In news which is no surprise, former state Representative Charles Booker has declared for the Democratic nomination to face incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) in the 2022 election.
Mr Booker said last March that he was “strongly considering” running for the Senate in 2022, and, as we have previously noted, in April formed an exploratory committee on the subject. Continue reading
The black communities around the country have been really eager in their attempts to ban no-knock warrants. Louisville’s Breonna Taylor was killed when plainclothes police officers returned fire — not opened fire but returned fire — after Miss Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, claiming that he thought the police were armed intruders, and fired, hitting Officer Jonathan Mattingly in the leg. The officers then fired 32 shots, entirely missing Mr Walker, but hitting Miss Taylor six times. From Wikipedia:
The Louisville Metropolitan Police Department investigation’s primary targets were Jamarcus Glover and Adrian Walker (not related to Kenneth Walker), who were suspected of selling controlled substances from a drug house approximately 10 miles away. Glover had cohabited with Taylor and said the police had pressured him to move out of Taylor’s residence for unspecified reasons.[37] Glover and Taylor had been in an on-off relationship that started in 2016 and lasted until February 2020, when Taylor committed to Kenneth Walker.
In December 2016, Fernandez Bowman was found dead in a car rented by Taylor and used by Glover. He had been shot eight times. Glover had used Taylor’s address and phone number for various purposes, including bank statements.
In a variety of statements, Glover said that Taylor had no involvement in the drug operations, that as a favor she held money from the proceeds for him, and that she handled money for him for other purposes. In different recorded jailhouse conversations Glover said that Taylor had been handling his money and that she was holding $8,000 of it, that he had given Taylor money to pay phone bills, and that he had told his sister that another woman had been keeping the group’s money.
In the recorded conversations and in an interview with The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Glover repeatedly said that Taylor was not involved in any drug operations and that police had “no business” looking for him at her residence, and denied that he had said in the recorded conversations that he kept money at her residence. Taylor was never a co-defendant in Glover’s case.
A no-knock warrant was reasonable, in that the LMPD believed that Miss Taylor was holding drugs and money for Mr Glover. While the evidence sought through the warrant never appeared, Miss Taylor was, at the very least, closely involved with Mr Glover, a notorious drug dealer. That part never penetrated the consciousness of the black community.
And so we come to Lexington, where the Urban-County Council has advanced, on a 9-6 vote, a proposed ordinance to ban no-knock warrants.
Vice Mayor Steve Kay said of the four no-knock warrants Lexington police have served in the past five years, all were executed to preserve evidence in drug cases, despite Lexington police previously saying that they have been not used to preserve evidence.
Translation: we’ve got to give the drug dealers time to flush their stashes down the toilet!
In a city of 308,000 people, four no-knock warrants used over five years does not exactly seem like overuse or some sort of blanket policy.
“I believe strongly that we have a great police force and it’s lead by a great chief,” Kay said. Yet, the Black community has repeatedly said it does not want the police to use no-knock warrants.
“My sense is that the no-knock represents a threat … a continuation of the way that they have been at the wrong end of police enforcement. I want them to have faith in the department,” Kay said. “What I don’t want to read is that there has been a shooting and no one will come forward and provide evidence to the police.”
If the black community in Lexington “have been at the wrong end of police enforcement,” might that not indicate that too many members of their community have been on the wrong end of the law?
Lexington police union blasts nine council members who voted for no-knock warrant ban
By Beth Musgrave | June 10, 2021 | 1:04 PM EDT | Updated: June 10, 2021 | 3:34 PM EDT
The union that represents Lexington police officers blasted nine members of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council who voted Tuesday to ban no-knock warrants, saying they were pandering to “radically anti-police protesters.”
In Facebook posts, the Fraternal Order of Police Bluegrass Lodge #4 tied a rise in the number of shootings and murders this year to the vote to ban no-knock warrants. “City leaders are less concerned with your safety than they are with pandering to a small group of radically anti-police protestors,” one post read. . . .
In another Facebook post, the FOP tied two Wednesday murders to the vote on the no-knock ban.
“These shooting deaths came just hours after the Lexington City Council irresponsibly voted to ban no-knock warrants in Lexington. When it comes time for officers to arrest these murderers, do we really want to restrict the tools they have to apprehend the suspects safely?”
