Free Republic

California politicians are aiming to entrench and expand an Obama-administration policy that has questionable implications for the rights of the accused. Senate Bill 967 would require California universities whose students are receiving financial assistance to change their sexual-misconduct policies. Colleges would be required to follow a standard of “affirmative consent” from students engaging in sexual activities and follow a “preponderance of evidence” standard for disciplinary measures. The bill, co-sponsored by California state senators Kevin De León (D., Los Angeles) and Hannah-Beth Jackson (D., Santa Barbara), is in part a reaction to the newly established White House Task Force to Protect...

Do American young women deserve a sacred, federally-protected right to engage in reckless, irresponsible and even illegal behavior with no fear of consequences? Vice President Biden seems to think so. After a White House meeting in January to announce a new task force to curb sexual assaults on campus, the ever-effusive VEEP declared that every woman should expect such federal protection “no matter what she’s wearing, no matter whether she’s in a bar, in a dormitory, in the back seat of a car, on a street, drunk or sober.” His remarks accompanied the release of a new report by the...

Orson Scott Card, whose science-fiction book Ender's Game is being released as a film, is a conservative Mormon with a long history of attacking gay people and their rights. He's also one of the most respected sci-fi writers of all time. This has really got sci-fi fans and gay rights activists in a moral dilemma as the momentum for the film builds up to its November 1 release. Orson Scott Card has gone far beyond opposing gay marriage. In 1990, he wrote in Mormon publication Sunstone Magazine, “Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately...

To the shock of America, Katie Couric admitted she shared an intimate evening with Larry King. Yes, the bespectacled, suspender wearing, grandfatherly TV-news journalist who is 23 years Couric’s senior. On last night’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Couric recounted in striking detail about the Italian dinner date she went on with King 26 years ago in Washington, DC. After dinner, King drove them back to his apartment where he tried to put the moves on her. “So we sat there and what can I say, he lunged,” Couric said (to the delight/horror of everyone watching probably.)

American University Erupts Over Date Rape: Girls Who Drink and Go to Frat Parties Deserve Date Rape, Says Student Newspaper Columnist Today begins Sexual Abuse Awareness and Prevention month -- and American University is in an uproar over an anti-feminist diatribe in the student newspaper charging that some women who survive date rape invited it. "Let's get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI [fraternity] party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy's room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK?" columnist Alex Knepper, 20, wrote...

Date rape has been in our lexicon for a few decades now, fact is a majority of people have become quite familiar with the lines that separate consensual and non consensual sex. However, our present attitude about rape was not always the same as it is today. There has always been warnings to girls that they should not allow themselves to be in certain situations that could lead to unwanted advances from boys. There has been many a woman who has claimed they were raped while the only defense the man had was the girl allowed things to progress...

I’m going to need some Advil and a cold compress, please. I’m the Massachusetts Electorate, and I have what is bar none the absolute worst hangover of my entire voting life...Think, Electorate, think. What did I do? This much I’m starting to remember. Martha and I walked into the party and everything seemed to be going fine. She wasn’t talking much, but she never really does, and she wasn’t exactly pushing me to bare my soul, either... And now I’m vaguely recalling that stranger across the room, the one in the barn jacket who kept smiling at me and seemed...

My life is proof that something good can come from something so terrible. And I don't regret my last minute change of heart one bit.

Having my rapist's baby is the best thing I ever did: After being date raped, Miriam was horrified to fall pregnant, but her little girl is proof good can come of evil 09th September 2009 The party was a rare night out. Raised in a devout, Christian family in Reading, Berks, I was more used to going to choir practice than clubs with friends. But I had just landed a job with a telemarketing company and, when the new director announced he was taking us all out for a drink, I didn't want to seem unfriendly, so I agreed to...

A retired NYPD officer raped a woman after drugging her at a Bronx bar and hauling her to a motel in Westchester, police said. Greenburgh detectives charged ex-cop Jose Arroyo, 46, with the November rape and kidnapping of the 31-year-old woman. Arroyo, who left the force in 2005, slipped a drug in the woman's drink while they chatted at Doyle's Pub in Throggs Neck, police said. ">Snip<"

(Baby It's Cold Outside playing) GLENN: See, maybe this is just the -- maybe this is just the negative side of me, but... I think this -- you know, stop this song for a second. Maybe it's just me but this seems like, oh, this is kind of cute. But then I heard this done by Dean Martin and Dean Martin you know you couldn't trust. I mean, he was a friend of Sinatra. You know what I'm saying? Unions, I'm just saying. So then I hear it from Dean Martin and I think, there's something here. There's something much...

