Tonight, while hosting a book party for Peggy Noonan, Michael Bloomberg condemned the state of electoral politics, calling it “a race to the extremes.” What America needs is someone capable of “bringing people together,” the billionaire ex-mayor said. “You don’t solve problems by...making pie-in-the-sky promises.”

When bidding to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, Rio de Jaineiro promised the International Olympics Committee that it would eliminate 80 percent of the sewage found in the city’s notoriously filthy water, and would fully regenerate the lagoon in which rowing and kayaking events will be held. Now a few months from the start of the games, Rio has given up on keeping those promises.

Outside The Lines’ Bonnie Ford has a thorough examination of the current state of Rio’s water pollution, and things aren’t looking so great. Ford visits several areas in which the water is laden with trash, and describes being overwhelmed by the smell of raw sewage on a few occasions. She also got this quote from the Rio 2016 spokeswoman:

“It’s not going to happen because there was not enough commitment, funds and energy,” Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada told Outside the Lines. “However, we finally got something that the bay has been missing for generations, which is public will for the cleaning.

“Nobody wants to have guests at their house and show a dirty house. So if we’re not able to reach the target, we need to keep working until the last minute and make sure that the athletes can compete in safe waters, and we’ve been doing this.”

That’s not a very encouraging statement, doubly so considering that independent testing done by the Associated Press suggested that the presence of viral pathogens in the water was a problem the IOC was failing to address.

http://deadspin.com/2016-olympians...

The athletes have also resigned themselves to the fact that they will be competing in water that could very well make them sick. OTL’s story cites a 2015 U.S. Olympic Committee planning document that says the committee does “not expect to anticipate major reductions in bacterial or viral pathogen levels at the competition venues.” This has left many of the athletes to take extra precautions while competing:

The U.S. will send 48 rowers to Rio, and they will be as forewarned and forearmed as the federation can make them, starting with squeeze bottles of hand sanitizer that will be distributed on the flight to Brazil.

Hannafin says the athletes have been asked to get hepatitis A vaccinations and polio boosters and take the oral typhoid vaccine. Their oar handles will be bleached and their boats washed inside and out after each training session or competition. Gear will be laundered at a high enough temperature to kill microbes. “Track bites”—the nicks rowers get on the backs of their calves from their sliding seats—will be cleaned and covered to reduce the chance of infection. Probiotics screened by the USOC will be on the training table.

Should be a great Olympics.

Photo via AP

[OTL]

At the Republican town hall on Thursday, a questioner prefaced his inquiry about Obamacare by introducing himself as a Michigan State fan—but not before mispronouncing Ohio Governor John Kasich’s name.

Kasich, for what it is worth, was gracious in response to both slights.

Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

In court on Thursday, attorneys for alleged 9/11 conspirator Ammar al Baluchi screened scenes from the film Zero Dark Thirty in support of their argument that the CIA gave filmmakers Kathyrn Bigelow and Mark Boal greater access to evidence in the death-penalty case than the defense lawyers.

According to the Miami Herald, reporting from the war court at the Guantanamo Bay Navy Base, attorneys showed clips depicting a character named “Ammar” being subjected to a variety of abuses, including waterboarding. The judge in the case, Army Col. James Pohl, overruled prosecutor Jeffrey Groharing’s objection that “This is a movie, not a documentary.” (The accuracy of the film’s depiction of the role of torture in the search for Osama bin Laden has been widely disputed.)

Baluchi’s attorneys filed their 418-page Zero Dark Thirty motion in 2013 following reports from Gawker and Judicial Watch that revealed, in part, the CIA’s involvement in the film’s production.

http://gawker.com/declassified-m...

http://gawker.com/declassified-m...

