Bill Straub: The Grim Reaper holds fast, then blames the other side; count the bills just sitting on his desk
The best way to describe the legislative acumen of Senate Republican Leader Mitch “Root-‘n-Branch’’ McConnell is to resurrect the three-card monte guys that used to set up outside the Port Authority Building in Manhattan to scam the Jersey guys that constantly poured out on to Eighth Avenue.
These days, McConnell, of Moscow, by way of Louisville, is utilizing his sleight-of-hand skills to convince...
Bill Straub: A great political enigma of our times is why evangelicals continue to be devoted to Trump?
It has developed over the past few years into one of the great political enigmas: Why have evangelicals, those Bible-quoting, sin-hating, Sunday-go-to-meeting folks who are the quintessential salts of the earth, so enthusiastically embracing President Donald J. Trump, a lying, cheating, misogynistic four-flusher who spews insults and profanity as often as evangelicals shout “amen’’ and seems...
Bill Straub: Lone holdout in vote in U.S. House to support Hong Kong freedom fighters was — Massie
It was Aesop who first noted that a man is known by the company he keeps. With that in mind, Rep. Thomas Massie, aka Wonder Boy, might want to reconsider cozying up to his new BFFs, notorious international tormentors Russia and China, who aren’t exactly known for having the best interests of the United States in mind.
Massie, R-SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, has long looked at Russia with admiring...
Bill Straub: Where is the line drawn on reprehensible conduct? After Sondland testimony, where is honor?
It’s kind of like the old joke, “Well, besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
For many Republicans, and every single Trumpster, it would seem, the question becomes, “Well, besides the obvious evidence that the president committed impeachable acts, made a shambles of the nation’s foreign policy as a result and sought to coerce the president of Ukraine into investigating...
Bill Straub: Sen. Rand Paul cuddles up to Trumpism using the oldest, lamest excuse — everybody does it
Sen. Rand Paul appears to be joining other members of the flock in an exodus from the once-grand, old Republican Party and cuddling up to a new political sect – Trumpism.
Paul, R-Bowling Green, who at one time called the object of his devotion “a delusional narcissist’’ and compared him to Joseph Goebbels, is doing everything except wash the feet of President Donald J. Trump, aka President...
Bill Straub: Looks like Bevin managed to step on his own tail, but don’t count Mitch McConnell out yet
It was during the Republican National Convention in Houston in 1992 and renowned columnist Molly Ivins was talking about Clayton Williams, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Texas who, despite all odds, lost to Democrat Ann Richards as a result of highly erratic behavior and questionable comments, like publicly recounting various adventures in a Mexican cathouse.
Ivins allowed that the Williams...
Letter to the editor: Bill Butler objects to Bill Straub’s ‘low blow’ on segregation related to Bevin, Cameron
I strongly object to Bill Straub’s column today in the NKY Tribune and I suppose other Kentucky media outlets. To paint Cameron and Bevin in the context of George Wallace the former segregationist is a low blow at best, and in the poorest of taste, cheap. Is it an indication of how badly he wants to affect the election in Kentucky next Tuesday that he would stoop to such levels as to suggest if not...
Bill Straub: Ah, the memories of George Wallace’s yesteryear revisit KY in Bevin, Cameron campaign
Return with us now, for a moment, to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when Alabama Gov. George Corley Wallace, whose face, a witness once observed, resembled a clenched fist, stood before the state capital in Montgomery to declare “in this very heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland’’ — “segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.”
It was Jan. 14,...
Bill Straub: Argue the facts when you have them; when you don’t, pound the table. And so they do
There’s an old bromide often circulated among lawyers in just about any courthouse you might happen upon in any part of these United States: When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, pound the table.
Congressional Republicans, also known as white guys in suits, are industriously pounding the table these days in regard to the hearings being conducted that might...
Bill Straub: McConnell dismisses rules of fair play, obstructs progress, to further his own agenda
WASHINGTON – The United States Senate has been converted into a cemetery during the 116th Congress and it should come as a surprise to no one that the primary grave digger is one Addison Mitchell McConnell.
Much of what the House has sought to accomplish this year has been relegated to the legislative mausoleum controlled by our own Senate Republican Leader Mitch “Root-’n-Branch’’ McConnell,...
Bill Straub: Where oh where have all the statesmen gone, and look what’s left? Then there’s Tom Loftus
Some years back, Kentucky had a gentleman serving in the Senate named John Sherman Cooper, from Pulaski County, who regularly voted against the positions endorsed by his own political party, worked diligently with members of the opposing party — befriending one who ultimately would become president — and pulled out all the stops to end the Vietnam War, much to the consternation of a president...
Bill Straub: President Trump hides in plain sight, while Mitch McConnell provides the cover he needs
WASHINGTON – It was left to Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott and a couple of senior members of the upper chamber to make the short trip down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House in August 1974 to tell the second-most corrupt president in the nation’s history – Richard Nixon – that the jig was up.
Scott, a pipe-smoking, mustachioed, moderate from Pennsylvania, didn’t exactly blurt out...
Bill Straub: Bevin has high-flying aspirations; loves taxpayer-owned airplane, fending off immigrants
Give Gov. Matt Bevin credit. His highfalutin aspirations are frantically taking him from local embarrassment to national laughingstock.
Say what you will, but the man we lovingly call St. Matt the Divine of New Hampshire continues to display grand ambitions. And there appears to be no bottom to the depths he’s willing to plunge to achieve whatever nasty goal he sets.
St. Matt’s inanity consists...
Bill Straub: Standing ready to protect Constitution, John Yarmuth stands out in congressional delegation
Rep. John Yarmuth has to be one of the loneliest guys in the nation’s capital.
Since he was elected to represent the Third Congressional District, which includes the city of Louisville, in 2006, Yarmuth has served much of his tenure as the lone Democrat in the sea of red that constitutes Kentucky’s congressional delegation.
When former Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Versailles, lost his re-election bid...
Bill Straub: Deja vu all over again — gun massacres, promise of controls, then nothing; repeat rapid fire
All right, let’s break this one down to its component parts.
On the morning of Aug. 3, a gunman, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, shot and killed 22 people and injured 24 others in El Paso, TX. About 13 hours later, in Dayton, OH, a second gunman shot and killed 10 people and injured 17 others.
The incidents brought to 251 the number of mass shootings that have occurred in the United States of America...
