Recent Articles

Don't you get mad when politicians lie? The lies coming from those we elected to represent us in the U.S. House and Senate from the Kentucky Majority Party have such a record that we must research what they do opposed to what they say.

The entire Kentucky Republican Contingent we sent to Washington voted to overthrow the Government and to throw out and discard all votes of Kentuckians. Their chest thumping about their love for America wanes to the insignificant when their disdain for the wishes of Kentuckians is so evident...

With post Civil War Reconstruction unpopular in the South, including the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the Legislature came up with a clever idea to answer a labor shortage caused by losing 20% of its unpaid labor force. The answer was reviving and expanding the system of indentured servitude to orphans and poor children. State law created a system (complete with fill-in-the-blank forms) that empowered the County Judge to "bind out orphans, and children whose parents are incapable of bringing them up in moral courses."

If having the power of state government as center of all (like the Sun), then modern Kentucky politics has revolved around two planets (Democrats and Republicans) with the always rising and waxing moons of far left progressives and far right conservatives.

A president, facing a radically right-facing United State Supreme Court, goes to the American people calling for reforming the Court. This is President Joe Biden following the bombshell decision revoking the rights of women to have an abortion, right?

In fact, this was equally true of President Franklin D. Roosevelt eighty-five years ago in 1937. Led by a group of conservatives, referred to as the Four Horsemen, the Supremes had repeatedly overturned New Deal legislation designed to pull the nation out of the Great Depression in favor of private corporations...

The Founding Fathers knew the history of their ancestors' flight from the one stop one size fits all religion of Britain. The first words of the First Amendment to the US Constitution made sure there would not be an equivalent of the Church of England in America.

Or so they thought.

Editor's Note: With the US Supreme Court decision announced on June 27, 2022, the wall crumbled more. Authority figures can now lead prayer in public schools. What child can say them nay?

The question posed by George Humphreys in his look back at the Democratic political history of Western Kentucky Where Have All the Democrats Gone? is one that has more than one answer. No one factor edged the Democratic Party out of electoral seats in the Purchase..

The full list of what or who's at fault for the demise of Democratic Purchase power is best left to some future political science student looking to impress their prof with a delve into the dark path that Democratic politics has followed.

For this article, we look at modern Democratic leadership.

If former United States Senator and Vice President Alben W. Barkley could return 100 years after his losing the gubernatorial primary in 1923 in his first statewide campaign, this might be one of the first questions he might ask. Barkley, who grew up in Lowes, a small community located in Graves County, and Clinton, certainly would find it difficult to understand, as Berry Craig's recent Courier-Journal opinion column, that Democrats, who dominated Jackson Purchase politics for most of the 20^th century, failed to file for any of the region's legislative races this year...

Editor's Note: The Fall of Kentucky's Rock: Western Kentucky Democratic Politics Since the New Deal was selected for a 2022 Kentucky History Award, presented by the Kentucky Historical Society. Congratulations, George!

George G. Humphreys' new book, The Fall of Kentucky's Rock: Western Kentucky Democratic Politics Since the New Deal, examines the roots of a region once believed an impregnable stronghold for the Democratic Party fell. ..."The development of the public power system in western Kentucky was critical to the development of the region. The availability of cheap, abundant electricity was a key to the federal government's location of the massive uranium enrichment (atomic bomb) facility outside Paducah in the early 1950s. Some suggest the choice to locate in Paducah was influenced by Vice President Alben W. Barkley, the former US senator from Paducah..."

Following the December 10^th tornado that devastated towns in western Kentucky and Tennessee, help has flooded in... Not all the help has been the same.

One group, Four Rivers Indivisible, has distributed over 1500 quality high filtration masks in January to Mayfield residents.

They can use your help to meet more needs.

June 14, 2012 (Mayfield, KY) The second mural in the new series of murals planned by Mayor Teresa Cantrell will be completed this Saturday. The mural will be located on the west side of the D&D Shoes Building (formerly the Merit Clothing Company).

...Prints of the mural will be available for purchase at a special area set up on the courthouse lawn on Saturday evening during the Cruise-In and Summer Music Fest Concert. Prints are numbered, and Rudy Holmes will be on hand that evening to personally sign any prints that are purchased. The sale price for the prints is $25.00 and they are 11" x 17". Additionally, notecards with the mural design will be available for purchase as well

(Hickman) County to send formal protest to Dr. Stack's office (State Department of Health) in regard to Purchase District Health Department not providing services for citizens here..

