Suspect99

June 2009

Steve Beshear and possible legal threats against User:TylerKnew and Wikipedia

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! If you look at the edit history, I did not write that Beshear and Kelley were best friends, User:Lkelley1944 did. There are three sources regarding their personal relationship; two newspaper articles that discuss their continued friendship and close association, a YouTube video featuring Kelley discussing Steve Beshear, as well as this recent article on PageOne Kentucky, the preeminent political blog in Kentucky. Kelley is notable due to his previous record as County Attorney for both Ballard County, KY and Lee County, KY (not something a lot of people can pull off easily), his service on the Beshear gubernatorial transition team, and his current leadership position within the Kentucky Democratic Party.

I would like to know if your statement that "Now I don't know about wiki rules, but if you keep throwing things like this around I could be considered libelous acts and that is a much bigger issue then an edit ban." constitutes a legal threat, because if it does, that would lead to an immediate response under the rules of Wikipedia and if you're making a legal threat towards me personally, there are four things I need to tell you. Firstly, you are obviously not an attorney nor have had any kind of legal training, otherwise you would understand how to prove libel. Secondly, any attorney willing to take your case would be disbarred in many jurisdictions for bringing it. Thirdly, if you are making a legal threat, know that I would take great pleasure in filing countersuit for emotional distress and legal fees. Fourthly, do your research. You really don't scare me. Please let either myself or an administrator know if you are making legal threats. As I said, take a look at the references, which chronicle a long professional and personal relationship, including service as "best man" at Beshear's wedding, and judge it for what it is. However, if you have a problem with the tone of the Steve Beshear article or have a problem with the statement, take it up on the Talk:Steve Beshear page. Blindly removing content without discretion is not the way to handle this.

This being said, I am going to restore the Steve Beshear article back to the last non-disruptive edit and am going to remove the sentence "They have been best of friends..." (a direct quote from Kelley, I might add) because it's superfluous but will retain the reference. I also intend to add that he was a fraternity brother of Congressman Ed Whitfield (something else in the sources but then again I didn't write it) or is the fact that Whitfield is a Republican going to cause a problem? For simplicity, please respond here. Thanks!TylerKnew (talk) 21:09, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, I thought you were the one adding the post about Larry Kelly to the site, I apologize as I stated earlier I am new to this and created an account solely for this reason. I believe the person going to great length to link the Governor to Larry Kelly in an unfavorable manner is a person who has a personal, and misguided grudge against the Governor. And the libelous remark was intended for him, so again I will apologize for that. Now I don't know about the YouTube post, but I believe the pageone entry was a blog post and was posted by this same fellow in question, and as for the KDP and transition things I can't say for sure but, knowing people within both organizations I hadn't heard the mans name until now.

However seeing how you have taken the bias comment off and I can dispute them going to college and being in the same Fraternity I don't have much else to complain about.

Fair enough. However, bear in mind that many of the statements regarding the relationship between Kelley and the Governor were added by User:Lkelley1944. Matter of fact, that user created the Kelley article and uploaded the pictures of Kelley and Beshear. Later, information about Kelley's past was added to the article. The YouTube video features Kelley talking and singing about Beshear, while being familiar with PageOne, the chances of PageOne being involved with writing this article are practically nil (I'd bet my house on it; they're pretty respected journalists/bloggers). Having analyzed the sources, it's not libelous and I'm assuming that you meant to say that since you can't dispute them going to college you don't have much to complain about. Thanks! TylerKnew (talk) 00:49, 19 June 2009 (UTC)