Emily Bazelon (born 1971) is an American journalist, senior editor for online magazine Slate, and a senior research fellow at Yale Law School. Her work as a writer focuses on law, abortion, and family issues. Bazelon appeared on the March 28, 2012 edition of The Colbert Report to discuss The Affordable Health Care Act.

Bazelon is a writer and senior editor of Slate. She has written articles about controversial subjects, such as the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld trial and post-abortion syndrome. Bazelon edits Slate's legal columns, "Jurisprudence", and is co-editor of its blog on women's issues, XX Factor (also known as DoubleX), and regularly appears on The Political Gabfest, a weekly Slate podcast with David Plotz and John Dickerson.

She is also a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. Before joining Slate, Bazelon was a senior editor of Legal Affairs. Her writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, as well as other publications. She has worked as a reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area and, in 1993 and 1994, as a freelance journalist in Israel.

Stephen Tyrone Colbert ( /koʊlˈbɛər/ or /ˈkoʊlbərt/; born May 13, 1964) is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.

Colbert originally studied to be an actor, but became interested in improvisational theatre when he met famed Second City director Del Close while attending Northwestern University. He first performed professionally as an understudy for Steve Carell at Second City Chicago; among his troupe mates were comedians Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, with whom he developed the critically acclaimed sketch comedy series Exit 57.

Colbert also wrote and performed on the short-lived Dana Carvey Show before collaborating with Sedaris and Dinello again on the cult television series Strangers with Candy. He gained considerable attention for his role on the latter as closeted gay history teacher Chuck Noblet. It was his work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news-parody series The Daily Show, however, that first introduced him to a wide audience.

Daniel Keenan "Dan" Savage (born October 7, 1964) is an American author, media pundit, journalist and newspaper editor. Savage writes the internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column Savage Love. Its tone is frank in its discussion of sexuality, often humorous, and hostile to social conservatives and Rick Santorum's views on homosexuality. Savage has clashed with cultural conservatives on the right, and the gay establishment, on the left. He has also worked as a theater director, both under his real name and under the name Keenan Hollahan, using his middle name and his grandmother's maiden name. In 2010, Savage and his husband Terry Miller began the It Gets Better Project to help prevent suicide among LGBT youth.

Dan Savage was born to William and Judy Savage in Chicago, Illinois. He is of Irish ancestry. The third of four children, Savage was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary North, which he has described as "a Catholic high school in Chicago for boys thinking of becoming priests." Though Savage has stated that he is now "a wishy-washy agnostic" and an atheist, he has said that he still considers himself "culturally Catholic."

The suicide of Phoebe Prince, on January 14, 2010, led to the criminal prosecution of six teenagers for charges including statutory rape and civil rights violations, as well as to the enactment of stricter anti-bullying legislation by the Massachusetts state legislature.

Prince had moved from Ireland to South Hadley, Massachusetts. Her suicide, after suffering months of bullying from school classmates, brought international attention to the problem of bullying in US schools. In March 2010, a state anti-bullying task force was set up as a result of her death. The Massachusetts legislation was signed into law on May 3, 2010.

The trial for those accused in the case occurred in 2011, with pre-trial hearings beginning on September 15, 2010. Sentences of probation and community service were handed down after guilty pleas on May 5, 2011.

Phoebe Nora Mary Prince was born in Bedford, England, United Kingdom, on November 24, 1994, and moved to the seaside community of Fanore in County Clare, Ireland, when she was two. Prince attended Villiers Secondary School, a private school in County Limerick, where she reportedly suffered problems, including self mutilation and a failed suicide attempt. She immigrated to the U.S. in the fall of 2009 with her mother and four siblings. Her mother lived in Boston for a few years. The choice of South Hadley, Massachusetts was reportedly because of the presence of extended family, including an aunt, identified in news accounts as Eileen Moore. Her father, a British national, reportedly chose to remain in nearby Lisdoonvarna, rather than emigrate. Prince was attending South Hadley High School at the time of her death at age 15, on January 14, 2010.