LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky man has been arrested and charged with threatening to kill the state’s governor, first lady and their family in a series of Facebook posting, federal authorities said Friday.
Federal agents said they also believe 22-year-old William Collin Bordt had posted online threats against the former director of the South Carolina Republican Party, Todd Kincannon, and another person who chairs an election commission in Simpsonville, S.C.
A criminal complaint filed in federal court in Lexington states that Kentucky State Police and federal agents arrested Bordt on Wednesday and charged the Lexington man with using interstate communications to make threats. A federal magistrate judge ordered Bordt released from custody on Friday, but restricted his travel to the eastern half of Kentucky and barred him from going to the state capitol, Frankfort.
Bordt’s attorney, Patrick Nash of Lexington, was out of the office and did not immediately return a call seeking comment Friday.
A review of Bordt’s Facebook profile listed in the complaint showed several posts, but no threats against any public officials. An email sent to the address listed in a criminal complaint was not immediately returned.
A spokeswoman for Beshear, a Democrat in his second term as Kentucky governor, declined immediate comment Friday.
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear on Friday asked a federal judge to delay the effective date of his ruling allowing state recognition of same-sex marriages while he appeals the case.
Private attorneys representing Beshear filed the request Friday afternoon, about 24 hours after they were hired to take the case.
U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn overturned parts of Kentucky’s same-sex marriage ban and set an effective date for his ruling of March 20. If Heyburn’s ruling stands, the state will have to start allowing same-sex couples to change their names on official identifications and documents and obtain any other benefits of a married couple in Kentucky.
Attorney Leigh Gross Latherow wrote in a motion that halting implementation of Heyburn’s decision would allow appeals courts and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court to sort out what the law is. Latherow said the laws surrounding the issues in the suit are unsettled and not definitively established.
“Requiring administrative agencies to implement these rules and granting marital status recognition to same-sex couples, only to be invalidated upon reversal by the Court of Appeal will cause chaos and irreparable and real harm to all concerned, including the prevailing parties,” Latherow said. “The only way to eliminate the risk of this irreparable harm is to maintain the status quo.”
Latherow wrote that if Heyburn did not rule by Tuesday, an appeal would be filed with the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
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FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Kentucky’s harsh winter has state lawmakers scrambling to offer relief to school districts faced with making up lost instructional time that added up to weeks in some areas due to long bouts with snow and ice.
No one wants students sitting in classes during summer, but a final version to prevent that is still being worked out.
The Kentucky House weighed in on the issue Friday, passing a bill aimed at allowing districts to waive up to 10 missed instructional days this academic year. The bipartisan-backed measure calls on state Education Commissioner Terry Holliday to approve such requests from districts.
House members voted 82-8 to send the bill to the Senate, which is working on its own version.
Senate President Robert Stivers said Friday that waiving a set number of days statewide seems inappropriate.
“We’re trying to figure out some way to make sure that there is an application that best suits the majority of the districts, but primarily looking at these kids getting educational time,” Stivers told reporters.
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LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its 300,000 members pledged Friday to spend more money on U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s re-election than on any other race in America.
“Whatever it takes,” Rob Engstrom, the chamber’s national political director, told reporters shortly after a news conference in Lexington announcing the chamber’s official endorsement.
Engstrom declined to say how much money the chamber planned to pour on the Senate minority leader, but the group has already spent more than half a million dollars on ads for McConnell dating to last summer, according to campaign finance records.
McConnell could use the help. He is facing well-funded opposition in May’s Republican primary from Matt Bevin. Groups like FreedomWorks and the Senate Conservatives Fund — founded by former Republican U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint in South Carolina and now run by one of his former lieutenants — has spent hundreds of thousands to support Bevin or oppose McConnell, according to campaign finance records.
Speaking at Whayne Supply in Lexington — owned by McConnell donor Monty Boyd — McConnell never mentioned Bevin. Instead, he called his Democratic challenger — Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes — a “new face of the status quo.”
“She is the new face of the same current leader of the Senate who says coal makes him sick,” McConnell said.
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