Lead Stories

Politics
1:09 pm
Fri May 10, 2013

Mitch McConnell Demands White House Investigate IRS for Targeting Conservative Groups

Credit U.S. Senate

Update: White House spokesman Jay Carney says an inspector general is looking into the matter

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is calling on the Obama administration to conduct a government-wide probe in the wake of an admission by the Internal Revenue Service that it targeted conservative groups.

 

The IRS apologized on Friday for inappropriately flagging conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews.

Lerner said the practice, initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati, was wrong and she apologized while speaking at a conference in Washington.

McConnell says the admission is proof that his earlier concerns were well founded, adding the White House needs to review the agency's actions.

"Now more than ever we need to send a clear message to the Obama administration that the First Amendment is non-negotiable, and that apologies after an election year are not an sufficient response to what we now know took place at the IRS," he says. "This kind of political thuggery has absolutely no place in our politics."

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Environment
12:45 pm
Fri May 10, 2013

College Divestment Campaigns Creating Passionate Environmentalists

Originally published on Fri May 10, 2013 3:16 am

At about 300 colleges across the country, young activists worried about climate change are borrowing a strategy that students successfully used in decades past. In the 1980s, students enraged about South Africa's racist Apartheid regime got their schools to drop stocks in companies that did business with that government. In the 1990s students pressured their schools to divest in Big Tobacco.

This time, the student activists are targeting a mainstay of the economy: large oil and coal companies.

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Local News
12:09 pm
Fri May 10, 2013

Kentucky Judge Says Cabinet For Health And Family Services Must Explain Record Redaction

A judge has ordered Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services to explain why it refuses to release certain information in child death and near death records, which has been a long-fought battle between the Cabinet and the media.

Since 2011 the Courier Journal and the Lexington Herald Leader have been in court with the Cabinet over two years worth of child abuse records.

“From the beginning they have felt the public was not entitled to anything. They continue to lose that fight," says attorney Jon Fleischaker who represents the media in the case.

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Arts and Humanities
11:58 am
Fri May 10, 2013

The Great Louisville Gatsby Mystery: Where Is Daisy's House?

When I moved to Louisville as a freshman English major, one of the first bits of trivia I learned about my new city was that Daisy’s house from “The Great Gatsby” was right down the street.

Daisy Buchanan, the It Girl at the heart of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, was socialite Daisy Fay when poor soldier Jay Gatsby courted her during a brief stint at Louisville’s Camp Taylor, where Gatsby – like the author himself – trained during the first World War.

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The Two-Way
10:54 am
Fri May 10, 2013

Jacob & Sophia Rule Among Baby Names, But Liz & Liam Are Hot

Originally published on Mon May 13, 2013 8:09 am

If this was a contest, some might call for the name Jacob to be retired after so many wins.

According to the Social Security Administration:

"Jacob and Sophia are repeat champions as America's most popular baby names for 2012. This is the fourteenth year in a row Jacob tops the list for boys and the second year for Sophia."

Rounding out the top 10 lists:

Girls / Boys

2. Emma / Mason

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Commentary
7:00 am
Fri May 10, 2013

How-To Festival Preview: A Life By The Books

Credit Shutterstock.com

For more than 40  years, I’ve been reading books professionally, as a frequent critic and later as book editor of the state’s largest newspaper. In those roles, I have had a ringside seat to observe some of the best books to be published in the last half of the 20th century—as well as a lot of the less-than-great books during that period. When you comb through thousands of books every year, you have a challenge. What, if any, of these shall I read? How will I find the time?

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The Salt
6:45 am
Fri May 10, 2013

Big Ag Agrees to Conserve Cropland, But At What Cost?

Credit Robert Willett / MCT /Landov
Peanut plants grow on a Halifax, N.C., farm that received federal subsidies in 2011.

Originally published on Thu May 9, 2013 5:11 pm

Taxpayers help subsidize crop insurance premiums for farmers to the tune of about $9 billion dollars, a figure that's growing each year. These policies protect farmers from major losses, and help support their income even if there's no loss of crops.

And in return? Well, environmentalists argue that farmers who receive this financial support should be required to be good stewards of the land.

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Commentary
6:43 am
Fri May 10, 2013

On 'Hicksploitation' And Other White Stereotypes Seen On TV

Credit A&E
Some of the cast members of the reality show Duck Dynasty find themselves handcuffed to one another.

Originally published on Fri May 10, 2013 8:10 am

On cable TV, there's a whole truckload of reality shows that make fun of working-class, white Southern culture. They are some of the most popular and talked about new shows, too, such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty.

MTV tried cashing in on the redneck TV trend with its own hyped-up platform for young Southern kids behaving badly, Buckwild. It played like a Southern-fried version of Jersey Shore. Its stars were a dimwitted crew of young people in West Virginia drinking hard and riding pickup trucks through ditches filled with mud.

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Arts and Humanities
6:45 pm
Thu May 9, 2013

Listen | 'The Great Gatsby,' F. Scott Fitzgerald and Louisville

F. Scott Fitzgerald in Louisville in 1918.

On the eve of the release of a new Great Gatsby film, WFPL's Jonathan Bastian hosted a news special on the film looking at the city's role in the great novel. Veteran Louisville journalist Keith Runyon discussed what Louisville would have been like when F. Scott Fitzgerald was in town and WFPL arts reporter Erin Keane went in search of a Louisville house connected to the novel. Later, Keane, Jonathan and The Courier-Journal's Matt Frassica discussed more about the novel.

Listen below:

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