Fox Anchor Greg Kelly seems like a victim not a rapist in allegations against him -- Case doesn't add up against son of NYPD Chief Ray Kelly

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and his son Greg

Greg Kelly seems like the victim in the rape case alleged against him.

That may not be the politically correct thing to say but I bet it turns out to be the truth.

There is something deeply suspicious about how this whole affair has entered the public domain.

Three months after an alleged rape a woman walks into a police station and makes an accusation.

She must know after that length of time a successful prosecution is almost impossible.

There is no possible physical evidence, no doctor's report, no third party, seemingly, other than her boyfriend who has his own questions to answer quite obviously.

So is there another motive?

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The son of the NYPD Chief Ray Kelly and a very successful anchor for Good Day New York on Fox News has been a singular outstanding guy throughout his career.

A former marine, he covered the White House and America's various wars before taking over the Good Day New York slot.

Now his career is in deep jeopardy because of a rape accusation, four months old when it was made.

It is an incredibly serious allegation, which, if true, deserves the full punishment of the law.

But that seems like a massive outside possibility.

What happened that night after Kelly and the paralegal woman whom he had met and went for drinks with will strictly be a he said/she said series of allegations.

We know they willingly went back to her law firm because she told him her boyfriend was home in her place.

We know they texted and talked after the alleged assault and that the woman later claimed she was pregnant by him.

We also know that her boyfriend, clearly angered by what had transpired, tried to raise it publicly with Kelly's father, the police commissioner .

Kelly is in a no win situation until the District Attorney decides whether to proceed with charges or not.

But it seems to me that the allegations against him are flimsy to say the least.

I suspect the boyfriend was very angry when he heard about the encounter and this stems from that moment.

But time will tell.

The New York Post this morning reports that investigators “don’t buy her story,”

“It sounds like a bunch of BS” the source said.

Another source said, “It sounds like she got caught [cheating] by her boyfriend, and then he forces her hand: ‘If you’re not lying, you better report.’

As I said much more to come out.

Liam Neeson has the full right to embrace Islam if he wants -- His wife's death has led to a search for life's meaning

Liam Neeson's public embrace of Islam has certainly landed him in the middle of a steaming controversy.

The Irish Hollywood star told the London Sun that he was considering adopting the religion because of his experiences in Istanbul while filming where he found the calls to prayer and beauty of its historic mosques very moving.

I know Liam Neeson somewhat as we serve on the American Irish Historical Society board together and we often meet in Irish circles in New York.

He is as normal as a Hollywood superstar could be, courteous and genuine to a fault.

But there is no question that life dealt him a savage blow in March 2009 when his wife Natasha died tragically after a minor ski accident in Canada.

I had last seen them together at the American Ireland Fund dinner in New York where they were such a striking handsome couple and clearly in love.
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The death left him devastated. I remember meeting him long after it had occurred and he still seemed deeply shocked by what had happened.

It is understandable that after such an awful occurrence, which left him a widower with two young kids, Liam Neeson would question life's certainties and the received wisdoms we all take for granted.

His interview with the Sun was also notable for his statement that he was constantly searching for proof of God's existence and seeking out the latest books on religion.

It is clear from his hectic work schedule that he threw himself into his work after his wife's tragic passing. Hardly a month goes by that we don't see him in some movie or other.

But at a deeper level clearly he is searching too which is what he was saying in the Sun interview.

If Islam and its tenets gives him some insight and comfort well then why not embrace it?

The religion gets a bad rap in the west -- there are tens of millions who practice a moderate form of it that is no more militant than Catholicism.

Lest we forget the mote in our own eye let's not forget the crusades where Muslims in massive numbers were put to the sword by invading Catholic armies.

Liam Neeson is still on a quest no doubt, so we should not be surprised when he reaches some different conclusions along the way.

Unless we have walked in his shoes and suffered the unbearable loss he did we are in no position to pass judgement on his choices.

Boston keeps its Irish roots - community’s presence felt through out Massachusetts

BOSTON – 38% of the state of Massachusetts is of Irish extraction, and every fourth face or so you see here reflects that ancestry.

On the plane from New York to Boston on Monday, I felt like I was on Aer Lingus. Across the aisle sat a red haired beauty straight out of The Quiet Man, and an elderly pair of ladies in front of me were ringers for every Irish nun I knew.

