Brock Turner, convicted of sexual assault after attacking an unconscious woman in 2015, lost his appeal Wednesday.

Turner’s case drew international attention in 2016 after Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced the former student to six months in county jail, and critics condemned the sentence as a wrist slap. Stanford Law Professor Michele Dauber gathered nearly 100,000 signatures in support of a ballot measure to recall Persky, and in June he became the first California judge in 86 years to be voted out of office, with 60 percent of the vote against him.

In plain sight, for decades! Though Weinstein's targets were women rather than children, the way power and silence worked for him reminds me of UK entertainer Jimmy Savile, who occupied a similarly dark-yet-obvious position in the firmament of leering celebrity sociopaths. The way everyone knew. The way people would blurt it out in inferences, uncomfortable jokes, and off-kilter quips. The way Letterman fawns ("Thank God for Harvey") when he realizes he just got too close ("I'm fed up with Harvey's behavior"). These interactions now make Paltrow and Letterman, like Seth McFarlane, targets for criticism. But I'm not sure it's fair because it's not as if anyone else was saying anything, and fear was presumably why they didn't say more. Read the rest

A GOP lawmaker swears he's not the notorious internet misogynist who said this... Read the rest

Newly released court documents show that Brock Turner, the former Stanford student convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman outside of a frat house, behaved in an “aggressive” and predatory way towards other women just one week before the attack.

The 471 pages of documents released Friday by the Santa Clara County Superior Court show that Turner lied to investigators about having no experience with using drugs and alcohol before college. Read the rest

“Trainwreck” director Judd Apatow as Bill Cosby on The Tonight Show. Read the rest