The Lexington Police Department is like major police departments everywhere: the officers have a hard, dangerous job to do, and they are doing it during a time of increased lawlessness. Lexington has seen 19 homicides in 160 days, which puts the city on pace for 43 murders this year, which would blow 2020’s record of 34 out of the water. At a time in which the city is less safe than it has ever been, the black community want to hobble law enforcement even more.
“There is a concerted effort underway by the Fraternal Order of Police, as we speak, to paint council members who voted for this police reform, our group and others as supporting both criminals and the endangerment of our fellow citizens and police officers,” said Rev. Clark Williams, a member of the group (of black religious leaders).
“We are not the enemies of the Lexington police, and for the record, nobody wants Lexington to be safe for everybody more than we do,” Williams said. “But this form of misinformation and divisive rhetoric has no place in the legislative process, and it further demonstrates why we need a permanent ban on no-knock warrants.”
Really? If “nobody wants Lexington to be safe for everybody more than (they) do,” why are they trying to aid the criminal element in town?
No-knock warrants have hardly been abused in Lexington; there’s no need for an absolute ban. It would be an easy check to keep the current policy, of having the Mayor, someone who isn’t part of the Police Department, review and approve or disapprove of the applications before they are presented to a judge.
As we have previously noted, the state Supreme Court has consolidated the cases against the General Assembly’s new laws restricting Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) ’emergency’ powers under KRS 39A, and a lawsuit against the Governor exercising those powers. The state Court then set June 10th, then eight weeks away, to hear oral arguments in the cases. That means, in effect, that the Governor will continue to exercise authority the General Assembly denied him, for at least 3½ months after the state legislature took its action, and, in all likelihood, a couple of months after that.
Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)
Several lawsuits were filed in state courts last year to stop the Governor’s emergency decrees under KRS39A. On July 17, 2020, the state Supreme Court put a hold on all lower court orders against Mr Beshear’s orders and directed that “any lower court order, after entry, be immediately transferred to the clerk of the Supreme Court for consideration by the full court.” Three weeks later, the Court set September 17, 2020, another five weeks later, to hear oral arguments by both sides.
The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, until November 12, 2020, which upheld the Governor’s orders.
If the Kentucky Supreme Court, officially non-partisan but in practice controlled by the Democrats, follows the same pattern, a second eight week delay will mean a decision around the first week of August! Even if that decision supports the duly passed laws of the General Assembly, the state courts will have given the Governor half a year to exercise power that the General Assembly restricted.
On May 6th, Governor Beshear announced that he would loosen the restrictions, but not eliminate them entirely, effective just before the Memorial Day weekend. Then, on May 14th, the Governor announced that almost all restrictions would be lifted on Kentuckians, including the hated mask mandate, even for those who are not vaccinated against COVID-19. He had, the previous day, followed the Centers for Disease Control’s recommendations, and stated that “fully vaccinated” Kentuckians could dispense with face masks.
‘A huge relief.’ Businesses, politicians celebrate end of KY COVID-19 restrictions.
By Alex Acquisto and Daniel Desrochers | June 11, 2021 | 6:00 AM | EDT | Updated: 7:45 AM EDT
A year of mask-wearing and social distancing ends Friday, as Kentuckians were given clearance to stop taking routine precautions against spread of COVID-19 for the first time since the virus initially invaded the state.
Gov. Andy Beshear first required masks be worn in public places and around others outside one’s household in July of 2020 as a way to blunt the spread of the disease and has renewed that order each month since.
On Friday, that order was lifted, along with restrictions on crowd capacity in restaurants and most other businesses, ripping off the state’s COVID-19 protective band-aid.
So, despite the best efforts of Republicans, Governor Beshear has pretty much gotten away with his dictatorial and unconstitutional actions. At this point, the battle is to keep him from being able to do it again.
KY Supreme Court hears arguments on limiting the governor’s power during emergencies
By Jack Brammer | June 10, 2021 | 1:37 PM EDT | Updated June 11, 2021 | 7:57 AM EDT
A day before Gov. Andy Beshear is to remove most COVID-19 restrictions in Kentucky, the state Supreme Court on Thursday heard arguments on Beshear’s challenge of Republican-backed laws that limit his authority to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and other emergencies.
Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. said after nearly two hours of oral arguments on two related cases that the state’s highest court will rule “as quickly as we can.” A decision is not expected for several weeks.