The issue at hand is whether the CIA shared more information with Bigelow and Boal, who did not even have the necessary security clearance, than they did with defense attorneys. If so, the defense argues, this would be further evidence that the United States has lost the moral standing to execute the accused (if they are convicted). From the Herald, in 2013:

Baluchi’s attorneys Jay Connell and Air Force Lt. Col. Sterling Thomas, both on the case because they have top-secret security clearances, want the war court judge to order the government to furnish them with uncensored correspondence between the filmmakers and U.S. officials, including interrogators’ names. They want to read an unredacted version of an internal CIA memo that talks about “an interrogation of a character who is modeled after Ammar al Baluchi” — in which the agency sought changes.

“The United States has provided more information to the filmmakers of Zero Dark Thirty about Mr. al Baluchi’s treatment in CIA custody than it has to his defense counsel,” they argue. Although those lawyers months ago signed an agreement to safeguard national security secrets, “the prosecution has provided no information about Mr. al Baluchi’s rendition, detention, and interrogation.”

The unusual detour through a Hollywood production is just the latest effort by attorneys to shine a light on what happened to the alleged 9/11 conspirators before they got to Guantánamo in 2006. The CIA has acknowledged that it waterboarded Mohammed 183 times, among other interrogation tactics portrayed in the movie. But nothing has ever surfaced on what was done to his nephew, who sits four rows behind him at the war court as a co-defendant in the case alleging five men conspired to direct, train and fund the hijackers who killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

Baluchi was in court on Thursday, and while he had seen the clips before, defense attorney Cheryl Bormann said, he was nevertheless “visibly upset” during the screening. “Mr. al Baluchi sat in court today and watched film clips about his own torture.”

Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

At tonight’s CNN Republican Presidential Town Hall in Columbia, South Carolina, after months of struggling to connect with voters, Jeb Bush finally said something we can all relate to: He thinks his brother’s painting habit is “really weird.” Jeb didn’t refer to W.’s naked self-portraits specifically, but I’m sure those haunt his dreams.

Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.

In Flint, Michigan, Erin Brockovich has joined the cavalry: the famed environmental activist is bringing her talents to the Mitten. She’ll be helping lawyers organize a class action suit for the embattled residents.

Brockovich, whose 1993 fight against water poisoning by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company of California was immortalized by Julia Roberts, met with Flint residents this week to discuss the lawsuit, according to ABC 12.

In other Flint news, Mayor Karen Weaver and Governor Rick Snyder don’t see eye to eye on when to replace the poisonous lead pipes in Flint, according to the Detroit Free Press. Snyder wants to assess the pipes and begin work within the next 30 days, while Weaver’s wants the work to begin immediately.

“We’re going to get this done — and done quickly — by any and every means necessary,” Weaver said in a statement. “The people of my city have simply run out of patience, and I have a moral obligation to act.”

Contact the author at hillary@jezebel.com.

Image via Getty.

“Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”

- Revelation 13:18

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

Lately, Donald Trump has claimed, repeatedly and emphatically but without providing any evidence, that he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq not only after it became clear that it was a mistake, but before it even hapened. But in a 2002 interview with Howard Stern, uncovered by BuzzFeed News, when asked whether he would support an Iraq invasion, Trump said that he would. “Yeah I guess so,” Trump replied. “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

Trump has never provided any evidence that he was against the war. In fact, he has insisted that, while his opposition was “loud and strong,” reporters did not feel they needed to document his political opinions because he was not a politician at the time. (There is, however, evidence that Trump expressed mild—if confused—skepticism about the war subsequent to the January 2003 invasion.)

The Howard Stern interview was conducted on September 11, 2002. Not only does he advocate for invading Iraq, Trump makes no mention of the “thousands and thousands of people” he now remembers cheering for the towers’ destruction in Jersey City.

http://gawker.com/donald-trump-i...

Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Responding quickly to BuzzFeed’s newly uncovered interview in which Donald Trump advocates for invading Iraq, Anderson Cooper asked the man himself if he remembered answering in the affirmative. In response, Trump comes as close to breaking character as we’ve seen him yet. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

http://gawker.com/donald-trump-a...

