Actor Kevin Spacey pleads not guilty to sexual assault charges in UK



Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey pleaded not guilty in U.K. court Thursday to charges of sexually assaulting three men at least a decade ago.

Spacey, 62, entered the plea at a hearing at London's Central Criminal Court, the Associated Press reported.

The famous actor — best known for his roles in "The Usual Suspects" and "American Beauty," as well as the hit Netflix series "House of Cards" — was charged with four counts of sexual assault in May and one count of "causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent."

Spacey has denied all of the charges against him.

The assaults allegedly happened in London between March 2005 and August 2008 and one in western England in April 2013. During this time, Spacey was serving as the artistic director for London's Old Vic theater.

The alleged male victims are now in their 30s and 40s.

At a preliminary hearing in June, Spacey's attorney Patrick Gibbs said the actor "strenuously denies any and all criminality in this case." The presiding judge then granted Spacey bail and permitted him to return to the United States.

After deliberation on Thursday, Justice Mark Wall set a trial date of June 6, 2023. Spacey was permitted to remain on unconditional bail until then, allowing him to freely move in and out of the U.K. until his trial.

The scandal-plagued actor has said he is "confident" he will be able to prove his innocence in court.

Spacey's career went into turmoil beginning in 2017, when fellow actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of making sexual advances towards him at a party in the 1980s, when Rapp was just 14 years old. Spacey said at the time that he didn't remember the alleged incident, but he apologized for "deeply inappropriate drunken behavior."

However, shortly thereafter, filmmaker Tony Montana claimed that Spacey had groped him at a bar in Los Angeles in 2003. And Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos then alleged that Spacey would frequent the Old Vic theater in London, where he would "squeeze whoever caught his attention."

That year, the Old Vic acknowledged it had received 20 allegations against Spacey that spanned "a range of inappropriate behavior" while he was employed as artistic director.

These allegations against Spacey came at the height of the #MeToo movement, after disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein's predatory behavior was exposed. Spacey was subsequently written out of the final season of "House of Cards," and his role in Ridley Scott's 2017 film "All the Money in the World" was cut out of the film, while he was replaced by Christopher Plummer.

Whitlock: Bill Maher and the left’s house of Trump cards teeters at the brink of collapse



Bill Maher is lying. To his audience. And to himself.

He's no longer a loyal Democrat. He's anti-Trump. And his enthusiasm for Trump resistance is rapidly waning.

The liberal comedian's HBO talk show, "Real Time with Bill Maher," has turned into a weekly ray of hope for those of us praying America snaps out of its left-wing fascism revolution.

Every Friday night, it seems, Maher finds a way to trash the woke, and every Saturday morning across social media platforms, conservatives gleefully share his most recent rebuke of the left.

The latest episode of his show convinced me that Maher has been red-pilled and that former President Donald Trump is the sole reason Maher won't admit it. Trump is the only thing holding together the Democratic Party. He fig-leafs progressive insanity.

On Friday, Maher opened his panel discussion addressing the Biden administration's catastrophic handling of our withdrawal from Afghanistan. Maher trashed Trump and then declared that the former president couldn't have made a bigger mess than the current one.

Panelist Jackie Calmes, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, vapidly responded:

"You know how you always say, 'I can't believe Trump did that.' Nothing he did would make you think he'd hit bottom, and then … Well, it could be worse."

That should be the slogan of the Democratic Party: "It could be worse."

To his credit, Maher pushed back and demanded that Calmes explain how things could be worse. She had no answer. She backpedaled, claiming she wasn't trying to defend the Biden administration.

The left is a house of Trump cards. Remove Trump and the progressive movement immediately collapses beneath the weight of its bulls**t. Remove Trump and the left can't defend the authoritarian actions it's taking to overhaul America's cultural norms.

Without Trump, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey would be viewed as treasonous villains for their censorship of free speech. Trump resistance justifies infringement of the Constitution's First Amendment. Big Tech, especially smartphones, has too much influence over American society. On Friday, Maher ended his show explaining the negative impact of our cellular devices. Maher understands that smartphones and social media apps are disconnecting and dividing us.

Trump resistance is the lone catalyst and justification for corporate media framing the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6 as an "insurrection." The insurrection is the Big Lie. No one authentically believes you can overthrow the government with flagpoles, moose heads, and zip ties. The Taliban staged an insurrection in Afghanistan. Trump supporters staged an unruly, criminal protest that never reached the level of violence seen at a typical Antifa or Black Lives Matter protest.

