Excerpted from Good Morning America: Two waitresses will get their day in court against a New York City restaurant they’ve sued for sexual harassment and sexual discrimination, battery and a hostile work environment.

Kristen McRedmond and Alexandria Lipton were given the green light last week by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, which affirmed that the case should go to trial.

Both women waited tables and tended bar at Sutton Place Restaurant and Bar from August 2004 until they were both terminated in July 2006.

McRedmond, now a teacher, said that a nighttime shift manager, Neil Hanafy, made vulgar sexual comments and touched her inappropriately while she worked at the restaurant. Hanafy repeatedly asked her how much she weighed, she claims, and at one point picked her up to put her on a scale to settle a poll among male co-workers about her weight, according to her attorney, Rosemarie Arnold.

“This is an egregious case where disgusting men felt they could treat women in a demeaning manner, and it’s clear that every judge on the [New York] Supreme Court … and now the appellate decision affirms that’s not behavior that’s tolerated in the workplace,” said Arnold.

In addition to sexual harassment, sexual discrimination, battery and a hostile work environment, the two women are also alleging retaliatory termination and unlawful imprisonment, and are demanding $15 million in compensatory and punitive damages, according to the complaint.

McRedmond claimed “she was unlawfully imprisoned by Sutton Place when she was held in the manger’s office after Hanafy attempted to weigh her,” according to the court filing.

Two waitresses will get their day in court against a New York City restaurant they’ve sued for sexual harassment and sexual discrimination, battery and a hostile work environment.

Kristen McRedmond and Alexandria Lipton were given the green light last week by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, which affirmed that the case should go to trial.

Both women waited tables and tended bar at Sutton Place Restaurant and Bar from August 2004 until they were both terminated in July 2006.

McRedmond, now a teacher, said that a nighttime shift manager, Neil Hanafy, made vulgar sexual comments and touched her inappropriately while she worked at the restaurant. Hanafy repeatedly asked her how much she weighed, she claims, and at one point picked her up to put her on a scale to settle a poll among male co-workers about her weight, according to her attorney, Rosemarie Arnold.

“This is an egregious case where disgusting men felt they could treat women in a demeaning manner, and it’s clear that every judge on the [New York] Supreme Court … and now the appellate decision affirms that’s not behavior that’s tolerated in the workplace,” said Arnold.

In addition to sexual harassment, sexual discrimination, battery and a hostile work environment, the two women are also alleging retaliatory termination and unlawful imprisonment, and are demanding $15 million in compensatory and punitive damages, according to the complaint.

McRedmond claimed “she was unlawfully imprisoned by Sutton Place when she was held in the manger’s office after Hanafy attempted to weigh her,” according to the court filing.

Lipton also said Hanafy asked her and another waitress to comment about certain sexual content in pornographic movies, according to a court filing. She also said he would “routinely” make comments about the bar’s female customers by saying things like “She’s a stupid [expletive], she’s ugly, she’s fat, she’s disgusting, get her the [expletive] out of here,” according to court records.

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Rudy Eugene, who authorities suspect may have been high on a dangerous new street drug known as “bath salts,” had to be shot four times by a police officer to halt the cannibalistic attack.

The victim, Ronald Poppo, 65, is in critical condition after police say 75 percent of his face was devoured by Eugene.
Footage taken by security cameras at the nearby Miami Herald building show most of the 18 gory minutes of Eugene’s growling and vicious attack on Poppo when Eugene ate the man’s nose, mouth and eyes.

Eugene had a criminal past and has the notoriety of being the first person ever tasered by the North Miami Police Department after he was arrested for beating and threatening to kill his mother in 2008. Police told ABC affiliate WPLG that they had to taser him three times to subdue him.

“He wasn’t cooperative, wouldn’t follow orders, very belligerent,” said Detective Mike Pons. “He had that thousand-yard stare, staring right into you, not assessing or understanding what the commands were.”

According to WPLG, police believed that Eugene may have been mentally ill, but according to the judge who handled the case was never referred to the court’s mental illness diversion program.

Eugene was found guilty, but the court suspended his sentence citing in court records “the defendant is not likely to engage in a criminal course of conduct.”

That prediction proved to be horribly wrong last Saturday. Police say Eugene, 31, started his day in South Beach where he dumped his car. It is believed that he may have been cruising the streets for the popular Urban Beach Weekend.