The Irish experience is overwhelming and heartening in Boston. The great Kennedy dynasty came out of here of course, but also generation after generation of Irish leaders in every possible field.

From church to education to business and politics, the Irish in Massachusetts often led the way nationally. It is a proud history that is being lived every day.

Not far from here is the town of Scituate, the most Irish town in America where, according to ancestry records, almost 50% are of Irish background.

The latest American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau shows 34 million Americans claim Irish heritage. If it seems like many of those live in Massachusetts then it may be because it is true.

All in all 16 communities within the South Shore neighborhoods of Boston have the highest percentage of people of Irish descent in the U.S.

In addition to Scituate, at least 44% of the population in Braintree, Hull, Marshfield, Avon, Pembroke and Milton claim Irish ancestry also, according to the Census Bureau.

Scituate, on Cape Cod Bay, is also close to Plymouth Rock where the Mayflower arrived. It has a population of a little over 17,000

The data shows that the South Shore's "Irish Riviera" hasn't significantly changed since the census of 1980, the first one where the ethic question was asked. Irish Americans continue to dominate the large majority of suburban Boston.

According to the 2005-2009 American Community Survey, 19 of the top 20 most Irish communities in Massachusetts are south of Boston. 

A decade ago there were similar results. These same towns were among the top Irish American communities in the state of Massachusetts, according to the 2000 census.

Richard Finnegan, professor of political science and director of Irish studies at Stonehill College, maintains that the South Shore has long been home to a large Irish community.

The migration of Irish families from Boston to the South Shore dates back to the end of World War II, and continued through the 1950s and ‘60s.

Finnegan says that many gravitated towards the South Shore because of geography.

"If you live in Dorchester or Hyde Park, you don’t think of moving to Swampscott,” he said.  “Where will I move if I can get ahead and move up the social ladder? Quincy, Weymouth, and down the South Shore.

“When you’re on the South Side (of the city) and looking to rent a beach house for a few weeks, you go to the South Shore.”

This same pattern continues today.

“Families move where their family and friends are,’’ said Finnegan.

He is right of course. The Irish are still a huge part of Boston and its surroundings, and long may it stay that way.

Belfast's ugly peace walls are better left standing - US funding for effort to take them down is misguided

Peace wall, Belfast

The International Fund for Ireland (IFI) has allocated $3.8 million to take down the peace walls in Northern Ireland.

Bad idea.

The IFI money comes mainly from American taxpayers and this use of their hard-earned dollars makes me wonder what planet they are living on.

Northern Ireland is still decades away from being a totally normal society.

Yes, it is horrific that walls still have to be erected between warring communities, but hardly surprising.

Just last week a young Catholic man was almost murdered when he was beaten and chased when he found himself in a Protestant neighborhood.
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The peace walls serve a real purpose, dire though they might look and seem.

Northern Ireland has come a very long way. There are almost no deaths now attributed to The Troubles. A civil society is slowly growing up as well as a cross community government.

Those are magnificent achievements and the peace walls have played their part, ugly as it may seem.

Anyone who has spent time in Belfast knows how closely many of the warring communities live in close proximity to one another, especially in Belfast.

A wrong turn and you can find yourself, like the young Catholic man last week in hostile territory indeed.

On many of my visits there I relied on the graffiti and color of the curbstones, red white and blue in Protestant areas, to warn me if I had strayed.

The peace walls also protect during the marching season when the annual rush of blood to the head among Protestant marchers occurs and violence spikes.

Some day in the future the walls will come down but it it not imminent.

Which is why this is a waste of American taxpayer's money in my opinion.

The intent to do good is very clear and should not be denigrated.

But it clashes with the still sad reality in my opinion.

Sectarian killings could increase and tensions rise if the walls come down prematurely.

IFI money far better spent on cross community projects that will breed understanding and eventually friendship for the next generation.

Meryl Streep gives amazing performance as Margaret Thatcher -- Iron Lady, warts and all, exposed in new biopic

Run don't walk to see Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in the new movie 'The Iron Lady.'

If Streep doesn't win the Oscar for this performance there is no justice in Hollywood.

She portrays the demented Thatcher who sees her dead husband and carries out imaginary conversations with him.

She paints a picture of a sad old woman, desperately holding on to her last vestiges of sanity.

In flashback we see her life unfold as she remembers it.

After superbly acting out the old and semi deranged Thatcher Streep plays the most powerful woman in the world at her very height. She plays it so well that never for a moment do you not think it is Thatcher.

