Blog wars!!!!

As has been previously noted here, sometime during the last month, Mark Nickolas has gotten a bit thin-skinned.

Nickolas, who runs the Bluegrassreport.org blog, has never answered any of the questions that have been raised by posters to his blog about his 501(c)4 tax-exempt status for his Foundation for Kentucky's Future. Over the past few weeks, he has even taken to deleting comments about said tax status. Why, it's almost as if he has something he wants to keep hidden, isn't it?

Nickolas has a reputation for being -- well, let's say "dishonest" -- in his posts. He quotes rumors from so-called insiders that have never come to pass. We're still waiting for the Kentucky House of Representatives to impeach Gov. Fletcher and for the Supreme Court to remove Joe Lambert as chief justice. He has allowed all sorts of vile personal rumors about Republicans to remain on his site despite knowing the comments were libelous. He continuously allowed Democrat posters to call Fletcher administration staffers all sorts of slanderous and mocking nicknames.

Two weeks ago, however, Nickolas had an epiphany. He decided that he would no longer allow rumors to be posted on his site. He spent one full day deleting (or "unpublishing," as he called it) posts and banning participants. We don't think he published one original post that day, he was so busy controlling the content others posted to his site.

He finally reinstituted a sign-in requirement after he accused a poster of sock puppetry.

That's where it gets interesting.

Someone with the "nom de plume" of William Hayes has put up a blog called The Rural Democrat ( http://theruraldemocrat.blogspot.com ) on which he unabashedly supports the Beshear-Mongiardo ticket for the Democrat nomination for governor.

On that blog, Hayes dropped a bombshell. It explains a lot about Nickolas' conduct of late.

It's no secret that Nickolas' live-in, Chantel McCormick, runs a consulting/PR/fundraising firm that focuses on helping Democrat candidates. But Hayes revealed a couple of facts that put the whole matter into perspective. First, McCormick is working for the Miller/Maze gubernatorial ticket. But most importantly, it was revealed that McCormick had been working for Dan Mongiardo's U.S. Senate campaign before being dumped for undisclosed (but highly suspicious) reasons.

Only after that did Nickolas post that he is supporting the Miller/Maze ticket in this year's Democrat primary, and he credited Jonathan Miller as being one of the biggest influences behind Bluegrassreport.org. (That's reason enough to vote against Miller, in our never to be humble opinion). Of course, Nickolas made no mention of his live-in's connections with Miller/Maze or her being fired by the Mongiardo Senate campaign.

Although Nickolas is not allowing any discussion of his 501(c)4 tax-exempt status on his blog, there has been a considerable roundtable on it on Hayes' site.

And, we're pleased to note, some of our companion conservative blogs are now reporting that an investigation into Nickolas' foundation's tax status, and possible fraud, is ongoing. Quite frankly, we feel that Kentucky's best future is one without Mark Nickolas anywhere near it.

There have also been some accusations, as yet unanswered by Nickolas, that after running Ben Chandler's 2003 gubernatorial campaign and starting out with Chandler's '04 Congressional effort, Nickolas was let go after some money turned up missing. As usual, though, Nickolas won't answer those charges, even to declare that they are total bovine effluvia, and we've seen no proof other than the allegation, so we don't want to get into that beyond hoping and wishing that it's true.

After all, this is the man who whines and cries every time Danny Briscoe is quoted in the newspapers as a Democrat strategist, never mind that Briscoe has won more gubernatorial races in Kentucky than Nickolas.

While we certainly don't support either of the slates pushed by William Hayes or Mark Nickolas, in this little battle we have to take Hayes' side. Nickolas' site has been bad for Kentucky politics. While it's true he has tried to take on his own party's chair (again, probably for personal reason) he has never questioned his side's disgusting conduct in the merit system investigation.

We certainly hope the rumored IRS investigation of the Foundation for Kentucky's Future turns up something juicy, and Nickolas is forced to flee the state -- and since he fancies himself as an equine person, we'll say "on the horse he rode in on!"