Killing a good bill

An editorial from the Courier-Journal:

Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Northern Kentucky Republican running for lieutenant governor, has bought into unfounded insinuations that House Bill 419, to generate donations for rape crisis centers through a box Kentuckians can check on state tax returns, somehow is linked to abortion services.

The sponsor of HB 419, Rep. Chris Harris of Pikeville, who describes himself as a “pro-life Democrat,” insists his bill has nothing to do with abortion.

The state-funded rape crisis centers do not provide any abortion services under a mission narrowly defined by state law and regulations.

Yet HB 419 has been stalled in Mr. McDaniel’s Appropriations and Revenue Committee since March 2.

Senate saboteurs

A good editorial from the Courier-Journal:

Has Congress gone crazy?

That’s what many U.S. observers and much of the world must be wondering after a group of rogue Republican senators opted to communicate directly by letter with “the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” seeking to undercut President Barack Obama’s ongoing negotiations with Iran over nuclear enrichment.

...Among the 47 senators signing the letter: Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, the new Senate majority leader, and Rand Paul, a first-term senator with presidential aspirations.

Mr. McConnell, who took over the leadership post this year with a pledge to end dysfunction and return the Senate to a working body, appears off to a poor start. And if Mr. Paul’s signature represents his grasp of foreign policy, Republicans would be justifiably leery about him as a presidential nominee.

Shutdown averted

The Courier-Journal addresses the House Republicans who tried to use Homeland Security as a hostage against President Obama's executive orders:

The holdouts were House Republicans who persisted in voting against the Homeland Security measure, despite a growing backlash among their own people. That included a Wall Street Journal editorial this week that called them “cliff marchers,” determined to march over the cliff to failure.

Among the marchers was Kentucky’s U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, of Northern Kentucky, who gave a floor speech demanding his colleagues hold President Obama accountable for his “unconscionable and illegal acts.”

As a final act of defiance, he insisted on a full reading of the bill to fund Homeland Security but capitulated and withdrew his request after a clerk spent about 20 minutes reading the document to an increasingly restive audience, according to a report on National Public Radio.