The nurse and clerk were hired under contract instead of being hired directly under the Purchase District Health Department. "In other words, they were hired by contract where they would not be put in the state retirement system," he said.

He said both of them recently made a request to the director of the Purchase District Health Department to be put under the state's retirement plan. "We were assured at the local health board meeting, and I was assured at the district meeting, that these ladies would not be asked to take a pay cut."

Discovery Park of America released details today about the upcoming temporary exhibit premiering at the museum and heritage park that will shine a spotlight on one of the most unique collections of globes and maps in the world. "The Fascinating World of Murray Hudson's Globes and Maps" will be on display in the museum's ATA Traveling Exhibit Hall Dec. 2, 2021-March 1, 2022.

Editor's note - Go. Go. Go to see this exhibit.

The Mississippi River is one of the world's major river systems in size, habitat diversity and biological productivity. It is also one of the world's most important commercial waterways and one of North America's great migration routes for both birds and fishes.

Barges and their tows move approximately 175 million tons of freight each year on the upper Mississippi through a system of 29 locks and dams.

The state of Illinois made a commitment of four million dollars to the Alexander--Cairo Port Project on June 2, 2021.

The just announced and planned river port on the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois will be completed in 2023. At that time the port will become a new central axis in American inland shipping security framework...

Port security has emerged as a significant part of the US Government debate on U.S. homeland security. The primary issues for Congress and states are (1) how to fund and structure needed local port development (2) designing new commitments to maintaining safe and secure maritime shipping from and into American ports.

Kentucky's positivity rate dropped below 10% in a report published October1, 2021. Several Purchase counties have climbed out of high rate of spread to moderate - a good sign of possible easing.

8800 Kentuckians have died from the virus.

Former Courier Journal reporter, Ira Simmons, penned the proclamation commemorating the 200th anniversary of the first county of the Kentucky Jackson Purchase.

The proclamation reprinted in the story was read by Clinton City Councilman Howard Dillard and signed by Hickman County Judge Kenny Wilson and Anniversary Chair Sherry Allison.

...Andrew Jackson and Isaac Shelby set this story in motion when they negotiated The Chickasaw Treaty of 1818. This treaty transferred a vast amount of Chickasaw Land in west Kentucky and west Tennessee to the US Government...

During the era of the Korean crisis, William Batts stood guard over a nuclear cannon...

Statement from Dr. Donald Shively, Superintendent, Paducah Public Schools:

"Paducah Public Schools began the year with Level 3 COVID-19 mitigation strategies due to the surge in COVID-19 cases. Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and American Academy of Pediatrics continue to recommend masking for all students. Therefore, the Level 3 mitigation strategies will remain in place.

All students (ages preschool through grade 12), staff and visitors are required to wear a mask or face coverings that cover their nose and mouth at school, on the bus, and on district property when indoors.

All but one Kentucky county in red zone as of September 13, 2021. Over 8000 deaths associated with virus.

Positivity rate 13.70%

Due to the rising COVID-19 numbers in our region, and considering that a majority of our sponsors and vendors work in healthcare or emergency management, our partners have made the difficult decision to postpone Saturday September 18th Pediatric Day 2021 until Nov. 13.

To the Editor:

I am a wife who, more times than I would like to count, has sat with her husband as a tube down his throat breathed for him. I have listened to the whoosh whoosh of oxygen being pushed into his lungs as he slept in a medically induced coma...

The bleating of the "freedom" lovers is drowning all else out...Freedom without responsibility is selfishness.

Carlisle and Trigg get out of red. Hickman gets in deeper. Eastern Kentucky suffering far more cases.

...The very achievements of Roman civilization hastened conditions for its collapse. The interconnectedness that the Roman empire achieved created ideal conditions for the pandemics that would overwhelm it...

...It is the impact of the virus on our belief systems that are the most intriguing.

Just as climate change and pandemics undermined a ruling Roman worldview, COVID has shaken the modern faith that we can reshape our natural world as we please...

Editor's Note: Why I love historians. Our story doesn't repeat but it may have more verses and a chorus.