He then walked across a causeway that connects the popular neighborhood with downtown Miami when he began to strip his clothes off. The footage picks up and shows an agitated Eugene naked and bent over a second figure believed to be Poppo.

Poppo was homeless and lived near the area where the attack occurred. Poppo tries to fight back as Eugene tries to take off his clothes. As the assault begins, the surveillance video shows a few passerbys beginning to notice what is going on. Police say they received at least five calls from witnesses.

When a police officer, who has been described as traumatized by the incident, arrives on scene, he is seemingly casually getting out of his patrol car until he notices what is going on. The officer almost immediately draws his gun. The cop ordered Eugene to stop the attack, but Eugene ignored his command and even growled back at the officer.
It’s unclear when the officer fired because the video is obstructed by a metro commuter train line, but it eventually took four bullets to make Eugene stop his brutal assault.

It’s still unclear what triggered the violent attack. Police and many in the medical community believe that drugs, in particular “bath salts,” may have played a role. “Bath salts” have become increasingly popular in the Miami party scene, and they can trigger extremely violent outbursts. But police have found no evidence of drugs at the scene, and toxicology results will take several weeks to come back in.

The Commerce Department reported the economy grew at an annual rate of 1.9 percent in the first quarter of 2012, slower than first estimated.

The Labor Department reported the number of Americans seeking jobless benefits rose last week to a five-week high, evidence that the job market remains sluggish.

The figures come in advance of the labor report that routinely turns into a political football — the monthly jobs report, set for release on Friday. Economists expect 158,000 jobs were created in May, slightly better than the past two months but far below the pace this past winter. They also expect no change in the unemployment rate.

The numbers continue to hang over the candidates and require each to continue to make a case for how he can improve the economy.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has touted his experience in corporate finance. President Obama has said he helped stabilize and improve the downward-spiraling economy he inherited and needs more time to complete the task.

“As with all of the numbers we’ve seen every month, they all tell the same story, that President Obama promised for the past three years to turn around the economy but has failed,” said Kirsten Kukowski, a Republican National Committee spokeswoman. “While things get slightly better, they are nowhere near where they need to be.”

The Democratic National Committee did not respond to a request for comment. The Obama campaign, though, has started to aggressively criticize Romney’s record in the private sector during his time as Bain Capital. The campaign is also opening up a new front, going after his days as Massachusetts governor.

The Commerce Department originally said estimated growth from January-March was 2.2 percent. The agency then revised the number, saying the change was largely because consumers spent less than estimated, business restocked more slowly and the U.S. trade deficit grew sharply.

Still, analysts think the economy will grow at a slightly faster rate this spring. They estimate growth at an annual rate of 2 percent to 2.5 percent in the April-June quarter. Many expect the economy will maintain that pace for all of 2012, an improvement from last year’s 1.7 percent growth.

However, growth of 2.5 percent is typically enough just to keep pace with population changes. Most economists say it takes almost twice as much growth to lower the unemployment rate by 1 percentage point over a year.

The unemployment rate has fallen a full percentage point since August — from 9.1 percent to 8.1 percent last month.

Part of the reason for the drop is that employers added 1.5 million jobs during that time. But it has also declined because some people have grown discouraged and given up looking for work. The government only counts people as unemployed if they are actively looking for a job.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

“The Administration opposes gender discrimination in all forms, but the end result of this legislation would be to subject doctors to criminal prosecution if they fail to determine the motivations behind a very personal and private decision,” White House deputy press secretary Jamie Smith told ABC News’ Jake Tapper in a statement Wednesday evening. “The government should not intrude in medical decisions or private family matters in this way.”

The Prenatal Non-Discrimation Act (PRENDA), sponsored by Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks, would ban abortions on the basis of gender or race, while also making the coercion of a woman to obtain a sex- or race-based abortion illegal.

Pro-choice groups such as NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood adamantly oppose the legislation, arguing that it will restrict access to abortions. Planned Parenthood officially endorsed Obama for re-election on Wednesday, and announced a $1.4 million ad buy on his behalf.

“Rather than attacking a woman’s right to choose, lawmakers with a sincere interest in addressing gender bias should support policies that work to combat the bias and stereotypes that continue to plague our society,” Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “This alternative approach would unify – not divide – our country and could achieve important advances without taking away any woman’s right to make her own personal, private medical decisions.”