That is quite a trick, especially for an American, to pull off, the imperious gestures, the grating upper class voice, so inimical to most Irish people, the perfectly coiffed presence, who crushed or charmed every powerful man in her path.
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The scope of Thatcher's achievement is clear. A grocer's daughter entered a male-dominated world in the mother of parliaments and somehow found a way to be the first ever female Prime Minister of the world's oldest democracy.

The faults and flaws are clearly outlined too. The inability to understand the anger she created among the poorest in Britain with her savage social cuts, the cold blooded decision to let ten Irish hunger strikers die, the equally cold blooded decision to sink the General Belgrano, steaming away from the battle in the Falklands War among them.

Her husband Denis comes across as the hero of the piece, a man who was an infinitely calming presence on his megalomaniac wif.

He persuaded her finally she had outlived her popularity and was facing certain defeat in an election for Tory Party leader.

Thatcher finished power for a generation of Tories, so hated was she when she left office. yet her legacy has grown larger, especially here in America since she stepped down.

Meryl Streep's portrait warts and all is among the best work she has ever done-- no easy claim to fame that.

The real truth about the Boston College taped IRA interviews

Gerry Adams (Sasko Lazarov / Photocall Ireland)

There is clear evidence that journalist Ed Moloney and researcher Anthony McIntyre knew full well before the Boston College IRA project began that they could not guarantee confidentiality or legal indemnity to the IRA members who participated in the oral history project.

Moloney and McIntyre are now trying to sue to stop the tapes from being handed over to the Police Service of Northern Ireland after a Boston judge found that Boston College had to surrender the interviews.

The judge found that they may contain information that police in Northern Ireland want to follow up with regarding crimes committed by the IRA.

McIntyre is on the record as saying that they had complete certainty from Boston College that the interview participants, all former IRA members or Loyalist members, had indemnity.
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Here is what McIntyre told a radio interviewer: “The assurances from Boston College were very firm."

“In 2000, when the project was first mentioned, I asked specifically, what would be the arrangements?

“I was told by the Boston College representative, whom I met in Belfast, that under no circumstances would they accept archival material into their library to form part of their archive if there was any possibility, the remotest possibility, of legal repercussions, for those who had donated their interviews.

“And they were very specific about this. The Loyalist researcher also asked them the same thing. And he was told it was firewalled against any legal incursion from the British.

“[Q:] Did you have that in writing? Did you have legal assurances?

“[McIntyre:] We had a contract in writing, a Donation Agreement, which was given to the people concerned, the people who were doing the interviews, which explicitly stated that they, at all times, would be in control of the release of the information and only they, and no one else, could release it prior to the death.”

How then does this gel with a Boston College affidavit introduced in the court which directly denies this statement?

The affidavit states, "Prior to the commencement of the project, Robert K. O’Neill, the Burns librarian (where the tapes were to be housed) cautioned Moloney that although he had not spoken yet with Boston College’s counsel, the library could not guarantee the confidentiality of the interviews in the face of a court order.”

Here is a fax from O’Neill to Moloney sent in May of 2000:

“A further affidavit states . . . each interviewee of the project was to be given a contract guaranteeing confidentiality ‘to the extent that American law allows.’”
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And here is what Jack Dunn, a spokesman for Boston College says:

“I think that our good friends in Ireland seem to lack a fundamental understanding of the American legal process. We fought the fight and the fight was lost. And our hope is that the second round of the fight may prove differently.

“I think what hasn’t been stated here is that when this agreement was reached, an agreement was signed between Boston College and Ed Moloney that stated that each interviewee is to be given a contract guaranteeing confidentiality to the extent that American law allows.

“That seems to be forgotten by Mr. McIntyre and Mr. Moloney. That they were told to tell the interviewees that the confidentiality would be given to the extent that American law allows…

“The (donation) agreement between Moloney and McIntyre is bound by an earlier agreement, Agreement ‘A,’ which states each interviewee is to be given a contract guaranteeing confidentiality to the extent American law allows.”

So Boston College is clear on that, and Moloney and McIntyre, either through legal inexperience or not checking properly, continued with the interviews on shaky legal grounds, which have now precipitated an almighty furor.

As I have written before, the Boston College project was deeply flawed form the start.

Both Moloney and McIntyre are arch critics of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, and the only people interviewed were of the same opinion.

The lack of academic objectivity to begin with should have been clear to anyone who cared to check, as Boston College should have.

