Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Simon Says by Gillian Colbert High Court: Florida Death Penalty System Is Unconstitutional. WASHINGTON (CBSMiami) – The Governor, his attorney general, and court officials across the state are all reviewing the decision from the high court that could drastically change Florida’s death penalty system. In an 8-1 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the system Florida courts have used to put inmates on death row for decades, saying it wrongly gives judges more authority than the jury. The ruling centers around Timothy Hurst who murdered his manager at a restaurant in Pensacola back in 1998. In a 7-5 vote jurors voted in favor of death, and the judge made the final decision to give him the death penalty. In the majority opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death. A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough.” Attorney General Pam Bondi issued the following statement regarding Tuesday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling: “In light of today’s United States Supreme Court decision holding Florida’s capital sentencing procedure unconstitutional, the state will need to make changes to its death-sentencing statutes. I will work with state lawmakers this legislative session to ensure that those changes comply with the Court’s latest decision. The impact of the Court’s ruling on existing death sentences will need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.” “I don’t think it’s a great surprise this decision came down putting Florida in line with other jurisdictions,” said attorney and former state and federal prosecutor David Weinstein. Weinstein told CBS4’s Natalia Zea that state lawmakers now have their work cut out for them. “Now the legislature has to do something about correcting the procedure,” he said. Howard Simon, president of the American Civil Liberties Union which advocates against the death penalty, says he has pushed the state to change the law for years. He now wants the 390 people currently on death row to be spared, in part to keep their cases from clogging up the court system. “The simplest thing would be to convert those death sentences in to sentences of life imprisonment,” Simon said. Weinstein does not believe they will all be eligible to have their death sentences reviewed. “If your case is deemed final on what’s called direct review, you’ve already exhausted your appeals, you’re not going to get another crack at the sentence,” Weinstein said. He also believes the families of the 91 people already executed under this system will have no legal recourse. “Up until today, every time the Florida death penalty’s been reviewed it’s been found to be constitutional, so there is no rightful relief,” Weinstein added. Courts across the country are still reviewing the potential impact of the ruling. A spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Courts released a statement to Zea, saying in part, “Any motions filed in the trial courts with respect to this ruling shall be addressed based on each case’s individual merits and the status of the law as it develops in the Florida Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court and any future legislative action.” In addition to the judge versus jury power divide, Florida is the only state in the nation that does not require a jury to vote unanimously to impose a death sentence. Simon says any new or amended law should change that. “How can it be in Florida that it takes a unanimous jury to find somebody guilty, but a simple majority to sentence somebody to death? Unless Florida does adopt a unanimous requirement for a death sentence, that’s only going to be the next U.S. Supreme Court case,” he said. Hurst’s case will now go back to the Florida Supreme Court for review, and possibly a new sentencing hearing. Unless the state legislature changes the law before that hearing, however, any sentence imposed would be based on the newly-ruled unconstitutional system. Late night TV comedy has 2 new acts. What do the founder of Nerdist and the voice of the E-Trade baby have in common? They're both heading to late-night TV. Comedians Chris Hardwick and Pete Holmes are premiering their shows, @midnight and The Pete Holmes Show , on Monday and Oct. 28, respectively. Both half-hour programs air Mondays through Thursdays at midnight ET/PT, and are preceded by late-night veterans of the time slot ( @midnight by The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central; Pete Holmes by Conan on TBS). That is where the similarities end for these newcomers, who hope to pump fresh blood into a late-night circuit dominated by the new guard (Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel) and old guard (Jay Leno, David Letterman) of veteran hosts. With the help of popular lead-ins, network executives and programmers are hoping to tap into the demographic of young-adult males who characteristically are up until the wee hours, where they're catered to by the likes of Adult Swim, Fox (on Saturdays) and ESPN. "I think that's where a lot of our audience is living and consuming content," says Kent Alterman, president of Comedy Central's content development and original programming. "Traditionally, prime-time is considered 8 to 11 (p.m.), but for the purposes of our own audience, it's probably more aptly described as 10 (p.m.) to 1 (a.m.)