BAD REVIEW: Actor Alec Baldwin was indicted in New Mexico a second time yesterday on charges of involuntary manslaughter in the 2021 fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie “Rust.”

  The first charge, a felony, accuses Baldwin of “total disregard or indifference for the safety of others,” while the second count involves negligent use of a firearm.

  Baldwin has insisted that he was told the gun did not contain live rounds and that he did not pull the trigger — the gun simply went off. Experts who have examined the gun have said it’s impossible that it fired without pulling the trigger.

  Live bullets are not supposed to be mixed with the gun props on movie sets. Baldwin has not been accused of loading the gun with real bullets. Actors are customarily not held responsible for the safety of prop guns.

  The charges filed against Baldwin a year ago were dropped. The 65-year-old has since said that he’s had trouble getting work and he has his Hamptons estate up for sale at $19 million.

GEORGIA AFFAIRS: In a development that could make a mess out of the Georgia election interference case, a court filing including credit card records shows that District Attorney Fani Willis appeared to be having an affair with lawyer Nathan Wade before she hired him to be her lead prosecutor on the case. 

  Wade’s estranged wife provided the records showing that Willis travelled with him to both San Francisco and Miami before she hired him. The filing by one of 14 defendants in the election case argues that both Willis and Wade violated professional standards of conduct. Both might have to bow out of the case, or worse.

GAME OVER: Nearly the entire staff of Sports Illustrated including writers and editors were laid off yesterday, possibly spelling the end for the magazine that has been published just short of 70 years.

  If SI dies, it’s yet another example of what happens when investors and money mongers take over a journalistic operation. 

  The magazine was launched in 1954 by Henry Luce as part of the Time empire. It featured stunning color pictures and such star writers as Dan Jenkins, Frank Deford, and Gary Smith, and of course, the famed swimsuit edition.

  Time Inc. sold SI to magazine publisher Meredith Corporation in 2018, which then sold it to Authentic Brands Group, a licensing and merchandise company with no history in journalism.  ABG laid off a third of the staff and then tried to make money off the SI name with resorts, casinos, and even brain energy pills. 

  ABG sold the SI publishing rights to the Arena Group for $15 million a year. Arena recently missed a payment and ABG appears to be pulling the plug.

GUILTY OR INNOCENT: Twenty years after the murder that dominated the news, The Los Angeles Innocence Project has gone to bat for Scott Petersen, who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife Laci. The Project says it “represents Scott Peterson and is investigating his claim of actual innocence.”

  Lawyers have already succeeded in overturning the death sentence for Petersen, now 51, who was convicted of killing his wife and dumping her body along the shore of San Francisco Bay. Petersen had been having an affair and may have had motive to be rid of his wife, but the current legal effort might attempt to focus on a burglary near the Peterson home in Modesto around the time Laci disappeared.

ORANGE ALERT: Donald Trump continues his racist attacks on Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley, insultingly calling her “Nimbra” in social media posts saying she “doesn’t have what it takes.”

  Haley’s birth name is Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has always gone by Nikki and took her husband’s name Haley upon marrying.

  Trump has also questioned Haley’s citizenship, even though she was born in the US, claiming her parents were not citizens at the time of her birth. Anyone born in the US is automatically a citizen, regardless of their parents.

  Trump has a history of questioning the birth citizenship of opponents who are not white, most notably President Barack Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Ted Cruz, and former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, whom he called “Coco Chow.” 

THE OBIT PAGE: Dr. Nancy Adler, a health psychologist whose research was instrumental in establishing the relationship between education, wealth, and physical health, died on January 4th at home in San Francisco. She was 77. 

  The short interpretation of her work is that good health and longer life is determined more by zip code than genetic code.

  In a 2007 report for the MacArthur Foundation, Adler wrote, “Premature death is more than twice as likely for middle-income Americans as for those at the top of the income ladder, and more than three times as likely for those at the bottom than those at the top.”

THE SPIN RACK: Iran has accused Israel of launching an airstrike on Damascus today, killing four Iranian military advisers along with a number of Syrians. — President Biden yesterday canceled nearly $5 billion in student loan debt for 74,000 people, most of them in public service jobs including teachers, nurses, and firefighters. Biden has been forgiving debt piecemeal since the Supreme Court struck down his more ambitious plan to forgive $400 billion in student debt all at once. — A grand jury has been empaneled in Uvalde, Texas to examine the failed police response to the town’s grade school massacre.  

BELOW THE FOLD: The federal highway administration has banned humor from electronic highway signs. Starting in 2026 electronic messages such as “Buckle up, windshields hurt” or “We’ll be blunt, don’t drive high,” will become an old joke under the new rules. 

  Highway administrators say that signs with obscure meaning, references to popular culture, or that are intended to be funny are too distracting to drivers. How about “Don’t read this sign.” 

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