"Leader McConnell was voicing his opinion about the upcoming Senate races," NRSC spokesman John Randall told Election Central via e-mail. "He was not admitting defeat but explaining the current situation."

Mitch McConnell explained that Republicans cannot win -- but it is not admitting defeat! According to the NRSC, the 2008 elections are in a netherworld between a word and it's antonym.

The nominating process in the 2008 presidential election began in Iowa last week, but the federal government's campaign-finance agency is unable to enforce the spending laws because it doesn't have enough commissioners.

And that is the fault of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., according to Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog. [...]

With only two commissioners in place since the start of the new year, the FEC is unable to issue finance rulings, file suits or levy penalties for violations of the campaign laws. Four votes are required for any decision.

Read the full article in the Kentucky Courier-Journal.

So what's he saying? That because they signed up it's a small price?

In the e-mail, Stewart claimed that research by conservative bloggers proved that Democrats did a bad job “vetting this family.”

Stewart acknowledged yesterday in an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal that he “pointed out” the smear campaign to reporters.

As ThinkProgress and BluegrassRoots point out, even in admitting culpability in pushing the smear campaign, McConnell's office misled reporters by claiming they only pointed to the story, rather than pushing it.

The only “skepticism” Stewart showed in his original email was a veiled partisan attack that came in the form of a question. He never “vetted” the research he was propagating to reporters.

As Greg Sargent notes, “when Michelle Malkin pointed her finger at the Frosts and started howling, McConnell’s staff immediately joined in the fun — that is, until they realized that they had a big dud on their hands.”

Television station WHAS-11 is unhappy that Senator McConnell mislead the new station about the story.

It appears Senator Mitch McConnell may have misled WHAS11 News when he told us nobody on his staff had anything to do with an effort to dig into the background of a 12-year-old boy.

...

WHAS11's Mark Hebert asked the senator about it on Friday.

“There was no involvement,” McConnell said. “None.”

GOP leaders said Thursday they will be distributing a fake photograph of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear standing beside a casino table with a drink in his hand.

...

The depiction has Beshear's head, with a sparkling front tooth, on someone else's body dressed in a white sports jacket, a white shirt with an open collar, holding a beverage while standing at what appears to be a roulette table covered with gambling chips.

Republican Ernie Fletcher, the current scandal plagued Governor of Kentucky is more than 20 points behind Steve Beshear in recent polling.

McConnell filed legislation for three years, starting in 1998, to curb the mandatory annual raise in wages of legal immigrant farmworkers under the government's H2A program. By 2001, the wage in Kentucky was $6.60 an hour, which struck some agricultural businesses as too high. (Agribusinesses have given McConnell more than $1 million for his campaigns--out of $21 million from all donors over 22 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.) But the bills kept failing.

In 2001, Chao ordered an indefinite delay in the release of an annual Labor Department wage report that triggered the farmworker raise. It was an insider move, not noticed by most Americans, but praised by McConnell's Republican congressional colleagues and business groups in letters obtained from Chao's office.

There’s a lot more where that came from. Read the article here.

State parties will publish their delegate selection rules and clearly explain how to participate in the summer of 2007.

Kentucky Democratic Party
190 Democrat Drive
Frankfort, KY 40602
502-695-4828
502-695-7629 (fax)

District-Level Delegates: 34
At-Large Delegates: 11
Pledged Party Leader & Elected Official (PLEO) Delegates: 6
Unpledged Delegates: 9
TOTAL Number of Delegates: 60

Alternates: 9

TOTAL DELEGATION SIZE: 69

System type: Primary

State convention page: Available
State plan: Not available online. Please contact the state party to receive a copy.
State filing form: Not available online. Please contact the state party to receive a copy.

** This information is prepared by the DNC's Office of Party Affairs and Delegate Selection and may be subject to change. For more information, please call 202-863-8000.

“Last night’s primary results show the stark contrast between the strong, principled leadership being offered by Kentucky Democrats and the failed leadership and misplaced priorities of state Republicans. When they head to the polls in November, Kentuckians will have a clear choice between Steve Beshear and Daniel Mongiardo, proven leaders who they can trust to stand up for working families, and a scandal-plagued Republican governor who has spent the last four years letting his special interest friends and partisan cronies run roughshod over the state government. The fact that an additional 50,000 more Democrats went to the polls yesterday shows both the desire for change in Kentucky and the energy and enthusiasm behind Beshear and Mongiardo.

