Interstate 66 Defeated?

The Courier-Journal is reporting that the controversial I-66 project may finally be dead.

I-66, if you hadn't heard, is a proposed new interstate that would ruin much of the Daniel Boone National Forest and other nature territories in Southern and Eastern Kentucky. The project has long since been given up on by everyone but Gov. Steve Beshear and Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY) who continue to push for the destructive and unnecessary development. Rogers has, according to his own website, "directed $96 million in targeted federal funding for development of I-66."

According to Elana Schor in the DC Streetsblog:

But even if I-66 lurched back to life in the coming months, the four-land highway still would face stiff challenges from environmental groups. The Kentucky Resources Council is one such local opponent, having taken on the state government in 2007 for attempting to exempt I-66 from an existing river-protection law.

As conceived, I-66 also would cut through hundreds of acres of the Daniel Boone National Forest, raising the prospect of significant environmental degradation in the area. (Incidentally, Kentuckian explorer Boone was the original namesake of the controversial road, but Rogers later took over that role.)

Steve Nunn Arrested in Graveyard

Back in March, a judge ordered Kentucky Republican politician Steve Nunn to have no contact for a year with his ex-fiance Amanda Ross, (division director for the Kentucky Department of Insurance). The restraining order was placed because of a domestic-violence charge against Nunn in February, in which it was alleged Nunn punched Ross in the face and held her arms while slamming her against a wall. Nunn also smashed a lamp and threw a cup of bourbon at her.

In August, Nunn was in trouble again. Ross asked a family court judge to hold Nunn in contempt of court over embarrassing photos of her. The judge required Nunn to "return to Ross all photographs of her and to take steps to destroy photos outside of his possession but provided by him to a third party".

On Friday, September 11, approximately 6:30am, Amanda Ross was found shot to death in the parking lot of her condo at 541 W. Short Street, Lexington.

Nunn, being the logical first suspect, became the subject of a manhunt. He turned up three hours later, when Barren County Sheriff Chris Eaton found him disoriented in Horse Cave's Cosby Church Cemetery, where his parents are buried. He had slashed his own wrists and was bleeding profusely. He also had a handgun and stated to Eaton that he'd tried but failed to shoot himself. (Some news reports are contradicting this and saying he did indeed have a gunshot wound.) At this writing, it has not yet been determined if the gun is the same one that was used to shoot Amanda Ross, and currently no murder charge has been filed against Nunn.


The son of former Governor Louie B. Nunn, Steve Nunn ran unsuccessfully for Governor in 2003. Oddly, he was chosen by the allegedly Democratic Governor Steve Beshear for the post of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services' Deputy Secretary. Nunn was forced to resign after the domestic violence/stalking charges.

Much of Kentucky Still Without Power

Apparently I spoke too soon when I said the current ice storm wasn't quite as bad as the one in 2003. According to the New York Times:

Much of Kentucky remained blanketed in ice Friday as more than 600,000 homes and businesses were still without power after being hit this week by the worst winter storm in memory. Utility officials warned it might take two weeks before all electricity was restored.

Emergency officials in three of the hardest-hit cities — Paducah, Owensboro and Benton — said that utility workers were doing everything they could, but that there simply were too many felled lines, especially in remote areas of the state, to move any faster.

Although the storm left more than 1.2 million people without power as it stretched from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania last Saturday, Kentucky was hit hard Tuesday night and into Wednesday, causing the largest power failure in state history.

And in Time Magazine:

Life has come to a standstill in Kentucky, and it's difficult to imagine just who in the Bluegrass State had the more miserable Super Bowl weekend. For those half-million residents who were still without power Saturday night (and 200,000 who were also reported to be without water), this past weekend involved shuttling between one of the estimated 172 emergency shelters that have been operating across the state since Wednesday.

As for state officials, the weekend involved a rapid reassessment of just how dire the situation had become. Speaking out the day after some local municipalities decried a lack of federal or state emergency relief, Gov. Steve Beshear described the fallout from last week's ice storm as the state's largest-ever natural disaster. He then activated every last member of Kentucky's National Guard, dispatching all 4,600 Guardsman to assist with the statewide crisis.

Most reports of the chaos have focused solely on the numbers: 700,000 Kentuckians thrown into the dark last Tuesday, nearly 200,000 of those concentrated in Louisville alone, with more than a dozen deaths now being investigated.

(First photo: Paducah, KY, swiped from the New York Times. Second photo, Spottsville, KY, swiped from Time.)

Court rejects Kentucky's attempt to seize web domains

From Online Casino Reports:

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear will appeal a court ruling that stops the state seizing domain names used by Internet gambling sites.

In a 2-1 ruling last Tuesday, the Kentucky Court of Appeals said the state does not have the jurisdiction to seize online casinos' Internet domain names in an effort to keep them from operating in the state. The ruling also said a Franklin Circuit Court judge cannot hold further hearings on the issue.

141 domains had been shortlisted for seizure, including two bingo sites, the hugely popular poker room, Poker Stars, and some major sports betting sites were also slated to be targeted under the move.

Poker advocates welcomed the Court of Appeals' ruling, with Poker Players Alliance Executive Director John Pappas calling it "a tremendous victory for Internet freedom and the rights of Kentucky residents who enjoy playing online poker."

"The Court of Appeals has agreed with the PPA's position that Judge Wingate did not have jurisdiction to issue the order that he entered against these domains and that Secretary Brown had no legitimate right to deprive the citizens of Kentucky of the legal right to play poker online."

However, Kentucky's Secretary of Justice and Public Safety, J. Michael Brown, said that the state would continue to fight the ruling.

