By Jove, I think she's got it!

Lexington Herald Leader reporter Beth Musgrave writes in this morning's paper:

"Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry issued a statement after the indictments were released, saying the city had made several changes to ensure the safety of the inmates and the officers there since he came into office in January 2007.

But in March -- just three months ago -- Newberry said in a deposition that he had not investigated problems at the jail nor had he asked for any changes to be made there.

Newberry said he knew of no changes to any of the procedures since he took office and had not contacted the FBI and offered the city's assistance -- despite the fact that he knew officers were testifying before a grand jury in Covington. The FBI confirmed that it was investigating allegations of civil rights abuses at the jail in September 2006 after it conducted a search of the Old Frankfort Pike facility.

Newberry, in a statement released to the Herald-Leader Friday, said he has learned more about the situation since his deposition."

There is much, much more coming on this story.

Stop Public Financing of Meth Labs Act of 2009

Rep. Melvin Henley sponsored one of two twin bills to cut welfare benefits for drug abusers in 2008.

He said today he is reworking the bill for 2009. Constitutional issues with the original bill would be addressed by requiring a show of probable cause before attempting to strip away public assistance. Rep. Henley said he wanted to set up a pilot project someplace in the state so policymakers could see what happens.

"There is not enough money to support these people who want to take what we give them and spend it on drugs," Henley said.

Rep. Lonnie Napier, the sponsor of the other twin bill, was not immediately available for comment. Napier's bill had thirty co-sponsors in the House.

Monday Admin meeting at FCDC will be fun

Courthouse sources said Lexington Herald Leader reporter Beth Musgrave was in Nicholasville this past week making copies of documents related to the Lexington jail prisoner abuse scandal at the Fayette County Detention Center.

The whistleblower's civil lawsuit against the city was filed in Jessamine County.

With the first public criminal court hearing on all this insanity coming Monday and the possibility of newspaper story tomorrow, the heat is slowly turning up on all the right people (here and here).

Starting to jump ship like a bunch of rats

There is intense speculation surrounding the Fayette County Detention Center tonight that Administrative Officer Senior Don Leach is trying to work out a deal to avoid losing his pension by flipping on some of his buddies regarding the ongoing inmate abuse scandal and providing critical evidence for an investigation into financial improprieties at the facility.

Don't be surprised to see the next wave of indictments hit Lexington jail employees as soon as this next week. (Memo to staff: if you have anything that might be of value to any kind of investigation out there, time is running out.)

Kentucky has third worst debt ratio in America

Official statistics compiled by a Michigan think tank researcher show Kentucky's state and local government debt gobbling up 22.18% of gross domestic product, worse than every state but Massachusetts and New York.

As revenues and and economic activity are at an all-time high, one might think it is about time to get our spending under control.

Newberry: Tim Bennett is my fall guy

This is a picture of Sgt. Hughes asking Mayor Jim Newberry about the whistleblower lawsuit against the city filed by Cpl. John Vest.

Newberry's response? "I guess I'm going to have to get to know John Vest a lot better," he said.

In sworn testimony, Newberry appeared to blame Public Safety Commissioner Tim Bennett for the cover up of illegal activities at the jail.

"Tim Bennett is the Public Safety Commissioner, who is responsible for the jail. And he is my primary source of information about the jail," Newberry said.

According to available court records, Bennett has not yet testified publicly. That should be an interesting conversation.

Is Newberry a mayor or just a money-grubber?

When it comes to dealing with city problems, Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry is a hard man to get involved in the process beyond, it seems, just sitting back and collecting attorney's fees.

Despite multiple lawsuits representing potentially millions of dollars in judgements against Lexington taxpayers, Newberry was extraordinarily incurious about what was happening at the scandal-plagued Fayette County Detention Center. In many of the lawsuits, the city is represented by Newberry's law firm Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs.

Newberry stated in a sworn deposition taken in Lexington on March 13 that despite an active FBI investigation, multiple phone conversations he had with federal whistleblower John Vest, and multiple media reports to the contrary he said he "had no reason to believe anything inappropriate was going on there."

One week ago, five people were indicted on multiple counts related to their actions in the Lexington facility. Four of the five are still employed there and the other was transferred out to work in another part of city government.

Further, Newberry said he didn't have any problems with jail administration interrogating staff members upon their return from testifying to the grand jury, but that he didn't think that was happening either.