“Last year, from coast to coast the American people demanded a new direction, electing Democrats who promised to clean up the Republican culture of corruption and put our government back to work for the people. By narrowly re-nominating an ethically-challenged governor who only barely beat one of the Republicans ousted in last year’s elections, Kentucky Republicans showed that they still haven’t gotten the message. Come Election Day, the voters will speak loud and clear by sending Steve Beshear and Daniel Mongiardo to Frankfort.”

"Clearly the GOP's 'Southern Strategy' is alive and well in Maryland. It's appalling that Michael Steele rolled out his own modern day version of the 'Southern Strategy,' designed to deceive African American voters," said Democratic National Committee Communications Director Karen Finney. "Is this the kind of leadership Steele plans to offer the national party if he were chairman? And when will the GOP stop using trickery to win elections?

"Last Tuesday, despite the efforts of Steele and national Republicans, the American people went to the polls and rejected the Karl Rove politics of hate and division, and overwhelmingly voted for fundamental change. Democrats are offering a new direction for America that protects the right to vote for all, and protects all voters from intimidation and deception at the polls."

Listed below is a small sample of the tactics used by Republicans in recent elections to intimidate voters across America. For more information about the Democratic Party's comprehensive national voter protection program to ensure the American people can vote with confidence in all 50 states visit www.democrats.org/voterprotection:

Republicans Tried to Scare Hispanic Immigrants From Voting. State investigators have linked a Republican campaign to letters sent to thousands of Southern California Hispanics warning them they could go to jail or be deported if they vote next month, a spokesman for the attorney general said. In fact, immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens can vote. [USA Today, 10/19/06]

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman Vowed to Challenge Voters at the Polls. During an appearance on behalf of the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Virginia in 2005, RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman vowed to "do whatever we can to help make sure Jerry Kilgore becomes the next governor of the state" - including, according to the AP "having poll workers on hand to challenge voter eligibility." [AP, 05/26/05]

Convicted Republican Phone Jammer Blamed GOP "Culture" and Was Afraid to Push Back on RNC Official. As he finished serving a prison sentence for "jamming Democratic phone lines in New Hampshire during the 2002 US Senate race," Allen Raymond told the Boston Globe that the "scheme reflects a broader culture in the Republican Party that is focused on dividing voters to win primaries and general elections. He said examples range from some recent efforts to use border-security concerns to foster anger toward immigrants to his own role arranging phone calls designed to polarize primary voters over abortion in a 2002 New Jersey Senate race." The scheme led to "the convictions of Raymond and two top Republican officials, and a Democratic lawsuit that seeks to determine whether the White House played any role." Allen said "he got caught up in an ultra-aggressive atmosphere" and that "he had been reluctant to turn down a prominent official of the RNC, fearing that would cost him future opportunities from an organization that was becoming increasingly ruthless." [Boston Globe, 06/10/2006]

Virginia County Asked to Halt Plan for Armed, Uniformed Police at Polling Places. The ACLU said that the planned police presence is a reminder of when armed government officials were used to prevent minorities from voting and will only intimidate many potential voters, causing them to avoid the polls. [http://www.aclu.org/VotingRights/VotingRights.cfm?ID=16862&c=32, 10/21/04]

RNC Funded Company Trashed Voter Registration Forms: "Voter's Outreach of America" aka "America Votes" is responsible for ripping up democratic voter registrations in Nevada. According to the investigative report, hundreds and perhaps thousands of individuals who think they are registered to vote actually are not. The organization has reportedly left Nevada and gone to Oregon. Full transcript of story attached... Well, the company [Voter's Outreach for America, aka America Votes] has been largely, if not entirely funded by the Republican National Committee. We should also point out that similar complaints have been received in Reno, where the registrar there has asked the FBI to investigate. It's a complicated story and we'll have a lot more tonight and I think in the days ahead." [KLAS Las Vegas Channel 8, 4pm news, Oct. 12, 2004]

Armed, Plain Clothes Police Officers Intimidated Elderly Black Voters In Orlando. Plain clothes police officers, revealing their side arms, made house calls to elderly, black voters who voted in Orlando's mayoral race in March 2003. The voters were in large part campaign workers or volunteers that helped to organize and get out the vote, mainly using absentee ballots, for African- American Mayor Buddy Dyer. Dyer won with just under 51% of the vote. His challenger, Ken Mulvaney and other defeated candidate alleged that Dyer aide, Ezzie Thomas, the 73-year old head of the Orlando League of Voters, filled out multiple absentee ballots on behalf of black voters. These actions came in spite of the fact that in May 2003 the Florida Dept of Law Enforcement had concluded "that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud."[Bob Herbert Column, New York Times, 8/16/04, 8/20/04; AP, 7/17/04]