Without Trump, the left would have to vigorously defend its contention that men can be "birthing people." It would also be forced to defend allowing biological men to compete against women in sports.

Would America's laissez-faire policy at our southern border exist without Trump? Our immigration policy makes no sense. It can't be defended. It doesn't serve the greater good of our country. It is as big a mess as Afghanistan. We're allowing illegal immigrants to flood our country simply because doing so is anti-Trump.

Critical race theory depends on Trump resistance for legitimacy. It can't survive scrutiny and analysis. On Friday, Maher and his interview guest, gay conservative writer Andrew Sullivan, mocked the New York Times 1619 Project and complained that the left has moved away from the goal of a color-blind society.

You should watch Friday's show. It was amazing. Maher flirted with multiple third rails, including suggesting that vaccines and masks shouldn't be regarded as a more important response to COVID than exercise, losing weight, and a healthy diet.

Watching Maher on Friday made me ponder what the world would be like if Trump abandoned politics. Would it hasten the collapse of the fascist left? If you removed the Trump card, would it force the fake leftists to confront the fraudulence of the rest of the progressives' hand?

I believe, at this point, the majority of leftists are fake. Black people, the house pets of liberals, are required to hate Trump and all conservatives. Gangbangers and drug dealers command more respect in the black community than black Trump supporters.

There's nearly as much pressure on white people. Who wants the baggage of being assumed racist for espousing conservative beliefs? Disavow Trump and supporting leftist policy protects you from accusations of homophobia, racism, and misogyny. Pretending to be a Democrat exempts you from being held accountable for any violations of political correctness. Late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel co-hosted "The Man Show" and performed in blackface. He's in good standing. Meanwhile, "Jeopardy" just canceled its brand-new host because of things he said on a podcast no one listened to 10 years ago.

Maher recognizes this hypocrisy. And he likely knows that he would be canceled, too, if he didn't keep up the charade of being a loyal Democrat and devout Trump hater.

Trump hate is the Democratic platform. It justifies Afghanistan, the border, 20 new genders, censorship, critical racism theory, mandating experimental vaccines, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Sometimes I think Trump has proven his point. He awakened the public to the swamp, the financial alliance among global corporations, political elites, and America's adversaries.

Does he have more to offer? Or is he now an impediment, a blinding force that stops well-intentioned people from seeing the damage the other side is doing to America?

Could Trump save America by stepping aside and fully exposing the lunacy of the Left?

What I'm suggesting reminds me of the strategy that civil rights workers used to defeat segregationists. Bible-carrying men and women put on their Sunday-best clothes and let photographers and cameramen document the behavior of bigots. The images won the civil rights movement.

Compelling liberals to defend their agenda without their trusty Trump card would unmask their wickedness.

Former Marxist Thomas Sowell tells Mark Levin how 'systemic racism' isn't backed by facts

Monday on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin interviewed economist and Hoover Institution senior fellow Dr. Thomas Sowell, author of the new book, "Charter Schools and Their Enemies." After discussing the benefits of charter schools as described in his book, Levin asked Sowell about his youthful embrace of Marxism and why leftist ideology cannot stand up to facts.

"The Left has the better vision; it's only when you turn from the vision to facts that suddenly everything collapses like a house of cards," Sowell said.

"I think many, if not most, of the people in the movement that created the Soviet Union were probably idealists wanting a better world. They had no idea what kind of world they were in fact creating," he added.

Levin also asked Sowell what he thinks the Left today means in protests against "systemic racism."

"I have no idea what they mean, and I'm not sure they have any idea what they mean, in the sense that you can ask them a factual question and get a factual answer," Sowell responded. "For example, one of the things I came across in writing a previous book was the poverty rate between blacks and whites. And, if I remember the numbers correctly, something like 22 percent of blacks were in poverty, 11 percent of whites were in poverty. Which, ‘Well, that shows the racism.’"

But Sowell looked further into the numbers and found that the poverty rate among black married couples for the year he researched was  7.5 percent.

"In other words, black married couples not only have a lower poverty rate than blacks as a whole, they have a lower poverty rate than whites as a whole,” Sowell explained. The facts did not support the allegation of systemic racism.

Listen:

Sowell tied the way the Left thinks to how our school system is failing America.

"They're not taught how to test things against facts; they're just taught to repeat these slogans. And when you try to talk to them in terms of facts, they think that you're trying to confuse them."

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