Legal Issues and Politics 1/27

Well known NYC anchor Greg Kelly has been accused of rape from a woman he met back in October 2011. The woman claims that she met the TV anchor on the street and they went out for drinks. They returned to her workplace, a law office, and that's where the assault happened. However, this is where things get fishy. The two continued to text and call each other afterwards. The boyfriend discovered the text messages and confronted her and that is when she tells him she was raped. The woman's boyfriend then contacted Greg's father, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, and said Greg ruined his girl's life. The Commissioner told the boyfriend to write a letter and now the NY County D.A. Office is investigating the matter to avoid a conflict of interest from Raymond Kelly and NYPD. Greg is said to be cooperating fully with the investigation.

Hillary Clinton said yesterday that she won’t be staying on very long into Obama’s second term. But she isn’t ruling out future political options after that.

The Bill & Melina Gates Foundation renewed its commitment this year to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria by giving $750 MILLION! That is so awesome!

Indiana’s GOP-sponsored creationism bill has passed the Senate Education Committee and will head to the floor. The bill would have public schools teach creationism as a fact and an opposing view to “science-based evolution.”

Washington state’s GOP tried to sink the marriage equality bill with poison amendments but lucky that didn’t work out. The decision is now to vote on it right away and risk the Right getting the 120,577 signatures to put it on the ballot or wait until the last minutes of the legislative session so they have fewer days to get the signatures. Signatures can’t be collected until after the bill is passed but before July 6.

Chris Christie saying something stupid: "The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South. It was our political institutions that were holding things back. I don't think there's anything necessarily so special about this particular issue that it must be handled by a legislature. Why would that be? I don't understand how anybody could argue with letting the people decide this issue. Let's stop hiding behind this 'we don't put civil rights on the ballot' thing. Ya know, please. These folks would put anything on the ballot if they thought they could win." (Yep, because all those Black people who were killed in the South chose to be killed and if their civil rights were put up for a long, they totally would have been treated equally.)

Did we really need a study for this? A new study reveals adults with lower intelligence are more prone to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, which, because they stress a resistance to change, also leads to prejudice. Duh!

The new Canadian quarter celebrates marriage equality! How cool is that?! Artist Gary Taxali talks about his collaboration with the Royal Canadian Mint: “The coin that Taxali is most proud of is the wedding-themed coin, featuring two intertwining rings that represent a gender-neutral marriage. ‘I live in a country where gender is irrelevant and the coin has to represent that. I thought it would be a nice thing to represent that and to show two rings; is one a man and one a woman? Two men? Two women? It doesn’t matter what they are, they represent the union of two people.’”  Even though the launch was just last week, the Royal Mint is already sold out of the first run!

Three years after a never-enacted marriage equality law was repealed at the ballot box, Maine’s activists will attempt to repeal the repeal. They have delivered the signatures necessary to put it on the ballot so the state should be able to vote on it in November. Currently polls show 55% of Maine is in favor of marriage equality. And the best part is that NOM can’t work in Maine this time because they are in trouble for breaking 12 different campaign laws the last time they were in the state.

Sophia Stockton, a junior at a junior at Mid-America Nazarene University in Olathe in Kansas was scared shitless when a bag of white powered fell a text book on terrorism. She took it to the cops who told her it was just cocaine — Like, a few hundred dollars worth.