The state Supreme Court last year unanimously ruled that Beshear’s orders were legal but that was before the legislature passed laws earlier this year restricting the governor’s powers.
There’s a lot more at the original, but basically the Governor’s attorney was arguing that the Governor had to have the powers he exercised.
After the court hearing, Beshear told reporters that a governor’s emergency powers certainly “have to be large enough with a one-in-every-hundred year pandemic that creates the deadliest year in our history, it has to be significant and strong enough to do what’s necessary there.”
“You look back at different things that this legislature has tried to do in the midst of this pandemic and they would have not had the courage to step up and mandate masks, which we know from the experts is absolutely necessary,” he said. “We would have looked like the Dakotas and not what we looked like here in Kentucky.”
The Governor was lying through his scummy teeth. The laws did not prevent him from issuing declaring a state of emergency or issuing executive orders under it; what hey did was to limit those orders to thirty days unless the General Assembly specifically authorized an extension. The legislature passed House Joint Resolution 77, which granted extensions to some, but not all, of the Governor’s executive orders, but did not include the hated mask mandate, and then highly partisan Judge Phillip Shepherd issued an injunction against that, saying that the Governor’s existing executive orders and emergency regulations constituted “proper responses to a public health crisis.” That’s a political judgement, not a legal one.
Mr Beshear was pissed off that the legislature did not agree with all of his executive order, only some of them. Saying that the legislature “would have not had the courage to step up and mandate masks, which we know from the experts is absolutely necessary” is a political argument, not a legal one.
Republicans, frustrated by the courts’ refusal to rein in the Governor’s mandates, ran against the Governor and his actions in the 2020 elections, and the voters rewarded Republicans with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, for a 75-25 majority, and two additional seats in the state Senate, out of 17 being contested, for a 30-8 majority in that body. The state legislature, in passing the bills at the beginning of this year’s session, was doing whet the voters of Kentucky wanted them to do. The Governor does not like that the voters did not agree with his dictates.
Mr Beshear, who was very, very, very concerned about the law when he was state Attorney General and doing his best to frustrate Governor Matt Bevin (R-KY), doesn’t seem to care much about the law anymore, not when the law is a problem for him. He has argued necessity, as though the Governor’s personal judgement of what is necessary somehow trumps or supersedes the law.
Well, not just no, but Hell no! The law is the law, and the constitution is the constitution, and no Governor, not Mr Beshear or anybody else, should have the authority to just suspend or ignore parts of it.
Alas! I am not confident that the state Supreme Court will follow the law; they’ve been far too compliant with the Governor’s wishes. But, with the restrictions over, there is no reason at for the justices to ignore the laws passed by the General Assembly other than the argument of what might happen sometime in the future.
The real solution for Kentuckians will come on November 7, 2023, when they will have the chance to vote this wannabe dictator out of office.
Charles Booker, from his Twitter profile.
Well, being the news junkie that I am, I went ahead and followed Mr Booker on Twitter, and he had this one up on Tuesday:
Every single day, I am deeply ashamed that Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul claim to represent Kentucky in the United States Senate.
— Charles Booker (@Booker4KY) June 8, 2021
Really? Well, a whole lot of Kentuckians would disagree with Mr Booker. In 2010, Dr Paul defeated Democratic nominee Jack Conway, who had already won a statewide election to become the state’s Attorney General, 755,411 (55.69%) to 599,617 (44.26%) to win his seat in the United States Senate. Anything over 10% is considered a landslide win. Then, in 2016, Senator Paul defeated then-Mayor Jim Gray of Lexington 1,090,177 (57.27%) to 813,246 (42.73%) for re-election.
Mitch McConnell? In 2014, Senator McConnell defeated Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes 806,787 (56.2%) to 584,698 (40.7%), and in 2020 he stomped Mrs Henderson 1,233,315 (57.8%) to 816,257 (38.2%), despite her spending $90.8 million to ‘just’ $60 million by the incumbent senator.
If you visit Mr Booker’s (exploratory) campaign website, you’ll see a letter from him on the front page. In it, he said, “We all want a society where every single person can be safe in their homes without the fear of being killed by the government agencies we pay to protect us.”