Florida Election Officials Sought To Purge African-Americans From Voter Rolls. Florida Officials Struck Over 2,000 Eligible Voters From Voting Rolls, 62% Were Democrats, More Than Half Were Black. An analysis by the Miami Herald found that the Florida Division of Elections had improperly included 2,119 voters who were on a list of more than 47,000 felons potentially ineligible to vote in the November elections. Florida law requires convicted felons to request clemency in order to regain their right to vote. Of the 2,119 people on the list, 62% were registered Democrats, almost half were Black and less than 20% were Republican. Only sixty-one Hispanics were included on the list of over 47,000 felons though they comprise 11% of the prison population, a politically significant fact for the November elections since Hispanics in Florida vote overwhelmingly Republican while Blacks vote Democrat. [Miami Herald, 7/2/04; Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 7/7/04, 7/8/04; New York Times, 7/10/04]

Native Americans Told "To Go Home" In June Primary. Poll workers demanded identification from Native Americans in South Dakota's June primary, and they illegally turned away Native American voters from the polls when they did not have it. The state's elections auditor sent out a memo to state poll workers stating that all voters must have IDs, but did not widely disseminate information that said that voters could sign an affidavit in lieu of showing identification. State Democrats say that the actions by poll workers were an extension of a wider move by the GOP controlled state legislature to suppress Native American turnout. The law requiring voters to show identification was passed last year. One South Dakotan voter turned away from the poll was told by an elections worker that "if she didn't' have a photo ID, she could just turn around and home." [Argus Leader, 6/11/04]

Kentucky Republicans Will Place Vote Challengers In African American Precincts. Kentucky's Jefferson County Republican Party announced that it will place Republican vote challengers in predominantly African American precincts during the November 2004 elections, reiterating their 2003 attempt to suppress voter turnout. In 2003, county Republicans placed challengers at 18 polling places in predominantly black districts. However, even Republicans have taken offense this year, and a dozen Republicans including two African Americans joined together to protest their party's actions. [AP, 7/30/04; Courier-Journal, 8/3/04]

Michigan Republican Lawmaker Says Gop Needs To "Supress" The Detroit Voters. Michigan State Representative, John Pappageorge, told members of the Oakland County Republican party that the GOP would do poorly in this year's elections if it failed to "suppress the Detroit vote." Pappageorge's comments were a thinly veiled mandate to suppress African American voter turnout in a city where 83% of the population is Black and overwhelmingly votes Democratic. [Detroit Free Press, 7/16/04; AP, 7/21/04; Washington Post, 8/26/04]

McConnell's Record:

McConnell Voted Against Providing Much-Needed Investment To Protect Americans From Terrorism. McConnell voted against Senator Lieberman's amendment to provide much-needed investment to protect Americans from terrorism. Senator Lieberman's amendment would have provided $8 billion in funds to meet pressing government-wide homeland security needs - including funding for first responders, port security, chemical security, rail and transportation security, FEMA and the Coast Guard. [SCR 83, Vote 59, Rejected 43-53: R 0-52; D 42-1 (ND 38-1, SD 4-0); I 1-0, 3/16/06]

McConnell Voted Against Increased Port Security Grants By $300M. McConnell voted against the Murray motion to waive the Budget Act with respect to the Cochran point of order against the Murray amendment, which would increase funding for port security grants by $300 million. [HR 4567, Vote 171, Motion rejected 45-49, D: 42-2, R: 2-47, I: 1-0, 9/9/04]

McConnell Voted Against Increased Funding For Interoperable Communications. McConnell voted against Sen. Stabenow's amendment to increase funding for interoperable communications by $5 billion. Stabenow said the funding would provide equipment so that first responders "can effectively and reliably communicate with each other." Noting that the 9/11 Commission recently gave Congress a failing grade in terms of first responder communications, Stabenow added, "God forbid there is another terrorist attack or a natural disaster. Are we going to tell the American people that we didn't provide direct funding to fix a failed communications system because it was eligible under another underfunded grant program? This is a dangerously incompetent response to a critical threat to our families' safety." Senate Republicans voted against similar amendments twice in 2005. [SCR 83, Vote 45, Rejected 43-55: R 0-54; D 42-1 (ND 38-1, SD 4-0); I 1-0, 3/15/06]