WARNING: Some Graphic Language I read occasionally of former Weatherman Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, both now not only accepted, despite their bombing campaign against America in the 1960s and 70s, but successful , establishment educators whose opinions on social issues are taken seriously. Every time I see Ayers’ name I shudder with fear and rage and realize that I will never be able to erase the mark he left on my life one evening 40 years ago. It was at the Undergraduate Library at the University of Michigan on a Friday night in November 1965. I was...

A man who was stopped for speeding was arrested after three gallons of the "date-rape drug" GHB were found in his car, enough for 20,000 doses, authorities said. Daniel Gertz, 37, of Los Angeles, was taken into custody on multiple felony charges including possession and transportation of a narcotic for sale, according to the California Highway Patrol. GHB, which stands for gamma-hydroxybutyrate, creates a euphoric, drunken feeling in low doses and can knock people out in higher amounts. Authorities said Gertz was transporting the drug to a party in San Francisco when he was stopped Wednesday for driving 88 mph...

Is Kucinich's bulldog going after Glenn Beck? Posted by Stephen Koff June 08, 2007 15:21PM Dennis Kucinich has consulted with a lawyer about radio talk host Glenn Beck's on-air comments knocking Kucinich's marriage. The lawyer has written to Beck's bosses. But beyond that, Kucinich so far will give no details. "That's true," he said today when asked whether he was discussing the matter with a lawyer. "A letter has been written to the executives of Clear Channel and Premiere and we're awaiting a response." Clear Channel is the parent of Premiere Radio Networks, which syndidates Beck's show on more than...

The stories most of the women told were strikingly similar: They first crossed paths with the man on an online dating site. They agreed to meet him for drinks. Then, they said, things get foggy. They don't remember much, just glimpses, they said: pushing the man away as they lay naked in bed, waking up and feeling as if something very bad had happened. But did Jeffrey Marsalis, 33, drug the women and force them to have sex with him, as prosecutors implied, or, as his lawyers say, were the acts consensual? A jury may get to decide. Common Pleas...

"A Coast Guard cadet accused of rape and other sex offenses was a manipulative senior who preyed on lonely women, a prosecutor said Tuesday in opening arguments at the defendant's court-martial."

Following a slew of media reports about the increase in drug-induced rapes, importer Benny Kalman has announced that the first consignments of the little cards that can detect the presence of date rape drugs GHB and Ketamine will arrive in the country as soon as next week. "I saw the product a year and a half ago but was not interested in it as there were still no reports of date rape in Israel then," Kalman told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. "Sadly, everything gets here eventually and a few weeks ago I realized that this problem was growing in...

HOURS after boarding the luxury cruise that would result in her death, Dianne Brimble's friend warned her of a group of men who had been ogling female passengers, a Sydney inquest was told today. The next morning, Ms Brimble, 42, was found dead in a cabin belonging to some of those same men. Police allege she had been given a lethal dose of the date rape drug gamma-hydroxybutyrate before being sexually assaulted. The inquest was told Ms Brimble had been ecstatic, setting out on the "holiday of a lifetime" with family and friends on the P&O liner Pacific Sky on...

WOMEN who are raped while drunk face losing the chance to bring their attackers to justice after a legal ruling on the eve of new licensing laws. A High Court judge yesterday threw out the case of a student who claimed that she was raped while drunk and unconscious on the basis that “drunken consent is still consent”. The judgment came hours before the sweeping relaxation of Britain licensing laws which introduces 24-hour drinking in pubs for the first time. The change prompted police and doctors to warn that Britain was facing an explosion of binge drinking. The prosecution in...

WOMEN who are raped while drunk face losing the chance to bring their attackers to justice after a legal ruling on the eve of new licensing laws. A High Court judge yesterday threw out the case of a student who claimed that she was raped while drunk and unconscious on the basis that “drunken consent is still consent”. The judgment came hours before the sweeping relaxation of Britain licensing laws which introduces 24-hour drinking in pubs for the first time. The change prompted police and doctors to warn that Britain was facing an explosion of binge drinking. The prosecution in...