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Illinois Next Gay Marriage Battlefield?

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Land Of Lincoln Set To Get Marriage Equality?

Illinois State Senator Heather Steans today introduced a bill that could make Illinois the next state to offer marriage equality. A matching bill has been repeatedly introduced in the Illinois House by openly-gay State Representative Greg Harris.

The two lawmakers wrote an Op-Ed, published yesterday in the Windy City Times, writing,

“Over and over again, our collective American community has learned the painful lesson that separate can never be equal. In the 19th century, women across this country came together to fight for the basic right to vote. In the 20th century, it took a brave young girl in Kansas to teach us that we cannot provide equal education in segregated classrooms. Marriage equality is our civil rights battle for the 21st century. When one of us is discriminated against, we are all discriminated against.”

Bernard Cherkasov, Chief Executive Officer of Equality Illinois, said of the bill,

“This is not an issue of sacred versus secular – there are plenty of synagogues and churches that both recognize and perform same-sex marriages.”

“Rather, marriage is a civil right – plain and simple.  The state cannot have a civil institution of marriage – with its plethora of benefits, rights, and responsibilities – and exclude from it an entire class of citizens.”

Thinking about the bill’s chances, here are a few facts about Illinois.

Looking at twenty one different data points, the Associated Press named Illinois the “most average state”

Almost thirteen million people live in the “Land of Lincoln.” 75% are Christian, of those, 30% are Roman Catholic. Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists account for 1% each. 81% are white, 16% are black.

The largest city in Illinois, Chicago, where Barack and Michelle Obama made their home, has a population of close to three million.

Overall, the state has become heavily Democratic.

Pat Quinn, the Democratic Governor, this spring said he supports civil unions for same sex couples, but has not offered an opinion in favor of gay marriage. His predecessor, the disgraced Rod Blagojevich, signed a gay rights law in 2005. From 1977 – 2003, all Illinois Governors had been Republicans.

A 2005 poll put 31% of residents supporting gay marriage, and another 34% supporting civil unions.

Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley supports same sex marriage, as do a number of Democratic politicians, including Dan Hynes, who is running for governor,  Illinois’ U.S. Rep Mike Quigley, and Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who is running for U.S. Senate.

Let’s hope.

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BREAKING NEWS

Trump Files Sweeping Legal Motion to Try to Block Georgia Grand Jury Findings and District Attorney Fani Willis

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Attorneys for Donald Trump Monday morning filed a sweeping 483-page legal motion asking a Georgia court to block any report from the Fulton County special grand jury and any evidence the grand jury may find, and to force District Attorney Fani Willis to recuse in the investigation into his unlawful attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in that state.

The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery first reported the filing. The Atlanta Journal Constitution also reports Trump’s attorneys have filed the motion.

Lawfare Blog’s Anna Bower, who has been covering the Fulton County case, calls the filing “mammoth.”

The news comes just hours after reports District Attorney Willis could be considering RICO, or conspiracy and racketeering charges against Trump.

READ MORE: ‘This Man Is a Criminal’: George Conway Busts GOP’s ‘Completely Ridiculous’ Trump Defense

This is a breaking news and developing story. 

Image via Shutterstock

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‘RICO’: Trump Could Be Facing Racketeering and Conspiracy Charges Used to Prosecute Organized Crime

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Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is reportedly considering RICO charges against Donald Trump in her probe of his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, CNN reports. RICO charges are generally used when prosecuting organized crime cases.

“The reason that I am a fan of RICO is, I think jurors are very, very intelligent,” Willis had said last year about a different case. “They want to know what happened. They want to make an accurate decision about someone’s life. And so RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor’s office and law enforcement to tell the whole story.”

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a law professor and an NBC News/MSNBC contributor, Monday morning on Twitter, pointing to CNN’s report, said Willis “is seriously considering a RICO charge.” She repeated that claim on MSNBC shortly after.

READ MORE: Experts Warn Trump Is Encouraging Violence One Day After He Announces Rally at Waco on 30th Anniversary of Siege

CNN reports, “Investigators have a large volume of substantial evidence related to a possible conspiracy from inside and outside the state, including recordings of phone calls, emails, text messages, documents, and testimony before a special grand jury. Their work, the source said, underscores the belief that the push to help Trump was not just a grassroots effort that originated inside the state.”

On-air Monday morning, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor, explained conspiracy, racketeering, and RICO, saying, “conspiracy” is “a loaded word. But all it really means is an agreement, a meeting of the minds between two or more people to commit a crime.”

But he added, “if we go up to racketeering, now, this is a really powerful tool the prosecutors use. What you have to do is show two things. First of all, the existence of what we call a racketeering enterprise, that can be a Mafia family, that can be a drug trafficking organization, but it could also be a corporation or a political entity, and then you have to show that they engage in what we call a pattern of racketeering activity, meaning that they committed two or more crimes in an organized fashion, which brings us to this other new piece of information. There’s a third phone call we already know about, of course, the infamous phone call to Brad Raffensperger. ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes.’ There’s also a public recording of Donald Trump talking to this investigator, Francis Watson, when he tells her, ‘when the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.'”

READ MORE: ‘Reacting to a Cult Leader’: Trump Supporters Organizing to ‘Stock Up on Weaponry’ Says GOP Adviser

“Now we know, Trump also called the former Georgia Speaker of the House asking him to convene a special session,” Honig continued. “As we know we’ve heard from some of the grand jurors special grand jurors who’ve come out, they’ve told us that they recommended indictments for more than a dozen people.”

Watch CNN’s report below or at this link.

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‘This Man Is a Criminal’: George Conway Busts GOP’s ‘Completely Ridiculous’ Trump Defense

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George Conway ripped Republicans for defending lifelong “criminal” Donald Trump against a looming indictment in New York.

The ex-president apparently expects to be charged in the Stormy Daniels hush money payoff, and the conservative attorney told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he richly deserves it.

“The Republicans are behaving like complete disgraces,” Conway said. “They’re basically saying that, by saying that Trump is being persecuted, they’re essentially saying, you can’t touch Trump and Trump is above the law. Whatever slack you might have wanted to cut a former president, that was gone after Jan. 6. This man is a recidivist criminal, he’s committed fraud all his life, he’s lied all of his life.”

“This Stormy Daniels thing was something he cooked up,” Conway added. “The notion that [Michael] Cohen is going to be discredited on it is ridiculous given the paper trail. We see the checks signed by Donald Trump. It’s hard to say he is being picked on for paying $130,000 in hush money to a porn star and concealing that and using a straw donor, which was Cohen, to do that, and saying he’s being persecuted somehow when no one has ever done that it is completely ridiculous.”

RELATED: Georgia weighs slapping Trump with racketeering charges: CNN

Watch the video below or at this link.


 

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