Free Republic

A day after a career criminal was arrested in the fatal shooting of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant at the lavish Beverly Hills home she shared with her husband Clarence, a 90-year-old music producer inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year, her family issued a statement that read in part, “Now, let justice be served.” But in Los Angeles, where left-wing lawmakers and activists have pushed a litany of progressive reforms that help violent criminals spend less-time behind bars, justice is not only fleeting — it’s twisted, critics say.

After two years of rising crime in Los Angeles, residents of upscale neighborhoods are finally starting to freak out after a spate of ‘flash mob‘ lootings at high-end retail stores have been accompanied with a disturbing increase in violent crimes committed in the suburbs, according to the LA Times. Private security officers guard the Beverly Hills home where Jacqueline Avant, the wife of music producer Clarence Avant, was shot and killed Wednesday. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)Crews of burglars publicly smashing their way into Los Angeles’ most exclusive stores. Robbers following their victims, including a star of “The Real...

BEVERLY HILLS (CBSLA) — Jacqueline Avant, the wife of music executive Clarence Avant, was shot to death Wednesday in an apparent home invasion in Beverly Hills... ...Avant was the wife of 90-year-old music executive Clarence Avant and mother-in-law of Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos. Clarence Avant, who was not injured in the shooting, is known as the “Godfather of Black Music” ....

Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos has voiced shock that a censorship debate has sprung up around the controversial Cuties film after a Texas grand jury indicted the streamer over the feature. In comments at the virtual Mipcom market on Monday, Sarandos said Cuties was misunderstood in America after the indictment claimed it “appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Defending the Maïmouna Doucouré-directed feature, which focuses on an 11-year-old Senegalese-French girl, who is torn between her traditional Muslim family and her dance troupe friends, Sarandos said: “It’s a little surprising in...

Newly unsealed court documents put Harvey Weinstein’s Rolodex on full display. The fallen movie mogul - who is now a convicted rapist facing up to 29 years in jail and will be sentenced Wednesday - once tried to save his career by emailing his famous peers, including billionaires, powerful agents and Hollywood titans. In emails, reviewed by Variety on Tuesday afternoon at the New York City criminal courthouse, where roughly 1,000 pages of documents were unsealed, Weinstein wrote to the likes of Michael Bloomberg, Quentin Tarantino, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Tim Cook and Eddy Cue. The...

Netflix has become the first major Hollywood company to take a stand against Georgia’s recent passage of a strict abortion law, with chief content officer Ted Sarandos saying Tuesday that the streaming giant would “rethink our entire investment in Georgia” if legislation known as the “heartbeat bill” became state law.

Barack and Michelle Obama are raking in the cash, thanks to the influence of a former campaign supporter. The couple last week ( signed a creative production deal with Netflix) that one entertainment-industry source said could be valued at more than $50 million. Ted Sarandos, a major campaign contributor for Obama and the streaming giant’s creative-content chief who oversees an $8 billion budget, helped to broker the deal, the source told The Post.

A commission headed by Anita Hill and composed of and funded by some of the most powerful names in Hollywood has been created to tackle widespread sexual abuse and harassment in the media and entertainment industries. Called the Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, the initiative was spearheaded by Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm; Maria Eitel, the co-chair of the Nike Foundation; the powerhouse attorney Nina Shaw; and Freada Kapor Klein, the venture capitalist who helped pioneer surveys on sexual harassment decades ago. The commission’s mission, according to a news release, is to “tackle the...