendants the state, House Speaker Greg Stumbo in his official capacity and the Legislative Research Commission.

Costner and Cooper allege that Arnold inappropriately touched them and made lewd and vulgar comments in numerous incidents over several years. They also contend that they were not properly paid for hours worked and overtime wages.

In another lawsuit, legislative staffer Nicole Cusic sued state Rep. Will Coursey, the LRC and former LRC executive director Robert Sherman, claiming she was retaliated against when she was moved to a different office after she complained to Coursey, D-Symsonia, about what she said was his inappropriate behavior with a legislative intern.

Arnold recently resigned from the legislature and denied any wrongdoing. His attorney, Steven Downey of Bowling Green, said he has not yet seen the lawsuit against Arnold and could not comment.

Coursey's attorney, Mark Edwards of Paducah, said Coursey denies the allegations in the lawsuit. Edwards noted that the lawsuit does not say whether Cusic ever complained to anyone about the job move.

Louisville attorney Thomas Clay is representing the three women in the lawsuits, which were filed in Franklin Circuit Court. He said both lawsuits seek a trial by jury and an unspecified amount of compensatory damages.

Clay did not rule out the possibility of more lawsuits, noting that he has received "a flood of calls from people who are current or former LRC employees. They have experienced concerns. They have named names and the conduct, frankly, is shocking."

Clay would not comment when asked if he has talked to anyone in any law enforcement agency about the complaints.

He said his clients have "been fortified" by colleagues and others who have said "it's about time somebody stood up and said something here because this situation needs to be addressed."

A fourth female legislative staff member, Gloria Morgan, has filed a complaint with the Legislative Ethics Commission against Arnold. Her attorney, Brenda Allen of Frankfort, has not said if Morgan will file a lawsuit.

Stumbo responded to the lawsuits in an email message: "It is our policy not to comment on pending litigation."
Defendants in the lawsuits have 20 days to file a response with the court after they have been served.

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said his office is reviewing the lawsuits.
"We do not condone anything alleged to have happened in these lawsuits," he said. "We are committed to providing LRC staff with a safe working environment. We will wait for the civil process to take its course."

Sherman has denied any wrongdoing.

He resigned from his legislative position last month after he said his office had thoroughly investigated Costner's and Cooper's complaints and implemented protective measures for them.

Sherman is under investigation by Kentucky State Police for shredding documents in his Capitol office two days after resigning. He has said those documents had nothing to do with the sexual harassment claims.

Legislative leaders are to meet Wednesday to discuss a replacement for Sherman.

A special five-member panel of House members appointed by Stumbo is to meet next week to review the complaints against Arnold. Stumbo has not said if the panel also will consider Cusic's complaints.

Alleged retaliation

Cusic's lawsuit accuses Coursey of sexually harassing legislative employees and interns.
"Out of concern for Coursey, Nicole notified Coursey of his inappropriate conduct," the suit said.
After that, Cusic alleges, Coursey quit communicating with her and started complaining about her work.
Coursey then went to Stumbo's office, requesting that Cusic be transferred to another representative, according to the lawsuit.
Cusic was removed from Coursey's office and placed in a separate office with no work for a month, she alleged.

She later was transferred against her will from a secretarial position for the House to a secretarial position for the Senate, the lawsuit alleges.

Her lawsuit said Sherman and Coursey conspired and retaliated against Cusic for making a complaint against Coursey about his behavior.

As a result, Cusic said she suffered distress, embarrassment, humiliation, mental anguish, wage loss and medical expenses and should have been protected under the state's "whistleblower" statute.
Coursey's attorney said Coursey requested that Cusic be moved out of his office because "she was not a very good worker." He cited absenteeism and Cusic's failure to speedily issue responses to constituents.

Clay, Cusic's attorney, said he understands that Stumbo "was directly involved in the decision" to transfer Cusic.