Thorn + Rose: KSP finds inner Hitler
Two student reporters at the Manual RedEye get a rose for their scoop about how a Kentucky State Police training slide show included quotes from Adolf Hitler and Robert E. Lee and urged cadets to have a “mindset void of emotion” to “meet violence with greater violence.” For its part, the state said the slide show is no longer used. But the KSP issued the students this shockingly lame defense, seeming to miss the significance of using the architect of 6 million Jewish deaths as a moral compass: “The quotes are used for their content and relevance to the topic addressed in the presentation. The presentation touches on several aspects of service, selflessness, and moral guidance. All of these topics go to the fundamentals of law enforcement such as treating everyone equally, service to the public, and being guided by the law.” U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, who is LEO’s founder, tweeted: “I am angry. As a Kentuckian, I am angry and embarrassed. And as a Jewish American, I am genuinely disturbed that there are people like this who not only walk among us, but who have been entrusted to keep us safe. There needs to be consequences.”
Thorn: Police contract is bad math
Louisville Metro government math: One woman killed by police during an ineptly planned and executed raid + a search warrant issued under suspicious circumstances + a cover-up by the state’s highest law enforcement official = raises for police, a possible housing stipend and no real guarantees to prevent another Breonna Taylor from being killed. That is what the proposed police contract adds up to...Thorn: Have We All Stopped Caring?
Kentucky has rocketed past 100,000 COVID-19 cases. Gov. Andy Beshear refuses to enact strict rules as he had in March. The state Supreme Court is considering whether Beshear had overstepped his authority on those rules, and Republican lawmakers are frothing over the chance to rein in his emergency powers. Beshear has denied that steered his reluctance to revive past restrictions: “We are working very hard on enforcement, but we can’t enforce our way out of this.”
Absurd: Scientific polls are for losers
What got prime real estate on The CJ’s page one last week? It was a story about “Psychic Hal” Fitzpatrick who works out of a booth at the Lake Cumberland Flea Market. The headline: “Forget the polls. We asked this Kentucky flea market psychic to predict the 2020 election.” His prediction for tRump’s chances of winning? They were “going from ‘don’t know,’ to an almost ‘no.’ It’s switching now, and it’s going back to ‘yes.’”