Yeah, I get it: he’s channeling the killing of Breonna Taylor, the ex-girlfriend of a notorious Louisville drug dealer, who died when police returned fire from her then current boyfriend when they broke in, serving a legitimate no-knock warrant.
But, really, Mr Booker is worried about people being killed in their homes by police, an extremely rare event, when, as of May 30th, there had been 76 murders in his home town?
That’s 30 more murders than at the same time in 2020, a 65.22% increase. It was more than double the 33 homicides at the same time in 2019.
Louisville saw 92 criminal homicides in 2019, and almost doubled it to 173 in 2020. Louisville is currently on pace for a new record of 185 murders for 2021, and the long, hot summer hasn’t begun yet, but Mr Booker is worried about Breonna Taylor? One of us believes that Mr Booker’s priorities are misplaced.
As we have previously noted, the state Supreme Court has consolidated the cases against the General Assembly’s new laws restricting Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) ’emergency’ powers under KRS 39A, and a lawsuit against the Governor exercising those powers. The state Court then set June 10th, then eight weeks away and still more than a month away, to hear oral arguments in the cases. That means, in effect, that the Governor will continue to exercise authority the General Assembly denied him, for at least 3½ months after the state legislature took its action, and, in all likelihood, a couple of months after that.
Several lawsuits were filed in state courts last year to stop the Governor’s emergency decrees under KRS39A. On July 17, 2020, the state Supreme Court put a hold on all lower court orders against Mr Beshear’s orders and directed that “any lower court order, after entry, be immediately transferred to the clerk of the Supreme Court for consideration by the full court.” Three weeks later, the Court set September 17, 2020, another five weeks later, to hear oral arguments by both sides.
The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, until November 12, 2020, which upheld the Governor’s orders.
If the Kentucky Supreme Court, officially non-partisan but in practice controlled by liberals, follows the same pattern, a second eight week delay will mean a decision around the first week of August! Even if that decision supports the duly passed laws of the General Assembly, the state courts will have given the Governor half a year to exercise power that the General Assembly restricted.
And now? The Governor is trying to make most of the cases moot:
COVID-19 capacity restrictions lifting to 75% at most Kentucky businesses on May 28
By Alex Aquisto | May 6, 2021 4:57 PM EDT | Updated May 6, 2021 | 5:34 PM
Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)
Indoor and outdoor businesses in Kentucky serving fewer than 1,000 people can increase capacity to 75% at the end of the month, Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday, as he announced 655 new cases of COVID-19 and six virus-related deaths.Capacity restrictions right now for these businesses are at 60%. Beshear also said people gathering indoors “for private gatherings and for business” no longer have to wear a mask, as long as “100% are fully vaccinated.” That change goes into effect immediately.
Additionally, for businesses and events serving more than 1,000 people outdoors, Beshear increased their operating capacity from 50% to 60%. Both capacity increases go into effect May 28. Beshear said he expects the state will have no coronavirus capacity restrictions by July.
Translation: by the time the state Supreme Court will probably rule, there will be far fewer restrictions in place, and the Governor will argue that makes the cases moot. The Court would like nothing better than to simply dismiss the cases as moot, and you can bet your last euro that the Court would notify the Governor before any decision is announced what it would be and when it would be issued.
Governor Beshear said that Texas decision to drop mask mandates “will increase casualties,” but COVID cases there have dramatically declined.
The Governor’s latest thirty-day renewal of the illegal and repugnant mask mandate expires on Thursday, May 27th, at 5:00 PM EDT, just before his other COVID-19 restrictions are scheduled to be weakened, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him issue that one again.
Reiterating that Kentucky will not be repealing its mask mandate anytime soon, Gov. Andy Beshear announced 1,068 new cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky on Thursday, as well as 28 virus-related deaths.
Earlier this week, Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi lifted coronavirus restrictions, repealing their states’ mask mandates and reopening businesses to full capacity. Kentucky will not do that, Beshear said.
“We’re going to continue to lose people until we’re fully out of the woods and everybody is vaccinated,” he said in a live update. “That’s the reason we’re not going to do what Texas or Mississippi has done. Those decisions will increase casualties when we just have maybe even a matter of months to go.”
Except, of course, those decisions did not increase casualties, the seven day moving average of new cases in the Lone Star state being down to 2,651 as of May 6th, the lowest figure since June 17, 2020, while Mississippi is seeing a seven-day moving average of 182 new cases per day, a number not seen since April 14, 2020. Regardless of what the so-called ‘experts’ have told us, the empirical evidence has been that ending the mask mandates has not led to more cases, but, hey, dictators gotta dictate!