According to pro-life groups, PRENDA is an essential piece of legislation that must be passed.

“This is a real war on women,” Americans United for Life president Charmaine Yoest said Wednesday. “There is nothing pro-woman about killing a baby girl because she is female, and putting her mother’s health and safety at risk in the process.”

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Breitbart.tv: Today, Live Action released a new undercover video showing Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger clinic in New York City helping a woman determine if her unborn child was female so she could have a sex-selection abortion. The video is second in a new series titled “Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America,” exposing the practice of sex-selective abortion in the United States and how Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry facilitate the selective elimination of baby girls in the womb.

The video opens with crowds chanting “O-ba-ma,” followed by words on the screen saying “Fox & Friends presents ‘Hope and Change.’”

About 30 seconds in, ominous music begins and continues throughout the entire video that is interspersed with Mr. Obama’s speeches and dire-sounding news anchors talking about the debt, the economy and the cost of gas.

At the end of the ad, the three co-hosts thank producer Chris White for doing a “great job” and the “tremendous amount of research” put into creating the video.

The video was posted on the Fox News website earlier in the day, but it appears to have been taken down.

Liberal media watch-dog group Media Matters, which is often critical of Fox News, first drew attention to the segment. A blog post that contains the video says, “While Fox & Friends has long been a home for some of the most vicious, misleading, petty, and dishonest attacks on President Obama, they crossed a new ethical line today by producing and airing what is essentially a four-minute anti-Obama attack ad.”

Meanwhile, conservative blogger Ed Morrissey did not jump to Fox News’ defense, writing in his Hot Air blog: “If anyone wanted to look for evidence that the overall Fox News organization intends to campaign against Obama rather than cover the campaign, this video would be difficult to refute as evidence for that claim.”

In response to the controversy, Fox News Executive Vice President of Programming Bill Shine released a statement to TV Newser: “The package that aired on FOX & Friends was created by an associate producer and was not authorized at the senior executive level of the network. This has been addressed with the show’s producers.”

“Certainly [if] Wisconsin goes red, I think it’s lights out for Barack Obama,” said RNC Chairman and Wisconsinite Reince Priebus on Wednesday.

This is on the heels of a new Marquette University Law School poll showing Walker over Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett by 7 points, 52% to 45%.

Despite their tough talk, it’s not so cut and dry that a Walker win would automatically mean an Obama loss. The same survey also shows President Obama over Mitt Romney 51% to 43%.

The RNC said they have made “over two million voter contacts” and identified “nearly every Wisconsin voter” ahead of Tuesday’s vote, on a conference call the committee held Wednesday. That date will then in turn be quickly used for get-out-the-vote efforts ahead of November.

They also rolled out a partnership with their state parties to mobilize volunteers and activists from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota to make phone calls or travel to Wisconsin ahead of Tuesday. The chairman even said he doesn’t think there is another state in the country where the party “both nationally and locally know more about voters than the state of Wisconsin.”

The RNC stressed they are ready to quickly pivot to the general election after Tuesday. Aides say they have opened up 20 field offices that will be used to try and retain Walker as governor through Tuesday, but will quickly move to focus on Romney.

“One thing is really clear here, if Walker wins here next Tuesday, which we are very confident he will, Obama is going to have a much tougher road ahead in Wisconsin this fall,” Priebus said. “Clearly putting Wisconsin in the red column for the first time since 1984 is a pretty big deal.”

This comes on the same day Democratic National Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz visited Wisconsin to campaign with Barrett. According to the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel she said the party was “putting all of our effort into this fight.”

“Scott Walker has worked hard to make sure that people think that he’s the rock star of the right-wing tea-party extremism that the Republican Party has allowed to take them over,” Wasserman Schultz said. “And that is not what voters in Wisconsin want to see happen.”

On Sunday, Wasserman Schultz said just how important the recall is, calling it a “dry run” for the presidential election.

“And so what I think the implications will be, is that ultimately I think Tom Barrett will pull this out, but regardless it has given the Obama for America operation an opportunity to do … the dry run that we need of our massive, significant, dynamic grassroots presidential campaign, which can’t really be matched by the Romney campaign or the Republicans because they’ve ignored on-the-ground operations,” Wasserman Schultz told CNN’s Candy Crowley.