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kentuck

(110,950 posts)
Fri May 4, 2012, 05:46 PM May 2012

President Barack Obama honors Kentucky basketball champions

About 30 minutes ago:


http://www.kentucky.com/2012/05/04/2175858/kentucky-basketball-teams-meeting.html

<snip>
The last-minute invitation caused a minor political dust-up: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican and one of the president's biggest adversaries in Congress, was invited to attend but declined. The reason: He'd planned to attend the festivities in the run-up to Saturday's Kentucky Derby, another storied state sports tradition. But the conflict appeared to be more a quirk of the calendar than anything else.

A spokesman for the UK athletics department said the team would be on a tight schedule, returning to Kentucky quickly so no one missed any pre-Derby events.

The White House trip caps a whirlwind year for the players, some of whom were not old enough to vote in the last presidential election.

"It's one of those moments for these players that they have probably thought about without us even knowing that it was important to them," Calipari said. "So I'm excited about the opportunity for them to meet the president of the United States, the leader of the free world and someone who is trying to make a difference in their lives."

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