If Governor Beshear does not extend the mask mandate past July, virtually all of the cases on the laws would turn moot, so the Governor would not have a decision recorded against him; the state Supreme Court would simply dismiss everything. But that leaves open the possibility that, in a future ’emergency,’ or if COVID-19 cases suddenly increase again, that our authoritarian Governor would once again try to restrict the rights of Kentuckians.
This Governor needs to be slapped down, and slapped down hard, but the only way that will really happen is at the ballot box, in November of 2023.
The hearts of the editors of the what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal must have been all aflutter when former state Representative Charles Booker (D-Louisville) announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to see if he should run for the 2022 Democratic nomination against incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). In 2020, the editors endorsed the hard-left Mr Booker against faux moderate Amy McGrath Henderson for the nomination to run against Senator Mitch McConnell. After Mrs Henderson won the primary by an unexpectedly-close margin, the editors endorsed her against Mr McConnell, where she lost in a landslide.
We have previously noted the newspaper’s endorsements, and they are all to the left:
But the editors, as wrong-headed as they are in their policy choices, aren’t ignorant when it comes to Kentucky politics. And so I came upon this oh-so-hopeful article about a moderate Kentucky Democrat:
Political Notebook: Could Rocky Adkins be Kentucky’s Joe Manchin in 2022 Senate race?
By Daniel Desrochers | April 16, 2021 | 3:39 PM | Updated April 16, 2021 | 4:29 PM EDT
At a bill-signing ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda last week, Rocky Adkins did what he’s been doing for 34 years in politics.
He worked the room.
The tall man from the left hand fork of the middle fork of the Little Sandy River congratulated the people who got the bill passed. He cracked a joke with House Minority Leader Joni Jenkins. He acted surprised when a reporter told him that his name kept getting mentioned as a possible U.S. Senate candidate.
“What are they saying?” asked Adkins, a senior adviser to Gov. Andy Beshear.
They are saying there is potential for a competitive Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in 2022 against former state Rep. Charles Booker, who formed an exploratory committee Monday. They are saying it might take a specific kind of conservative Democrat to win statewide in Kentucky. They are saying it’s Rocky Adkins.
They are also saying a run by Adkins is unlikely.
There’s much more at the original.
It wasn’t so long ago that Kentucky was a thoroughly Democratic state. In 1971, when I first registered to vote in Mt Sterling, I registered as a Republican. Come the general election, I found out that I had exactly zero voice, as all of the members of the city council had been selected in the Democratic primary, as no Republican candidates even filed, there being so few of them, and knowing that they had no chance. It was a lesson that many conservative Kentuckians learned.
Many Democrats have tried to run as moderates in the Bluegrass State. Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes tried in her Senate campaign against Mr McConnell in 2014; she lost in a landslide. Mrs Henderson tried it in 2020, but nobody believed her, not after she was caught on tape in 2018, while raising money in Massachusetts to run against Representative Andy Barr (R-KY 6th District) saying, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky,” and Senator McConnell stomped her even harder than he had Mrs Grimes.
Of course, while the editors of the Herald-Leader would prefer a much more ‘progressive’ candidate, they’d be perfectly happy with Mr Adkins in the Senate, because the most important vote a Senator has is the one at the beginning of the session, the one which organizes the Senate by party, the one which determines which party will control the agenda. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) is the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, and votes with Republicans reasonably frequently, but it is his being a Democrat and not a Republican which has made Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) the Senate Majority Leader, rather than Mr McConnell.
Kentuckians are Republicans now, because Kentuckians are conservatives. While there are a lot of conservative Democrats in the Bluegrass State, they are older; they are Democrats because they have always been Democrats. It has been their sons and daughters who registered as Republicans. That’s why, in the 2020 elections, the voters of the Commonwealth gave the GOP 75 out of 100 seats in the state House of Representatives, an increase of 14 seats, and 30 out of 38 seats in the state Senate, an increase of two seats.[1]Only 17 of the 38 state Senate seats were up for election in 2020.
And the last thing Kentucky’s voters want to see is the Democrats solidifying their current 50/50 split in the Senate, holding the majority only because Democrat Kamala Harris Emhoff is Vice President and President of the Senate.