." Comedy Central has long wanted a nightly post- Colbert show , and Conan hasn't had a late-night companion since Lopez Tonight was canceled in 2011. Both Colbert and Conan have much higher concentrations of younger men than broadcast-network talk shows. Recruiting young fans is desirable for any network, says TBS President Michael Wright, who believes that Holmes' "contemporary, fresh" voice will be the perfect companion to the already young-skewing Conan . As a programmer, his job is to "give people what they want, but also give your audience what they don't know they want yet," he says , referring to Holmes. "It's a way to expand the brand, evolve, and grow." Popular comedian Pete Holmes will host a new late-night series on TBS. (Photo: Jeremy Freeman, TBS) So what could make or break these longtime stand-up comics as they settle into their new roles as late-night hosts? Opening monologues, for starters, which are "so important in defining who you are," but also in targeting a core audience, says Ron Simon, curator of television and radio at the Paley Center for Media in New York. "Sometimes it's best to develop a loyal fan base and then try to broaden out, or you can try to reach a larger audience from the beginning," Simon says. Despite the pressures of carrying an entire half-hour program, Holmes is trying not to sweat the ratings or narrow his appeal. "I think just by being honest and true to myself, we are going to skew younger," Holmes says of his show. "I'm just trying to make the things that make me laugh, which — I don't know what that says about me and my maturity — happens to be the same things that young people might enjoy." CHRIS HARDWICK, @MIDNIGHT. An outrageous hashtag on Twitter or a scathing review on Yelp: No social-media outlet will be shown mercy when Hardwick and his rotating panel of comedians poke fun at them on @midnight, from the folks at Funny or Die. The show is receiving an initial four-week commitment from the network. Using a game-show format in which the comic with the funniest jokes is declared the "winner" every night, Hardwick and his team will scour the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Vine and Yahoo! Answers for comedic material. Think of it as Jeopardy! for social media, but instead of guessing the correct answer, you get points for hilariously captioning an image or dreaming up a ridiculous hashtag for a tweet. "It's very British at heart," Hardwick, 41, says. "It's really just a structured reason to bring comics together to make fun of all the topical things they saw that day that came up in various social-media outlets." If anyone is up for the task, it's Hardwick, who founded the multimedia empire Nerdist Industries. With its website, podcasts, YouTube channel and social-media components, Nerdist caters to those passionate about pop and nerd culture. Hardwick's Comedy Central stand-up special, Chris Hardwick: Mandroid , aired last year, and he also has hosted Talking Bad and the current Talking Dead , talk-show companions to AMC hits Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead . Add Hardwick's years as a stand-up comic to the mix, and his progression to late-night TV was only a matter of time. After the pilot for a more tech-minded show was not picked up by Comedy Central about a year ago, the network asked if he'd like to host a new show produced by Funny or Die, the comedy website co-founded by Will Ferrell. Hardwick agreed, and helped develop what is now @midnight over the course of several months.He describes the show as the best comedic representation of his personality. "It's so much fun and so silly," Hardwick says. "It's all guilty-pleasure stuff that we're making fun of, so it should be a nice comedown from using your brain a lot on the Daily Show and Colbert . We want to hilariously glide people to sleep and into their beds at night." And what does the man who lampoons social media for a living actually enjoy on various outlets? For starters, he follows such celebrities as Anna Kendrick, Seth Rogen and Dean Norris on Twitter, along with "nerdier" choices including Joss Whedon, Buzz Aldrin and the Doctor Who official