Associated Press

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is vowing to repeal President Obama’s sweeping health care law.  He spoke Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. 

Senator McConnell stood next to a seven-foot tower of 20,000 pages of health care rules and regulations.  He called it a “monument to liberalism,” and said Republicans will not back down from the fight.

“Obamacare should be repealed root and branch," exclaimed McConnell.

As McConnell faces re-election next year, political observers are waiting to see if the five-term senator gets a challenge within the GOP from tea party backers. 

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee responded to McConnell’s speech in a statement by Chair Matt Canter.

“Even many conservative Republicans acknowledge that Mitch McConnell is a huge part of the problem in Washington," suggested Canter.

House State Government Committee Chairman Brent Yonts says lawmakers need to deal with legislative redistricting this year to avoid chaos heading into next year's elections.

With all 100 House seats and half of the 38 Senate seats up for election in 2014, Yonts said it would be good to have new boundaries drawn sooner rather than later.

The House has passed a redistricting plan. But the Republican-controlled Senate has opted to wait until next year to deal with the issue.

Redistricting is supposed to occur every 10 years to account for population changes found by the U.S. Census Bureau. Lawmakers passed a plan last year only to have it struck down by the Supreme Court.

A southern Kentucky official has posted records from a jail investigation online.

The move comes after the Glasgow Daily Times won a months-long battle in Barren Circuit Court over access to the records. The case began when the newspaper filed an open records request last year with Barren Fiscal Court. The court ruled in February that the county had to hand over an unredacted copy of the report, which was produced by a private investigator for the Fiscal Court at a cost of $3,500.

The trial of a Hendersonville woman charged with murder in the smothering deaths of her newborn twins got underway Tuesday morning.

Twenty-six-year-old Lindsay Lowe told police she hid her pregnancy from everyone. She said she gave birth to the boys at home on Sept. 12, 2011, and smothered them so her parents would not hear their cries.

Police have said the baby's father was a family friend, not Lowe's fiance.

District Attorney General Ray Whitley has said he plans to argue the affair gave Lowe a motive to conceal her pregnancy by killing the twins. Defense attorneys have argued that Lowe was mentally ill.

On Monday, a jury of seven men and five women was seated. Prosecutors have said they will not seek the death penalty.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo is calling again for passage of a measure to shore up government pensions in the waning days of the legislative session.

Stumbo said Wednesday that he wants to avoid the expense of a special legislative session that Gov. Steve Beshear has pledged to call if lawmakers don't reach an agreement on pension reform.

The Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-led Senate are at odds over competing proposals for restoring solvency to the pension system, which has a $33 billion unfunded liability.

The Senate proposal would create a 401(k)-like hybrid retirement plan for new employees. The House opposes that idea. The House wants to generate money for pensions from the state lottery and from horse racing tracks. But the Senate is balking at that proposal.