A series of violent storms and tornadoes have wreaked havoc on several states, including Indiana (14 dead so far) and Kentucky (19 dead so far). The numbers keep rising as rescue workers continue to find more victims — and that's not counting the staggering numbers of people injured and property destroyed.
It was Joe Biden in a tuxedo. Kidding! It was an African blackfooted penguin, and it was hanging out at the Kentucky State Senate during a vote about the local aquarium it calls home. Senate President David Williams reported interrupted a colleague's speech to announce, "The penguin... just defecated on the floor."
The security camera video of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's encounter with Nashville airport TSA agents is here, complete with wacky libertarian captions, so now you can make your own determination about how full of shit he was when he told his communications manager he was being detained by the TSA. Our verdict: still totally full of shit.
Good news: The hopeless racists of Pike County, Kentucky's Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church have been overruled. After church leaders voted to ban interracial couples—starting with the above-photographed lifelong attendee and her Zimbabwean fiance—a larger group of church members declared the racist rule null and void, since church bylaws cannot run contrary to the law, including anti-discrimination laws. Thirty church members went on to pass a new resolution welcoming "believers into our fellowship regardless of race, creed, or color."
Tomorrow, America heads to the polls for what will be the most important political day in our lifetime: The 2011 Elections. And after a whole 15 minutes spent googling "elections tomorrow," your Gawker Political Desk feels it has an expert grasp on all of the crucial decisions to be made. Let's check out some of the exciting last-minute campaign efforts of candidates across this sunny land!
Thank God the Senate was finally able to kill those jobs so quickly! Now the nation's top senators can return to the usual business of using their elevated positions to funnel money and prestige to institutions in their home states.
Just like the "Kentucky Woman" Neil Diamond sang about, Melissa Harvick "shines with her own kind of light," you could say. Earlier this week, Harvick appeared at a family court hearing as the defendant in a dispute with her husband, who had filed a domestic violence order against her. While her husband tried to explain his side of the story to the presiding judge, Harvick allegedly interrupted him and wouldn't stop talking. This prompted the judge to sentence Harvick to ten days in jail for contempt of court. The jail sentence did not please Harvick very much, as you will soon come to understand by watching the video above.
A Louisville, KY man has been arrested and charged with attempted murder for shooting a kid who was playing Ring and Run, ringing someone's doorbell then running away, with his friends. When his doorbell rang, 56-year-old Michael Bishop ran outside with his shotgun and fired in the direction of the fleeing kids, hitting a 12-year-old boy. So beware, neighborhood pranksters. [Courier-Journal, photo via Shutterstock]
A high school class in Louisville, Ky. just went on the best field trip, ever! If you like finding bodies. Because that's what they did! They found a body, face-down "by a creek behind the school in a wooded area."
Kathy Michelle Coy, a 33-year-old Kentucky mother of two, allegedly befriended a pregnant woman on Facebook before subduing her with a stun gun, killing her, and cutting out the baby with a drywall knife.
We are shocked—shocked—to hear that the University of Kentucky is under attack from a racist sign-maker, who has been leaving "juvenile" notices around campus that refer to President Obama using a racial epithet. The first was found hanging from a door in the law school building on March 15; on Thursday, a law student found a sign stuck to a bus stop reading "How Do You Spell Nigger? OBAMA," which is both hateful and factually incorrect. Ingeniously, the sign was composed of letters "cut out from a menu, glued to another piece of paper and photocopied," meaning we may never know the identity of Racist Sign Guy or Gal, and therefore never have the chance to say "what is your deal, man" to his or her face. [Lexington Herald-Leader]
Police say they found a "small bag" of crack hidden inside the foreskin of one Antoine Banks, late of Fairdale, Ky., during a strip search ordered after another small bag of cocaine was found "tied to the waistband of Banks' boxers." There are, probably, better places on one's body to secrete contraband—certainly there are more comfortable places—but the drug-concealing ability of the male human foreskin is, I think, an under-explored aspect of the circumcision debate. [WLKY]