As previously reported here and here, this isn't a political blog nor do political matters interest me in the least. I don't really like online gambling, because I think it's strictly for fools. (But then again, I think the same thing about American Idol, and it's still a free country.)

What qualifies this whole issue for Unusual Kentucky is not to take a position in support of online gambling, nor to incite partisan arguments from Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. It's to observe Beshear and Wingate's utter cluelessness about how the internet works, which they are continuing to take to embarrassing extremes. The hypocrisy is further compounded by Beshear's own efforts to bring brick-and-mortar casinos to Kentucky.

It's making Kentucky look naive, stupid, and greedy in the eyes of the rest of the world, and speaking as one of the staunchest defenders of the integrity and value of our fair state, I for one take great offense to it.

Casino industry calls for Kentucky boycott

As previously reported here, Governor Steve Beshear is spearheading a drive to confiscate internet domain names from gambling websites (even ones in other countries) because it is claimed they violate Kentucky law.

This idea, to anyone who has even the most basic clue how the internet works, is barking mad. A Kentucky judge cannot take over a Costa Rican website for violating Kentucky gambling laws any more than an Iranian judge can hijack an American swimsuit site for violating Iranian modesty laws.

Predictably enough, people are not taking this lying down and are now unfortunately calling for a boycott of Kentucky products, especially relating to the racing industry. Needless to say, we at Unusual Kentucky do not support such a boycott, but I can certainly see why a lot of people are ticked off at our Governor right now. I saw this rant today on Online Casino Advisory site:

"We call upon our friends and competitors in the casino news industry to help us reach the public with this call to boycott. If the Poker Players Alliance can get its members to refuse Kentucky products, especially gambling ones, that will send a message to Beshear. If the PPA can get protesters to carry signs in front of Churchill Downs, that would be a public display of our united anger.

If you are a resident of Kentucky, buy your lottery tickets across state borders, or online from another state. If you attend Kentucky tracks, drive to Indiana or other states featuring full racinos. If you live near the state border, buy groceries and cigarettes outside Kentucky."

I don't wish to see our state's economy damaged or hampered in any way, and I call upon Gov. Beshear to please get help and seek the counsel of experts who understand Internet law. This insane scheme to censor websites and confiscate their domain names is doomed to fail, but in the meantime it's obviously going to hurt Kentucky's economy, which we especially don't need at this time when the nation's economy is at an all time low. I also call upon the Democratic Party of Kentucky to quietly take Mr. Beshear aside and attempt to talk some sense into him, before his massive mistake takes the entire party down.

Kentucky vs. the Internet

We've reported on some truly weird Kentucky laws in the past, but this new court ruling from Frankfort has to take the proverbial cake. In case you haven't heard, Governor Steve Beshear has proclaimed, as if by royal fiat, that the state of Kentucky has the right to confiscate the domain names to online gambling sites (even ones in other countries) that, in his view, violate Kentucky anti-gambling laws.

Sounds insane? Sounds illegal? Yes, indeed. And yet Beshear's view is also held, coincidentally enough, by a certain Judge Thomas Wingate in Frankfort. Judge Wingate has ordered owners of 141 online gambling domain names to appear at a court hearing on November 17. And then they have to demonstrate that they're blocking traffic from residents in Kentucky - which of course, they're not. If the sites don't appear or don't comply with the ruling, the rights to their domain names will be forfeited to the state.

Experts, however, take an extremely dim view of Beshear and Wingate's confused idea of how the internet works. The professional Poker organization GPSTS called it "bizarre, far-reaching, and unpleasant", and iMega (Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association), which is an organization championing internet growth and innovation, had this to say:

"Judge Wingate has ignored the clear laws of his own state in coming to a decision that essentially green-lights any jurisdiction - in the U.S. and abroad - to ignore our rights and abuse their power to do away with competition or speech or content with which they oppose, regardless of the law. This is a dark day for Internet freedom."

John Pappas of the Poker Players Alliance is equally outraged at Beshear and Wingate's scheme:

"This action not only unduly restricts the freedom of Kentucky residents to play games of skill online, such as poker, but sets a precedent for censorship of the internet by force.

Many of Governor Beshear's arguments - that online poker is illegal, unregulated and without a mechanism to capture tax revenue - are false. Online poker is not illegal under Kentucky law, it is regulated in its home jurisdiction and the Commonwealth of Kentucky chose not to license and regulate poker websites."

Most disturbing of all to me is that the Governor openly admits that a key part of his reason for committing this constitutional travesty is because he would prefer gambler's dollars to be spent at Keeneland, Churchill Downs, and the Kentucky lottery:

"Illegal and unregulated gambling Web sites - many of which operate from other countries - are leeches on our communities and unfairly undermine Kentucky's horse-racing industry. By seizing those Internet names, the state can require the casino operators to block their sites from being accessed in Kentucky. Kentuckians likely spend tens of millions of dollars on illegal internet gambling sites each year - money that might otherwise go to Kentucky's horse tracks, charitable events and the state lottery."

So, uh, that pretty much reduces his argument to a very petty matter of professional jealousy: 'hey, dese other guys' gambling scams are interfering with OUR gambling scams! Dah, we can't have dat! We'd betta rub 'em out, boss!'

Mind you, I don't give a hoot about online gambling myself. It's strictly for suckers and dopes, if you ask me. But I'll still defend to the death these rubes' constitutional rights to go clickity-clack on any internet site they choose, and to blow their money on said sites.

If allowed to get away with this madness, I guarantee you internet erotica will be next, and then the precedent will be laid to quash political dissent sites and anything else that anyone in any Government anywhere wants to banish from the web. So this isn't just about Poker, it's about setting a legal precedent that allows two-bit politicians and judges to really screw up the internet for everyone else in the world.