In an interesting exchange during his deposition, Newberry stated that he had done no investigation of the jail and had no plans to do any investigation. Attorney William Jacobs then asked him if his only plan of action was to defend the lawsuits through his attorneys.

Newberry answered "yes."

Staying on the attack against official fraud

The Bluegrass Institute keeps hammering away at the Kentucky Department of Education's boondoggle that keeps Kentuckians stupid and bureaucrats raking in the dough.

The official response from the boondogglers is total silence, but several of them are supposed to be meeting in Frankfort starting in July for a task force to "study" the CATS assessment program. But don't expect much. They are so far in to the CATS mythology that if word really got out how rotten the whole thing is the stampede to get rid of the all the cheaters with their fancy titles and taxpayer-provided cars would be overwhelming.

Lex. Mayor Newberry: it depends on what you mean by do I know corrections officers

Sworn testimony by Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry in the Fayette County Detention Center indicates he is far more incompetent than was previously known.

The following is from a deposition conducted by attorney William Jacobs of Lexington:

Jacobs: So has anybody, anybody, Ted Bennett or anybody else, assured you or reassured you that the Detention Center is being operated according to law, safely, following the constitutional law and all that? Has anybody told you that? Not those exact words, but you know what I am asking you.

Newberry: I don't know that I've heard those exact words, but I have had no reason to believe that things were being done otherwise. I have confidence in Mr. Bennett's ability. I have confidence in Mr. Bishop's ability. And I'm impressed with the professionalism of the other jail personnel, with whom I've had occasion to work with from time to time. So I don't have any reason to believe that it's being operated in less than an appropriate fashion.

Jacobs: Is it fair to say that you have that opinion because you haven't asked anybody?

Newberry: I think I just told you why I have that opinion.

Jacobs: Because they're good workers out there you have confidence in them?

Newberry: Yes.

Jacobs: Okay. How many corrections officers do you know?

Newberry: I don't know... I guess it depends on what you mean by do I know corrections officers.

This is going to be more fun than I thought it was going to be.

If Jed Clampett listened to John Yarmuth...

He would still be out on the farm shooting holes in the ground and wishing that black stuff tasted better.

Giving credit where credit is due

Hey, did you hear? In honor of Gov. Steve Beshear, House Speaker Jody Richards, and Senate President David Williams coming back into Frankfort next week to fix the public employee fringe benefits disaster, the Bluegrass Institute is suggesting a day of celebration worthy of their fine efforts.

Blogger loses court case and you do, too

Former Kentucky blogger/media darling Mark Nickolas didn't mention the settlement of his blog blocking lawsuit on his new blog. After reading the settlement agreement, the reason for this becomes clear.

He lost the case, spin from a misleading press release notwithstanding.

From the settlement agreement:

"3. The Commonwealth Office of Technology employs software to filter internet
usage on state-owned computers. This software provides users the ability to block internet site categories predefined by the vendor. As part of its internet filtering policy, the previous named defendants chose to block several categories, one of which included “newsgroups/blogs.”
“Newsgroups/blogs” are defined by the vendor as containing “Web sites that enable the sharing of information such as on a bulletin board. Includes Web logs (‘blogs’) and guest book servers as well.”
4. Mr. Nickolas’s websites, bluegrassreport.org and bluegrassreport.com, are
categorized as “newsgroups/blogs” and therefore users of state computers were blocked from gaining access to them."

And you will be glad to see that the pro bono legal work provided by Ralph Nader cost the taxpayers of Kentucky $10,000.

A heads up on Fayette jail coverage

Tomorrow I will report on sworn testimony by Lexington's former Mayor Teresa Isaac and Mayor Jim Newberry in the ongoing Fayette jail scandals.

The Bluegrass Institute lives!

Two weeks after a massive hacker attack nearly destroyed the online presence of Kentucky's free market think tank, the Bluegrass Institute and Bluegrass Policy Blog are available again on the internet.

While a fairly expensive fix got the sites back up, a much larger project is underway to secure donor funding to take the organization's websites to the next level. This is in addition to generating much larger exposure for public policy solutions by expanding the efforts of the Institute in print and broadcast media.

The Institute's legislative tracking site, Kentucky Votes, was unaffected by the attack but it will also be part of the upcoming improvements that will be rolled out this summer.