Twitter page. Oh and there is his fondness for the "Socially Awkward Penguin" meme. Hardwick also has his share of geeky obsessions, which include playing BioShock Infinite and participating in cosplay (or costume play) with his girlfriend at conventions such as Comic-Con. "I actually have an insect collection that I'm really proud of it, but unfortunately, a lot of it's in a freezer," Hardwick says. "OK, that sounds creepy." PETE HOLMES, THE PETE HOLMES SHOW. With his first foray into late-night comedy, Holmes is hoping to reimagine the usual talk-show format. And how exactly does he intend to do this? By delivering personal monologues that aren't pulled from the headlines, matched with more Saturday Night Live -style digital shorts and non- celebrity-driven interviews with his fellow comedians. "No one booked so far is promoting anything," Holmes says. "I'm going to be sitting down with people that I'm actually excited to see and have a good chemistry and rapport with, and just let those moments play out." Holmes' résumé is just as wide-ranging as his sense of humor. He has written for sitcoms such as Outsourced and I Hate My Teenage Daughter , performed stand-up on Conan and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon , and had his cartoons appear in The New Yorker . You probably know him best as the voice of the E-Trade baby in the popular TV commercials, or as the harebrained "Badman" in CollegeHumor 's series of Batman parodies online. After appearing on Conan twice and meeting with O'Brien and producer Jeff Ross, Holmes was surprised to learn that they wanted to pitch a late- night show to TBS with him at the forefront. It's an experience that Holmes describes as "very surreal" and "a literal dream come true." "Every time I see (Conan) he makes fun of me and talks about how he's going to crush me and revoke his endorsement," Holmes says. "But when it gets down to it, it's the most nurturing, mentor-mentee relationship that I've ever had. He's always available and here for me personally, whether it's over dinner or lunch, over the phone or e-mail." The show, which has been given an initial seven-week commitment by TBS, moves at a brisk pace to accommodate its half-hour time slot, yet fans will be able to enjoy longer versions of sketches, interviews, and other in-studio segments online. As Holmes likes to put it, "The show will be as long as people like it to be, but the TV version is going to be a half-hour." Holmes' first-week guests include comedians Kumail Nanjiani and Chelsea Peretti, but he'd also like to snag face time with celebrities such as Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and Ryan Gosling (his self-professed "man crush") down the road. "I have straight crushes as well," Holmes says. "I'd like to get Kate Upton on just so I could look at her." Fans of his popular podcast You Made It Weird shouldn't fret: He plans to continue it and his various stand-up gigs. In the meantime, he'll focus on The Pete Holmes Show and — of course — Grand Theft Auto V . "Right now, it's the show, go home, one cocktail, one mission of GTA , and then I go to bed," Holmes says. "It's not bad, man, it's a satisfying life." POLITICO. Hillary Clinton not comfortable in her own skin; Rand Paul sheds his. Hillary not comfortable in own skin. 08/13/2014 05:01 AM EDT. Updated 08/13/2014 11:37 AM EDT. Hillary Clinton walks through a paneled doorway and onto the set of “The Colbert Report.” A grin splits her face. She puts her arms out and rocks them up and down as if she were a mechanical toy. Stephen Colbert is stunned. Shocked. Amazed. Hillary steps up onto the low podium where Colbert is seated behind a desk. Her grin grows wider. Colbert keeps a dumbfounded look on his face. A surprise appearance on his own show! The audience is daffy with delight. Hillary and Colbert now sit at the desk going through various grins and grimaces of faux astonishment as the audience chants: “Hill-a-ry! Hill-a-ry! Hill-a-ry!” This ought to be good. In September 2007, Hillary’s presidential campaign aides were arranging for her to appear on the season opener of “Saturday Night Live.” She refused. One said: “We told her doing ‘SNL’ would be a way of showing she was being a good sport and letting her hair down. But she didn’t want to do that.” She did not want to risk looking foolish. Her husband never had such qualms. He had once gone on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” and played the saxophone. But Hillary is not Bill. True, she will agree to do a comedy show this time around. But not an unscripted appearance. It has to be written out before she will do it. She does fine. Perhaps a little too stagy at times, but she is, after all, a professional politician, not a professional actor. And there’s