Kentucky: Ernie Fletcher

By John Cheves - jcheves@herald-leader.com Last September, a federal grand jury indicted road contractor Leonard Lawson for allegedly scheming to rig bids on contracts at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet worth $130 million. Since that day, the cabinet has paid $68.3 million to seven road-building or asphalt companies in which Lawson or his family currently hold positions, according to data from the state treasurer and secretary of state's offices. Most of the companies share a headquarters on Atkinson Avenue in Lexington. Lawson's companies have dominated road building in Eastern Kentucky for decades as he acquired political clout through heavy campaign donations, friendships and private business deals with elected officials.

Three years ago, in 2006, Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher's "Prayer Breakfast" was an orgy of sectarian bigotry, a greasy "fuck you" to everyone who didn't share the speakers' narrow conservative Southern Baptism, an object lesson in why combining religion and government is history's worst idea.

This year, on the same day that invitations to Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear's "Prayer Breakfast" landed in state employees' email inboxes, The Economist brings us the latest lesson from President Obama, this one on how to do a "Prayer Breakfast" right, if you must do one at all.

I think the final proof that Barack Obama plans once and for all to elevate respect for Americans who don't practice a religion came at this morning's National Prayer Breakfast:
There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same.

You have to go back three years to January of 2006 when first we heard that Senator Mitch McConnell was sending signals from the dugout that Governor Ernie Fletcher must go. As the weeks went by, the signals became crystal...

The office of Governor Steve Beshear (D-Lexington) released a statement today saying the current administration would cooperate with a federal investigation into potential illegalities in the state's transportation department during his predecessor's tenure.