How have your Repug state legislators ruined your life today?

We were warned.  The late, great, lamented Molly Ivins warned us. When it comes to daily life, it's our state legislators who have the most control over what we can do and whether we can do it safely.

Take Kentucky's General Assembly.  Please.

Since repugs took over the state house in 2016 for full control of the legislative and executive branches, they have been systematically dismantling the structures of civilization Kentucky progressives have managed to erect.

• slashing already minimal benefits for the poor, sick and disabled.

• denying the humanity of vagina-havers and condemning them to a slow, painful death of sepsis after an illegal abortion or a lifetime of forced birth. 

• canceling all state incentives for renewable energy and slapping a giant annual tax on the owners of electric cars.

• eliminating all background checks, training and permit fees for concealed carry.  Now you can get shot and killed for failing to genuflect to the Pumpkin Traitor anytime, anywhere in the Commonwealth. 

• exempting the governor and legislators from being subject to the courts, in case any dogooding libs try to sue their motherfucking asses for all of that unconstitutional bullshit.

and, of course, the coup de grace:

• hiding from the public all records of how and why legislators are fucking us over.

Kentucky repugs did this.  But Kentucky Democrats are letting them do it.  All of this and much, much worse.

Gov. Cowardly Worm Begs Lege to Protect Him From Mean Old Judge

I don't know how Phillip Shepherd can function these days, helpless from hysterical laughter as he must be.

Tom Loftus at the Courier: 

A lot of state government's big legal cases in recent years have landed in front of Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd. And they haven't always gone the way the governor or General Assembly want.

A Senate bill filed Friday would let Gov. Matt Bevin or other state officials avoid going before Shepherd.

Senate President Robert Stivers, upset with Shepherd’s handling of the big pension case last year, sponsored the measure, filed as Senate Bill 2. The low number indicates it’s a top priority of the Senate Republican majority.

Stivers, a Manchester Republican, complained in a floor speech Friday that all big state government cases and constitutional challenges should not be heard by judges elected from a single county.

Hey moron: State government cases are heard in the "single county" of Franklin circuit because that's where state government exists.

“It’s not appropriate. As I’ve termed it, it’s a super circuit judge,” Stivers said.

But Senate Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville, responded that he’s uncomfortable with the legislature meddling with the courts because it is angry over the outcome of a particular case.

“Initially, I am very skeptical of any piece of legislation which is directed particularly at one judge and one court,” McGarvey said.

Stivers' bill says claims against state officials and/or state agencies that now must go to Franklin Circuit can be redirected if a defendant requests a special judge. No reason for the request is required. And the chief justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court would be required to randomly appoint a special judge.

In an interview last fall, and again on the Senate floor on Friday, Stivers acknowledged that it is Shepherd’s handling of last year’s lawsuit against the pension bill that sparked his interest in in the issue.

Shepherd struck down the pension bill – Senate Bill 151 – last June for two procedural reasons. He said the rapid one-day passage of the bill violated part of the Kentucky Constitution that requires lawmakers have time to consider a bill. He also said the bill was an appropriations bill, which required at least 51 votes in the House to pass. (The House vote on the bill was 49-46.)

In December, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed Shepherd. In a 7-0 ruling, the high court agreed the rapid process violated the Kentucky Constitution, but it was silent on the question of whether the bill was an appropriations bill requiring 51 votes.

SNIP

One veteran Louisville attorney who has represented both Republicans and Democrats in major state government cases, Sheryl Snyder, said Monday he believes the current system is preferable.

“I think choosing judges at random for those kinds of state government and state constitutional issues would be at the cost of the expertise that the Franklin Circuit judges build up over the years by handling those cases…” Snyder said. “Also, the decisions of those Franklin Circuit court judges are always appeal-able to the Court of Appeals and/or the Supreme Court.”

SNIP

Robert Lawson, a retired professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, said Franklin Circuit judges have always properly handled such state government cases and that it is “ridiculous” to make such a change because of disagreement with a particular judge.

“This whole criticism of Judge Shepherd is outrageous,” Lawson said. “He’s very fair-minded, very competent."

Shepherd also knows repug bullshit when he hears it.

KY Repugs Cheating to Get Court Wins

Never occurs to them that Judge Shepherd rules against them all the time because they are always wrong. They never consider maybe they should stop passing unconstitutional legislation, and stop breaking laws to get that legislation passed.

No, their solution is to take state cases away from that mean old liberal judge.

From Tom Loftus at the Courier:

Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd’s order striking down the new Republican-backed pension law led to a lot of criticism from majority-party leaders, including from the governor himself.

Now, some of those leaders are looking at ways to keep all the important state government cases from going to Franklin Circuit Court.

“You basically have a super circuit judge, or judges, because the venue for so many cases are exclusively here. And that shouldn’t be,” Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said in an interview.

Stivers made the point on Friday as part of a panel discussion at the Health Care Leadership Conference of the Kentucky Hospital Association.

House Speaker Pro Tem David Osborne, R-Prospect, said during the discussion he sees support for the idea. “You’ll see some continued discussion and talk about this…But there are a lot of details that have to be worked out that haven’t been, so it’s a little bit tough to say where it’s going.”

