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One of the most prominent names associated with Kentucky bourbon is Beam.

The Beam family began making whiskey in 1795, but it was Jim Beam who put the product on the map, building the brand bearing his name after Prohibition.

Today, Jim Beam bourbon and the company’s other varieties of spirits are among the most popular in the world.

Jim Beam’s great-grandson, Fred Noe, has documented the colorful history of the family business and his rise from bottling line worker to Jim Beam master distiller.

Jeffersonville High School principal James Sexton has been assigned to lead Clark County Middle/High School after being put on paid administrative leave last week for reasons that were never publicly disclosed.

Sexton is also running for Jefferson County Board of Education's District 7 seat.

Greater Clark County Schools released the following statement Thursday night:

Indiana Republican Senate nominee Richard Mourdock is blasting Democratic candidate Joe Donnelly for a blistering ad released by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Thursday afternoon.

The spot goes after Mourdock's controversial comments about rape pregnancies, and demands he apologize for the remarks. A day after, Mourdock said his words were inarticulate and said he was sorry if people misinterpreted them.

Watch:

A lawsuit filed in Jefferson Circuit Court seeks to kick Republican state Senate candidate Chris Thieneman off the ballot, citing residency issues.

Thieneman is a Louisville businessman and political activist who is running against Democratic incumbent Perry Clark for 37th State Senate District seat.

A motion has been filed in Jefferson Circuit Court to disqualify state senate candidate Chris Thieneman. Read it here.

Updated: Tonight's reading at 21C has been canceled due to Hurricane Sandy-related flight cancelations. Sarabande Books is working on rescheduling the event for 2013.

Justin Torres' surprising and haunting debut novel "We the Animals" introduces us to three near-feral brothers and their young parents, a white mother and Puerto Rican father from Brooklyn who marry when the mother is only 14 and pregnant with the oldest boy. They move to a small town in upstate New York, where they are outsiders even among the other poor families, and struggle against the limitations of their poverty, lack of education and youth.

“They’re these city kids, this mixed-race couple, in this tiny little town,” says Torres. “There aren’t many supporting characters in this book. There are the boys, and there’s Ma and Paps, and it’s very essential in that way. I wanted it to be, to emphasize the claustrophobia of the family, how much they rely on each other and how much they can’t escape each other.”

(Read an excerpt of "We the Animals.")

Excerpt from Justin Torres' new novel, We the Animals.

"Never-Never Time"

We all three sat at the kitchen table in our raincoats, and Joel smashed tomatoes with a small rubber mallet. We had seen it on TV: a man with an untamed mustache and a mallet slaughtering vegetables, and people in clear plastic ponchos soaking up the mess, having the time of their lives. We aimed to smile like that. We felt the pop and smack of tomato guts exploding; the guts dripped down the walls and landed on our cheeks and foreheads and congealed in our hair. When we ran out of to­matoes, we went into the bathroom and pulled out tubes of our mother’s lotions from under the sink. We took off our raincoats and positioned ourselves so that when the mallet slammed down and forced out the white cream, it would get everywhere, the creases of our shut-tight eyes and the folds of our ears.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is defending Republican Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock and argues the GOP nominee's controversial comments on rape will not affect this year’s election results.

Paul was in Louisville Thursday speaking to the Rotary Club, where he talked mostly about the gridlock in Congress, fiscal policy and foreign affairs. But the senator’s political action committee—Rand PAC—is stepping in the middle of the closely watched Indiana Senate race.

In college football, the Louisville Cardinals host Cincinnati Friday in their annual battle for the Keg of Nails.

The Cards are unbeaten at 7-0; the Bearcats are 5-1 with their first loss coming last week at Toledo. Both teams are 1-0 in the Big East Conference.

U of L coach Charlie Strong says this is one of the biggest games of his two-and-a-half seasons in Louisville.

The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky says he’s pleased with the outcome of a trial that involved two defendants who attacked a gay man, although the convictions do not include a federal hate crime.

37-year-old David Jenkins and his 20-year-old cousin Anthony Jenkins were found guilty Wednesday of kidnapping Kevin Pennington. Prosecutors alleged that the assault happened because of Pennington’s sexual orientation, but the jury acquitted the Jenkins men of those charges.