By the way, if you wish to be kept updated with no nonsense daily reports on the activity of next week's special session, go to Kentucky Votes and sign up for a free account. You will get email reports first thing each morning on the prior day's legislative activity and which will keep you updated through the rest of the year as pre-filed bills are posted for the 2009 General Assembly.

Let them eat cicadas

We've heard about how bad things are getting in the newspaper business, but you probably had no idea the evil capitalists who run the Winchester Sun were making their employees eat cicadas:

Yarmuth to burn Northup without carbon capture

The Yarmuth for Congress campaign will put out a news release this afternoon attacking Anne Northup for urging Congress to allow for expanded oil exploration to meet increased demand.

The focus of the attack is the Congressional Democratic talking point that oil companies aren't drilling all their leased land now, so we should instead fine them for the leases that aren't being used. Yarmuth supports doing this.

That would be great if finding oil was as easy as dreaming up ways to steal money through taxes and fines from people who work for it.

Make no mistake, the people who are fighting against expanding oil exploration in this country will be tickled pink when they destroy domestic oil exploration completely and we further increase gas prices and our dependency on foreign nations. Yarmuth won't do it, but it would be great if he thought through his words and deeds a little before flaming Northup.

Someone tell moveon.org there is no draft

Here is a very well done, emotional, and totally misleading ad done by the folks at moveon.org:

Are you mad yet?

By now you have probably heard about Kentucky Education Commissioner Jon Draud getting caught lying about the $13,000 in extras he ordered for his taxpayer-provided car.

You may wonder why he isn't crying too hard about paying back that money after he got caught. Well, I'll tell you why.

On July 1, when HB 470 goes into effect, Draud will be laughing all the way to the bank with 40,000 little reasons not to care that you caught him in the smaller heist, with the entire legislature and Gov. Steve Beshear aiding and abetting, of course.

Purple arraignment falls next Monday

Indicted Fayette County Detention Center employees Anthony Estep, Kristine Lafoe, Clarence McCoy, John McQueen, and former employee Scott Tyree will be arraigned next Monday, June 23, at 9:30 am in US District Court in Lexington, according to court records.

It will be interesting to see how much bail Judge James Todd requires, who can't make bail, and where they might be housed before trial.

Also can't help wondering who is up next. The FBI confirmed that investigation of the inmate abuse scandal continues.

Fayette jail whistleblower testifies under oath

In written court documents from his civil suit Fayette jail whistleblower John Vest (plaintiff) shed light on where the scandal is going next.

Some goodies --

I call this one "naming names."

"Plaintiff has identified the following potential witnesses to testify at the trial of this matter: Teresa Isaac, Jim Newberry, Rebecca Langston, Tim Bennett, Ashley Case, Ron Bishop, James Kammer, Capt. Brian Proffitt, Debbie Shouse, Capt. Suzanne Whittlesey, Lt. Kristine Lafoe, Sgt. Anthony Estep, Sgt. John McQueen, Lt. Shawn Campbell, Tonya Roberts, Clarence McCoy, Scott Tyree, John Steward, Phillip Chumbley, Kenneth Isaac."

Don't forget that the federal investigation is not over:

"Plaintiff has been and still is cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice with respect to a criminal investigation into civil rights violations at the LFUCG Detention Center."

And if you are wondering what role former Lexington Mayor Teresa Isaac plays in all this:

"Isaac published to the media that the allegations of Vest were unfounded."

This is a very important point. Isaac can lie to the media about a lot of things, but when she tells the media falsely that someone else has lied to federal investigators, well that is a horse of a different color.

The Lexington Herald Leader reported September 29, 2006:

"We're absolutely convinced that the investigation will show there's no violations," Isaac said yesterday.
There have not been any incidents of excessive force at the jail, Isaac said. "I've reviewed the same records they've reviewed, there's absolutely nothing in there that would amount to a civil rights violation and I've been a civil rights attorney for 25years so I think I would know."

Isaac made her implausible assessment a day after federal agents removed hundreds of boxes of documents from the facility.

"Isaac's defamatory statements were made intentionally, with malice, with utter disregard for the truth, and made though she knew that her statements in this regard were false because she could not have reviewed all of the evidence seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Department of Justice at the time of her statements."

And here is where it starts getting fun:

"... in a malicious attempt to discredit the Plaintiff, Defendants Isaac and Bishop falsely reported publicly that over the past three years, the Plaintiff had been guilty of the same type of excessive force violations that he had reported to the FBI."