The Herald-Leader article notes that Mr Adkins is unlikely to run; he’s not exactly the sacrificial lamb type. But if Kentucky’s Democrats do nominate Mr Adkins, or his political doppelganger, it will be to do one thing, and one thing only: keep the Democrats in control of the United States Senate, and not to represent the beliefs of Kentuckians.
References
| ↑1 | Only 17 of the 38 state Senate seats were up for election in 2020. |
|---|
Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)
Kentucky Supreme Court will consider Beshear’s COVID-19 orders in light of new laws
By Jack Brammer | April 16, 2021 | 11:08 AM | Updated: April 16, 2021 | 1:12 PM
The Kentucky Supreme Court has decided to take up two legal cases involving Gov. Andy Beshear’s powers to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and other emergencies and hear them at the same time June 10.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. signed orders Thursday night for the state’s highest court to consider cases from Franklin and Scott circuit courts. He said a time for the June 10 hearing will be set later.
The Franklin case involves Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s appeal of Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd’s decision to temporarily block four legislative measures the General Assembly enacted this year that curb Beshear’s emergency powers.
The Scott case involves Beshear’s appeal of Circuit Judge Brian Privett’s ruling to temporarily block the state from enforcing some of Beshear’s executive COVID-19 orders against several restaurants and breweries
There’s more at the original.
Note the date of the hearing: June 10th. That’s eight weeks away, effectively another two months before the state Supreme Court will even hold oral arguments for and against the Governor’s executive orders and the laws passed by the state legislature to curtail them. A previous story in the Herald-Leader stated:
As of today, Kentucky is about 900,000 short of reaching the goal of 2.5 million vaccinated. More than 1.55 million Kentuckians have received their “first shot of hope,” said the governor.
With the current supply of the vaccine, Beshear said Kentucky could reach the 2.5 million goal in 3½ weeks, but said it most likely will be between four and six weeks.
So, if the guesstimates of four to six weeks are accurate, and if the Governor them lifts some, but not all, of his executive orders as promised, oral arguments eight weeks from now would make the case in Judge Privett’s case moot; and the Justices would almost certainly simply dismiss it.
But the Governor still wants that visible sign of subservience to his decrees:
Even with the easing of the restrictions, Beshear said, Kentuckians still will have to wear masks until there is more control of the virus. He also said he will address larger venues later.
We noted the previous pattern: Several lawsuits were filed in state courts to stop the Governor’s emergency decrees under KRS39A. On July 17, 2020, the state Supreme Court put a hold on all lower court orders against Mr Beshear’s orders and directed that “any lower court order, after entry, be immediately transferred to the clerk of the Supreme Court for consideration by the full court.” Three weeks later, the Court set September 17, 2020, another five weeks later, to hear oral arguments by both sides.
The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, until November 12, 2020, which upheld the Governor’s orders.
If the Kentucky Supreme Court, officially non-partisan but in practice controlled by the Democrats, follows the same pattern, a second eight week delay will mean a decision around the first week of August! Even if that decision supports the duly passed laws of the General Assembly, the state courts will have given the Governor half a year to exercise power that the General Assembly restricted.
Rights delayed are rights denied. But we will be lucky if our rights are only delayed; it isn’t difficult to picture the state Supreme Court coming up with some convoluted reasoning to invalidate the laws passed by the General Assembly. I can hope that the state legislature impeaches and removes our dictatorial Governor in the 2022 session, but, in reality, our best hope is for the voters to kick him to the curb in the 2023 election.
This tweet caught my eye:
KY Court of Appeals recommends transferring to KY Supreme Court Gov. Andy Beshear’s appeal of Scott Circuit Judge Brian Privett’s order to temporarily block Beshear’s COVID-19 orders against some restaurants and bars. ^JB
— Bluegrass Politics (@BGPolitics) April 12, 2021
I can’t say that this is a surprise, but the meaning is clear: the officially non-partisan but effectively Democrat controlled state Supreme Court will uphold the Governor’s appeal. `
Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)
The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, upholding the Governor’s orders.
The pattern was clear and obvious: the state Supreme Court was trying to give the Reichsstatthalter time to run out the clock, hoping that the COVID problem would be beaten by then, and they could simply declare the lawsuits moot. It hadn’t been beaten, so the Court decided in favor of the Governor.