State Sen. Morgan McGarvey, a Louisville Democrat who – like Stivers – is an attorney, said he believes any such move “would be blatantly political and an abuse of legislative power.”

Shepherd, who has served as a Franklin circuit judge since 2006, declined to comment on the matter.

 That's because whiny-ass titty babies are beneath his contempt.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article221607280.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article221607280.html#storylink=cpy

Bevin Determined to Lose Re-Election

You don't piss off the people who cook/serve your food or who cut your hair.  And you don't deliver public, deadly insults to the judge who handles all the lawsuits against your maladministration.

From the Herald:

Gov. Matt Bevin went after a Kentucky judge Tuesday, the day after that judge ruled against Bevin's procedural motion in a lawsuit over Kentucky's new pension law.

"I now have the most incompetent hack of a judge — I don't know if in Kentucky, but certainly one of the worst — who happens to be in Franklin Circuit Court," Bevin said in a radio interview on 55KRC, a talk radio station in Cincinnati.

On Monday, Franklin Circuit Court Judge Phillip Shepherd ruled in a 30-minute hearing that Bevin's attorneys could not depose representatives of Attorney General Andy Beshear's office, the Kentucky Education Association and the Kentucky Fraternal Order of Police.

The three parties filed a lawsuit April 11 against the state's new public pension law.

Because anyone and everyone who disagrees with Dear Leader is an idiot and a traitor.

Maybe it's just a giant, long-term piece of performance art.

Governor Scofflaw Urges Lawbreaking

Boy, has Judge Phillip "Honey Badger" Shepherd gotten under Bevin's skin.

Andrew Wolfson at the Courier:

Gov. Matt Bevin has urged the new University of Louisville Board of Trustees to meet in apparent defiance of a judge’s order blocking them from acting.

In an interview on WHAS-AM radio Wednesday, Bevin told host Terry Meiners that “the new board is not enjoined. The new board has authority to meet and they should do exactly that.”

In a July 29 order, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd ruled that the “governor's appointment of replacement board members and their authority to act as the duly constituted Board of Trustees of the University of Louisville” was “temporarily enjoined,” pending a final resolution of Attorney General Andy Beshear’s lawsuit contesting Bevin’s power to abolish the old board and appoint a new one.

The injunction also blocked Bevin, “his agents, employees and all other persons acting at his direction from taking any actions to implement his orders on U of L."

Beshear, who won the temporary injunction, said in a statement that Bevin encouraging defiance of a court order is a "serious matter that should concern all Kentuckians. We live in a country governed by the rule of the law, which must be respected.”

Judge Slaps Governor Trumpist Down Again

Seriously, Mattie Boy, as long as Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip "Honey Badger" Shepherd is on the bench, you're not getting away with any of that authoritarian bullshit.

No matter how many times Donald Traitor says it's OK.

From the Courier:

In a strong rebuke to Gov. Matt Bevin, a judge Friday ruled that the governor's abolition of the University of Louisville Board of Trustees was illegal and at least temporarily blocked the new one that he appointed from acting.

While allowing the resignation of President James Ramsey to stand, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd said the record "is devoid of any legal or factual precedent for a governor to abolish and recreate an entire board of trustees of a public university."

In a 22-page decision that rejected all of Bevin's arguments, Shepherd said if the governor's interpretation of the law was correct, "any university trustee or group of trustees, can be removed for no reason or any reason – good or bad, well-intentioned or malicious.” The governor could even unilaterally merge U of L with the University of Kentucky, Shepherd said.

“The governor’s unilateral action raises profound issues regarding the statutes on governance of public universities and the separation of powers under the Kentucky Constitution,” Shepherd wrote.

Bevin "Mass Firing" Stopped By Judge Honey Badger

Greg Stumbo may not be able to stop Governor Lying Coward from destroying the Bluegrass State, but Circuit Court Judge Phillip "Honey Badger" Shepherd is giving it a hell of a try.

Tom Loftus at the Courier:

Saying it appeared to be more of a "mass firing" than a legitimate reorganization, Franklin Circuit Court on Wednesday put a hold on Gov. Matt Bevin's order of last month that abolished and re-created the Kentucky Workers' Compensation Nominating Commission.

The job of the commission is to nominate candidates for appointment by the governor as judges who rule in workers' compensation cases. And on May 9, Bevin issued an executive order that abolished the existing commission (with former Gov. Steve Beshear appointees) and re-established a new commission with his own appointees.

But a 16-page order from Judge Phillip Shepherd on Wednesday suspends Bevin's executive order "pending a final judgment on the merits of this action."

Shepherd's order specifically bans the new appointees named by Bevin from nominating candidates for judgeships, and it prohibits Bevin from appointing any workers' comp judges other than those nominated by the prior commission, until further orders of the court.

The case raises "important issues concerning the scope of a Governor's reorganization power," Shepherd said. And he said the effect of Bevin's order must be held up until "a full and careful judicial review of whether the Governor's action complies with the separation of powers provisions of the Kentucky Constitution and the statutes."

But the judge also expressed strong concerns about Bevin's order.

"It appears from the record before the Court at this time that the primary purpose and effect of the Executive Order is to implement a mass firing of Commissioners, rather than to accomplish a bona fide administrative reorganization," Shepherd wrote.

In the immortal words of our fourth greatest president, "Please proceed, Governor."