A few days before the Kentucky Derby, former Governor Brereton Jones was standing on the backstretch at Churchill Downs, talking about trainer Larry Jones’ decision to run the filly Eight Belles in the Kentucky Derby instead of the Kentucky Oaks. Brereton applauded the decision, and not just because it meant that his filly, Proud Spell, […]

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I’m eagerly awaiting my invitation to the big victory party that will be thrown somewhere across our borders.
The guests of honor will be the members of the Kentucky House of Representatives, who boldly allowed the proposed casino amendment to die from lack of support or benign neglect, whatever you want to call it As I […]

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With the shot clock turned off and the final seconds ticking away, the proposed constitutional amendment to legalize casino gambling still is on the bench in the House of Representatives, hoping to at least get some floor time before the game is over.
The pundits on the sidelines are saying it will take a miracle to […]

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This is the last of a four-part series by Billy Reed on the issue of legalizing casino gambling in Kentucky. Mr. Reed is a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame. He has written about sports and politics in the state for almost 50 years.
No issue in […]

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This is the third of a four-part series by Billy Reed on the issue of legalizing casino gambling in Kentucky. Mr. Reed is a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame. He has written about sports and politics in the state for almost 50 years.
I’ve always said […]

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This is the second of a four-part series by Billy Reed on the issue of legalizing casino gambling in Kentucky. Mr. Reed is a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame. He has written about sports and politics in the state for almost 50 years.
On the day […]

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This is the first of a four-part series by Billy Reed on the issue of legalizing casino gambling in Kentucky. Mr. Reed is a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame. He has written about sports and politics in the state for almost 50 years.
I’ve lived and […]

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Here in our little corner of the world, we have a bad habit of making issues more complicated than they really are. We have an aversion to simple solutions. I don’t know why. It must be due to some strange fungus that grows in our government buildings – a fungus that paralyzes the brains of […]

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Hypocrisy, n., 1. False claim to virtue; insincerity, pretense, deceit, duplicity, playacting, phoniness. (The Oxford American Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus)
The desire to have a statewide referendum on casino gambling should be viewed, essentially, as a tourism and economic-development issue that will give our economically-troubled commonwealth an important new source of jobs, taxes […]

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Beard was the straw that stirred the drink. He was lightning-quick with the ball and tenacious on defense, but his signature quality was his burning desire to win.

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