Republicans in the Bluegrass State ran against Governor Beshear’s authoritarian decrees, and the voters rewarded them with 14 more seats in the state House of Representatives, a 75-25 advantage, and 2 more seats, out of 17 up for election, in the state Senate, giving the GOP a 30-8 margin. Though the Governor claims that opinion polls show that Kentuckians support his actions, in the only poll that actually counts, the one held on election day, they voted strongly against his dictatorship.
The General Assembly met beginning in January, and immediately started working on legislation to rein in the Governor’s powers. Dictators love their dictatorial powers, so the Reichsstatthalter vetoed those bills; the legislature promptly overrode his vetoes, and the Reichsstatthalter then went to court to try enjoin the new laws from taking effect.
Taking the cases to heavily partisan Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd, the Governor got what he wanted, the Judge blocking several of the General Assembly’s laws but not actually ruling against them.
And now the authoritarians’ playbook becomes obvious. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:
Beshear sets goal of 2.5 million vaccinated to lift capacity restrictions on bars, restaurants
By Jack Brammer | April 12, 2021 10:22 AM, Updated 11:08 AM EDT
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday he plans to remove capacity restrictions on nearly all venues, events and businesses that cater to 1,000 or fewer patrons once 2.5 million Kentuckians get their first vaccines against COVID-19.
Once that goal is reached, Beshear said, “We will remove the physical distancing restrictions and the curfew we have on bars and restaurants.”
What does that mean? It means that the Governor has given the courts their timetable, a specified amount of time that he says he needs to run out the clock. All the courts have to do is do nothing, until the Governor’s goals are reached, and then they can decide if he had the authority to do what he did.
In what he called “a pretty big announcement,” Beshear said all Kentuckians should be motivated to get the vaccine.
“If you are a restaurant, a bar, a store, a public pool, a country club, a grocery, a funeral home, a wedding venue, a concert hall, a museum, if you put on festivals, if you are a distillery, this is what you have been waiting for —a clear number and a clear goal to hit,” said Beshear.
He encouraged the businesses to make sure all their staff get the shots.
How, I have to ask, do businesses “make sure all their staff get the shots”? The only obvious way is for businesses to require such as a condition of employment, and have the right to see their employees’ medical records!
Even with the easing of the restrictions, Beshear said, Kentuckians still will have to wear masks until there is more control of the virus. He also said he will address larger venues later.
So, even when the Reichsstatthalter’s ‘goals’ have been met, he still wants to exercise that visible sign of subservience.
As of today, Kentucky is about 900,000 short of reaching the goal of 2.5 million vaccinated. More than 1.55 million Kentuckians have received their “first shot of hope,” said the governor.
With the current supply of the vaccine, Beshear said Kentucky could reach the 2.5 million goal in 3½ weeks, but said it most likely will be between four and six weeks.
But wait: if 1.55 million Kentuckians have received their first shot, in a two-shot series, that still means that they aren’t fully vaccinated. According to The New York Times, while 36% of Kentuckians have received the first dose, only 24% are fully vaccinated. That would mean that roughly only one million eligible recipients have received both shots, and there’s no guarantee that, with our dishonest Governor, he won’t decide that we’ll need another month under restriction, until 2.5 million are fully vaccinated.
COVID-19 is serious, but far more serious is the assault on our constitutional rights and the sheeple allowing the government to control their lives. Freedom, once lost, is very difficult to regain, and far, far, far too many Kentuckians have silently allowed this authoritarian dictator to do whatever the Hell he pleases.
Franklin Circuit Judge and Authoritarian Enabler Phillip Shepherd. Photo: Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts.
Shepherd said the court “is mindful that the challenged legislation seeks to address a legitimate problem of effective legislative oversight of the governor’s emergency powers in this extraordinary public health crisis” but “is also mindful that the governor and the secretary (Health and Family Services Secretary Eric Friedlander) are faced with the enormous challenge of effectively responding to a world-wide pandemic that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Kentuckians and over 500,000 people in the United States.”
The judge said all parties in the case “are acting in good faith to address public policy challenges of the utmost importance” but “the governor has made a strong case that the legislation, in its current form, is likely to undermine or even cripple, the effectiveness of public health measures necessary to protect the lives and health of Kentuckians from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Translation: the Judge recognized the legislature’s authority to change the law, but didn’t think that the legislature’s actions were wise ones. Who knew that a judge had the authority to decide that a legitimately passed law was simply unwise?