Now Moloney and McIntyre are defending the indefensible. They initiated a “Get Gerry Adams” project, roped in a gullible Boston College and it has now blown up in their faces.

Moloney and McIntyre can point the finger of blame not at Boston College or the courts but squarely where it belongs -- at themselves.

Even from the grave Ted Kennedy may dominate 2012 Presidential election

Ed Kennedy & Mitt Romney

Even from the grave Ted Kennedy may dominate the 2012 election.

That is because his tactics in 1994 against Mitt Romney when he ran against Kennedy for the US senate proved so successful.

I remember that race well.

I was allowed to accompany Kennedy for a day on the campaign trail. It was a wonderful experience watching the ultimate retail politician close up, knowing the names of every doorman, family, and public official he met.

But at the time Kennedy was down by three points and readily confessed he was deeply worried about his re-election against a young Mitt Romney. Romney looked fit and and was pounding Kennedy on being old and past his sell by date.

It was a harsh critique and Kennedy was reeling.

The unthinkable was about to happen it seemed.
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That was until Kennedy decided to hit back in devastating fashion.

Kennedy staffer Tad Devine went to Indiana and filmed unemployed workers who had been laid off after Bain Capital moved in to control their company.

The TV ads had a huge and immediate impact.

Kennedy went from three points down to winning the race by twenty points.

The tactic that worked in Massachusetts is being trotted out by fellow Republicans now against Romney.

But that is only the warm up for what Obama's folks will put together to try and defeat Romney in the Fall.

They are all taking their lead from Kennedy's successful assault on Romney on this issue back in 1994.

Just as he did when he endorsed Obama in 2008 and changed the complexion of the race, Kennedy

Somewhere Ted Kennedy, doubtless, is smiling.

New research shows Catholic majority now likely in Northern Ireland - New figures show trend is continuing and now inevitable

Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, First Minister Peter Robinson, Taoiseach Enda Kenny (Credit:  NGNS)

In a stunning column that turns the future on its head, Irish Times columnist Gerry Moriarty has shown that a Catholic majority in Northern Ireland will occur much faster than had previously been thought.

There has been a clear and inexorable pattern of Catholic population increasing while the Protestant population declines.

However, Moriarty presents it in a new and stark way and asks several critical questions.

Key of course is what will the upcoming Catholic majority mean for Northern Ireland?

But first to the facts and figures.

Moriarty opens his column by saying:

"The British and Irish governments and the people of Northern Ireland are facing the prospect – and sooner than most people might think – of how to manage a transformed constitutional situation where the majority in the North are likely to be from a Catholic background."

He goes on:

"The figures are revealed in the statistics: there are now significantly more Catholics than Protestants in nursery, primary, second- and third-level education in Northern Ireland. If that trend continues, and it’s difficult to see a reason why it should not, then in another generation or so the majority population should be Catholic or from a Catholic background – people of voting age, most of whose immediate antecedents are nationalist in their political outlook.

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He pointed out that figures from Northern Ireland’s Department of Education for 2010/11 show 120,415 Protestants and 163,693 Catholics in the North’s schools.

Those figures that is a breakdown of 57.6 per cent Catholic, 42.4 per cent Protestant.....figures for 2009/10 obtained from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that at university level the trend has continued

"In total... at third level there are 20,995 students (59.3 per cent) from a Catholic background and 14,410 (40.7 per cent) from a Protestant background." Moriarty writes

In the 2001 census the figures showed Protestants at 53.1 per cent and Catholics at 43.8 per cent. The 2011 census is expected to show that gap is much narrower.By the 2021 census the change will be dramatic

In the last election 48 per cent voted for Unionist parties and 42 per cent for nationalists. The rest voted cross community, mainly Alliance.

Of course, there is no certainty that Catholics would vote for a United Ireland, indeed, many say they would not.

However, with Scotland trembling on the edge of major devolution and conceivably outright independence, the old United Kingdom is not what it once was.

One could say the same about the Irish Republic of course, and many Catholics, now that they share power in Northern Ireland would hardly want to join up with a country in the throes of a terrible economic malaise.

But how a Catholic majority would work out is unpredictable. But it seems certain that it will happen within a generation.

The Protestant state for a Protestant people created against the wishes of Catholics corralled in 1921 into the new state may find itself on the ash heap in the future.

As Yeats might have said, All changed, changed utterly.