McConnell Voted Against $302M For Aviation Security. McConnell voted against a motion to waive the Budget Act with respect to the Gregg, R-N.H., point of order against the Schumer amendment. The Schumer amendment would appropriate $302 million for aviation security. [HR 2360, Vote 180, Motion Passed: 45-53, D: 42-1, R: 2-52, I: 1-0, 7/14/05]

McConnell Voted Against $1.6B For Transit Security Grants And $265M For Intercity Rail Transportation. McConnell voted against the Byrd (D-WV) motion to waive the Budget Act with respect to the Gregg (R-NH) point of order against the Byrd amendment. The Byrd amendment would appropriate $1.16 billion for transit security grants and $265 million for intercity rail transportation. [HR 2360, Vote 184, Failed 43-55, D: 42-1, R: 0-54, I: 1-0, 7/14/05]

McConnell Voted To Kill An Amendment That Would Add $322M For Battlefield Clearance And Safety Equipment For Troops In Iraq. McConnell voted to kill the Dodd, D-Conn., amendment no. 1817 that would add $322 million to the bill's spending on battlefield clearance and safety equipment for U.S. troops in Iraq. The money would be offset by a reduction in Iraqi reconstruction funds. [S 1689, Vote 376, Passed: 49-37, D: 2-37, R: 46-0, I: 1-0, 10/2/03]

An editorial in the Denver Post points out that "GOP leaders see the minimum wage bill as a vehicle to get permanent cuts in the estate tax, a levy paid only on estates of more than $2 million. Republicans are trying to trump an effort by Democrats, who see the minimum wage as a fall elections issue."

St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, FL) - August 1, 2006

"The minimum wage's buying power is at its lowest point in a half-century, but the integrity of House Republicans can't be much higher. The hoax they played at 1:30 on Saturday morning - passing a wage increase they don't intend to become law - takes election-year deception to new depths.

"The minimum wage, for the record, hasn't increased in a decade precisely because President Bush and congressional Republicans have no interest in it. In just the last month, Senate Republicans rejected an increase, and House Republican leaders buried an appropriations bill after it was amended in committee to include an increase."

The Courier Journal - (Louisville, KY) August 1, 2006

"No matter how you parse it, there's little virtue to be found in the minimum wage, er, estate tax bill passed by the House last week.

"Skeptics are right to call it a cynical election-year maneuver on the part of the Republican leadership another piece of legislation that has little chance of passing but puts Democrats on the spot.

The Tennessean - August 1, 2006

"What does a $2.10 per hour increase in the minimum wage have to do with a $268 billion tax cut for the 8,200 wealthiest families in the U.S.? Not one thing.

"The Republican House leadership yoked the two together last week as a political stunt.."

The Baltimore Sun - August 1, 2006

"Beyond that, the link between the two proposals is offensive. In order to require employers to raise wages enough so that 6.6 million workers can merely catch up with inflation, lawmakers would also grant 8,200 people an average tax cut of $1.4 million - a $600 billion hit on the federal treasury.

"If senators can't separate this economic odd couple, the whole package ought to be voted down."

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - August 1, 2006

"If the estate tax measure were to succeed, it would add hugely to the already huge federal deficit, which in turn would lead to pressure to cut the social programs that people on minimum wage need more than most.

"GOP leaders also know that by including the minimum wage in a bill slashing the estate tax permanently, they present a poison pill to Democrats in the Senate. Either way they win -- either way, it's poor Americans who lose."

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel - August 1, 2006

"By attaching it to an effort to cut the estate tax, Republicans, who have shown little interest in raising the national minimum wage, can play politics with the Democrats and claim a conversion, just in time for the fall elections.

"The Senate can end this charade by debunking the House bill. Now is not the time to cut the estate tax, nor is it right to ratchet up callous cynicism by pretending to endorse an increase in the minimum wage."

The Miami Herald - August 1, 2006

"Unfortunately, the bill the House cobbled together after midnight Saturday, which would raise the minimum wage and roll back the estate tax, wasn't worth the extra time and effort.

"The bill is a bad attempt to appease voters who have seen this Congress fail to deliver on important legislation, including for immigration reform, lobbying reform, deficit spending, Social Security reform, secret domestic surveillance and other measures."

The Denver Post - August 1, 2006

"GOP leaders see the minimum wage bill as a vehicle to get permanent cuts in the estate tax, a levy paid only on estates of more than $2 million. Republicans are trying to trump an effort by Democrats, who see the minimum wage as a fall elections issue...

"The increase is overdue, and the nation's 7 million minimum wageholders shouldn't be hostage to the GOP's anti-tax agenda."