One of Governor Beshear’s arguments was that the legislature might not approve extensions of his executive orders, which the held-in-abeyance Senate Bill 1 limited to 30 days without legislative approval. The legislature passed House Joint Resolution 77, passed to go along with Senate Bill 1, which granted the Governor extensions on some, but not all, of his executive orders.
Kentucky governor notches another court victory for his emergency COVID-19 orders
By Jack Brammer | April 8, 2021 | 9:26 AM EDT | Updated April 8, 2021 | 12:45 PM EDT
Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd has added another legislative measure to the temporary injunction he issued earlier this year to block laws that limit Gov. Andy Beshear’s powers to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and other emergencies.
The judge’s nine-page order handed down late Wednesday afternoon temporarily blocks House Joint Resolution 77. The move keeps Beshear’s COVID-19 restrictions in effect, including the mask mandate.
The resolution, sponsored by House Speaker David Osborne, was enacted by the legislature to implement Senate Bill 1, which would limit the governor’s emergency orders, such as one that requires Kentuckians to wear a face covering in public, to 30 days unless the legislature extends them. . . .
In blocking the resolution, Shepherd said, “In general, it appears that the General Assembly has ratified the governor’s actions related to economic relief for regulated businesses and professions but has attempted to impose a general termination of executive authority to impose public health restrictions (such as masking in public, social distancing, seating capacity or limitations on public gatherings.)“
“Whether HJR 77 represents a valid exercise of legislative authority or an unconstitutional usurpation of executive authority” is a legal issue that supports the issuance of a temporary injunction, Shepherd said.
The judge called Beshear’s existing executive orders and emergency regulations “proper responses to a public health crisis.”
“They should remain in full force and effect until the entry of a final judgment or until after notice and a hearing on any motion to terminate any such specific executive action,” he said.
That pretty much tells you how Judge Shepherd will rule; he thinks that the Governor’s orders were the proper responses.
Fortunately, our would be dictator isn’t having it all his way!
KY judge blocks Beshear’s COVID-19 orders at some restaurants and bars
By Jack Brammer | April 9, 2021 | 01:18 PM EDT | Updated April 9, 2021 | 4:00 PM EDT
A Kentucky judge has temporarily blocked the state from enforcing some of Gov. Andy Beshear’s executive COVID-19 orders against several restaurants and breweries.
The preliminary injunction issued Friday by Scott Circuit Judge Brian Privett runs counter to recent actions by Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd, which blocked the implementation of new laws that would have ended some of Beshear’s emergency restrictions against the coronavirus pandemic.
Oliver Dunford, an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation who represented the businesses, said the differing rulings “probably will expedite all this going to the Kentucky Supreme Court for a final court decision.”
“We are thrilled that Judge Privett issued the injunction, which prevents the governor from enforcing the restrictive orders against our clients,” said Dunford “The order recognizes that the governor is obligated to follow the laws, just like everyone else.”
Beshear spokeswoman Crystal Staley said late Friday afternoon that Privett’s ruling has been appealed to the Kentucky Court of Appeals.
Well, of course he has!
Judge Privett’s orders are narrow in scope, but by appealing them to the state Court of Appeals, this may well move the decisions out of Judge Shepherd’s court, where he has been slow-walking everything in what appears to be an effort to give Governor Beshear as much time as possible on his repugnant orders before a legal decision is reached.
“This action, at its most basic level, is simple,” said Privett in his order “The governor has two kinds of power: those given to him in the Constitution, and those given to him by the legislature under statute. The emergency powers of the governor at issue in this case are not inherent.”
The state constitution limits the General Assembly to a thirty-day session in odd-numbered years, and the legislature is done for the year, unless the Governor calls them back into a special session, which he will do about as soon as Hell freezes over, unless the state Supreme Court eventually upholds Senate Bill 1. We can expect no saving by the legislature now before next year.
But what really needs to happen is for the voters of the Commonwealth of Kentucky to vote out this wannabe dictator in the 2023 elections. He needs to be sent home, his tail between his legs, and a conservative Governor, one who respects our constitutional rights, elected to replace him.