a difference, right? COLBERT: “I will have you know, madam, I once did an entire show with President Bill Clinton.” CLINTON: “Oh, I hate to break this to you, Stephen, but I’ve met him, too.” COLBERT: “Gosh, you know everyone! What kind of loser do you have to be to not be included in your book?” CLINTON: “Well, you’re not in it, Stephen.” The audience practically laughs up a lung. When Al Gore ran for president in 2000, he was battered continuously by the media for “not being comfortable in his own skin.” But is Hillary any more comfortable in hers? Will she not do an appearance that might make her look candid, warm and appealing because she is not candid, warm and appealing? We do not know. But give the potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate this, she did stay for the entire five minutes and 14 seconds of her bit last week. Which is more than can be said for one of the possible Republican candidates in 2016, Rand Paul. While Paul has been getting some serious publicity recently, this also means he has been getting some serious scrutiny. Phil Rucker of The Washington Post wrote last week: “In a state [Iowa] that prizes retail politics, Paul cut a reticent figure on the stump. He often seemed introverted and averse to the kind of glad-handing and back-slapping that is a favorite pastime of some of his potential opponents.” “But his oddities,” Rucker went on, “also help underscore the outsider, anti-Washington posture that many GOP voters find appealing.” Could be. Republicans often do not shy away from candidates with “oddities.” In 2012, while Mitt Romney won the nomination, Rick Santorum came in second, Newt Gingrich came in third and Ron Paul came in fourth. In the GOP, oddities are no longer odd. But there is one quirk that Paul may have to get over. He can’t bolt from the room every time he comes upon a voter who might ask him a tough question. This happened last week in a tiki bar in Okoboji, Iowa, a town of 807 people in the northwest part of the state. Paul was on a 10-stop, 800-mile tour and was snarfing down a burger with Rep. Steve King, the Republican who represents Iowa’s 4th Congressional District. King recently gained notoriety for saying of immigrants: “For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds — and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” In the tiki bar, King and Paul were approached by Erika Andiola, who was brought to the United States from Mexico as an 11-year-old by her undocumented immigrant mother. Andiola is now 29, an honors graduate of Arizona State University and an immigration activist. She asked King about current immigration law. “You’re very good at English, you know what I’m saying?” the always-deft King said. “I was raised in the United States,” Andiola said. And Paul? Paul took one look at Andiola and one look at his aide, who jerked his head to the side, indicating Paul should get the hell out of there. Which Paul did. He took a hurried bite of his burger, left the rest, and fled the scene. Which was a little odd, since Paul recently told Republicans, “We have to reach out to more people. It has to be a bigger party, it has to be a bigger movement.” But faced in Iowa with a person of Hispanic heritage, he bugs out. “For me, a person who wants to run for president has to be someone that has the courage to talk to people who are affected,” Andiola said later, “and not just run from the problem.” Nobody is saying that Rand Paul is not comfortable in his own skin. It’s just that he wants to shed it when convenient. POLITICO. Comedians Colbert (left) and Stewart will host the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear Oct. 30. Can Stewart and Colbert save us? 10/28/2010 04:38 AM EDT. Updated 10/28/2010 10:56 AM EDT. Disquiet grows. Fear reigns. Madness swirls. In this election: A woman gets flung to the ground and stomped on the head. A candidate denies being a witch. Another is accused of worshiping idols. A reporter covering a Senate candidate is handcuffed by the candidate’s private security guards. A gubernatorial candidate in New York jams his face up against a reporter and says, “I’ll take you out, buddy.” And he doesn’t mean to lunch. NBC’s First Read nails it: “We’ve seen plenty of anger, frustration and high emotions in past campaigns. But the anger this cycle — culminating in Monday’s stomping in Kentucky — feels so much more different.” It is different. More desperate. More depressing. More draining. More filled with despair than hope. “Maybe our memories are too short,” First Read says, “but the level of anger, disrespect and incivility seems to be at an all-time high right now.” Let me add my own memory and agree. For me, the realization came early: I noticed this was going to be a different kind of campaign when people began showing up at presidential speeches openly displaying loaded firearms. It was considered no big deal. As far as I can determine, no lawmaker has introduced a bill banning such a practice. No lawmaker wants to get burned by the gun lobby. Not this year. And really, when you get down to it, what could go wrong with a few semiautomatics at a political rally? Especially when people are so calm and cool this year. So it is very fitting that the last major event of the 2010 campaign will be a rally by two professional comedians. I mean this. The political comedians have had their chance. Now let the pros take over. The twin rallies, the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, are scheduled to take place Saturday on the National Mall. One host will be Jon Stewart, a liberal, and the other Stephen Colbert, a liberal masquerading as an ultraconservative to make ultraconservatives appear (even more) foolish. Both are influential men with daily “faux news” shows that feature un-faux news. They have considerable influence among younger voters, some of whom, we can assume, get all their news from these two shows. In an often misquoted 2004 poll by the Pew Research Center, 21 percent of people ages 18 to 29 cited Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” as places where they regularly learned about presidential campaign news. “A lot of them,” Stewart said when he heard the poll results, “are probably high.” High or not, the trend lines seem to favor Stewart’s demographic. In the same Pew poll, 16 percent fewer young people were watching the network news than four years earlier, while 12 percent more young people were watching comedy shows than four years earlier. This was the largest percentage increase in the survey, topping even Internet use, which was up only 7 percent. In 2009, according to Nielsen, the median age of viewers of the three network newscasts was 62.3, and that was a full year older than the year before. At that rate, the viewers of mainstream news may be too old to operate the on/off button on their remote control in just a few decades. Can humor, even the somewhat dark humor of Stewart and Colbert, serve as an antidote to this year’s election? Maybe. Very little is actually known about the rally, what the two will say and how they will say it. About a month ago, Colbert testified in front of a House subcommittee on immigration to make the very serious point that undocumented farm workers do not take jobs away from U.S. citizens. But Colbert confused Capitol Hill with the Borscht Belt, and some of his jokes were not well received. “I don’t want a tomato picked by a Mexican; I want it picked by an American and sliced by a Guatemalan, and served by a Venezuelan, in a spa, where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian,” he said. And now you know why satire is called the “high wire” act of writing. Nothing is more difficult to do successfully or fails more miserably. As playwright George S. Kaufman once said, “Satire is what closes on Saturday night.” Colbert and Stewart open Saturday and play for one night only. And we will see if their satire can lift our spirits and make us forget, or at least tolerate, the campaign that has preceded it. Could the rally actually affect the outcome of some races? I don’t know. But I do know what Adlai Stevenson once said: “Your public servants serve you right.” ‘AGT’ Judge Simon Cowell Says He Feels Even Better Than He Did a Year Ago Following Bike Accident. ET spoke with the judges of 'America's Got Talent' ahead of the season 16 premiere, airing June 1 on NBC. Watch Father-Daughter Duo Jamie and Corinne Foxx Interview Each Other. ET brought the two together for an interview ahead of the 'Beat Shazam' season premiere June 3 on Fox. Watch Derek Hough Dance and Sing 'Step in Time' for 'Kennedy Center Honors' Special (Exclusive) The 43rd Annual Kennedy Center Honors airs Sunday, June 6 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. It will be available to stream live and on demand on the CBS app and Paramount+. In a celebration from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., honorees Debbie Allen, Joan Baez, Garth Brooks, Dick Van Dyke and Midori were saluted by today’s leading performers from New York, Hollywood and the arts capitals of the world. The honorees accepted the recognition and gratitude of their peers through moving performances and tributes by notable artists, including Kelly Clarkson, Derek Hough, Vanessa Hudgens, Pentatonix, Gladys Knight, Emmylou Harris, Jimmie Allen, Yo-Yo Ma and many others. Kim Kardashian Shares Sexy Thong Bikini Pics to Celebrate Reaching 225 Million Instagram Followers. Kim Kardashian put her famous backside on full display in sizzling new swimwear snaps.