So, does Trump remember it? “No, but I mean, I—I could have said that. Nobody asked me... I wasn’t a politician. It was probably the first time anybody asked me that question.... But by the time the war started, I was against the war,” Trump answered, clearly flustered by the question.

So basically what Trump is saying is that A) he hadn’t thought about it much so his immediate impulse was to go to war (good to know!), B) it only matters that he was against the war when it started, and C) since he wasn’t a politician at the time that somehow makes his current claims about his non-politician era impervious to fact (or something?). And that’s just the first thirty seconds.

Trump spends the next minute or so of his answer speaking remarkably quickly for someone who isn’t actually saying anything at all. Trump is unprepared, frantic, and grasping at (more) straws (than usual). All of which is to say, it is immensely satisfying to watch.

Please, enjoy.

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

On Thursday, when asked by Anderson Cooper what kind of music he listens to, Donald Trump launched into a remembrance of his friend, Michael Jackson.

Actually, earlier in the day, a voter asked Trump to sign a photograph of himself with Jackson.

That’s nice.

Photo via Getty Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

“Progressives have no idea how fragile it all is. That’s why they feel free to be unappeasable... They think America has endless give. But America is composed of humans, and they do not have endless give.” Is Peggy Noonan warning of a violent Republican uprising? It’s hard to tell sometimes, with Peggy.

http://gawker.com/peggy-noonan-i...

Dark days in Crystal City, Texas: Less than a week after Mayor Ricardo Lopez was arrested by his own police department at a city council meeting, residents are reporting that black water is running out of their taps. Not dark or murky water—black water.

http://gawker.com/the-mayor-of-c...

Crystal City denizens began sharing photos of the latest sign of their personal apocalypse on social media Wednesday evening, according to local news network KSAT. According to a notice published by the city the following morning, the water ran dark because renovations on the municipal water tank caused sediment to leak into distribution lines. Residents are advised to boil their water before drinking it.

We began following Crystal City, a town of about 7,500 near the Mexican border, after all but one of its top public officials were arrested by the FBI. Mostly, they were accused of taking bribes from a local gambling ringleader in exchange for allowing his illicit business to operate and snuffing out his competition. Then, on Tuesday, the mayor was arrested again after allegedly scuffling with a local woman at a city council meeting.

http://gawker.com/fbi-arrests-ne...

Nora Flores Guerrero, a resident, may have been feeling grateful this week. She told KSAT that her water only “stank”—it didn’t flow as dark as the heart of beelzebub himself, like her neighbors’.

Here’s one more image of the black water for good measure.

If you ask me, whoever’s running the show down in Crystal City is getting a little heavy-handed with their end-of-days symbolism, but who am I to judge.

Screenshot via KSAT. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Yesterday, Oregon achieved two things: it passed the highest minimum wage in America, and the first minimum wage law that has multiple tiers tied to cost of living in certain areas.

Exciting times (in minimum wage law)! Here is what the new Oregon law will do:

The proposal would start a series of gradual increases over six years: Oregon’s current $9.25 an hour minimum – already one of the highest in the nation – would jump to $14.75 in metro Portland, $13.50 in smaller cities such as Salem and Eugene, and $12.50 in rural communities by 2022.

Currently, only Washington, DC has a (state-level) minimum wage higher than $10 per hour, but Massachusetts is raising its minimum to $11 per hour starting next year. Oregon’s new law surpasses that, and takes a meaningful stab at addressing a common objection to high minimum wages: that they penalize businesses in areas with lower costs of living.

The new law was crafted in part as a compromise designed to forestall burgeoning movements for an even higher wage in Oregon. The wage increase has pissed off the usual suspects—but they would be pissed off with any increase at all!

The arguments over significantly higher minimum wages and the effects of these kinds of tiers are all theoretical until we try it. Why not try it in a state called: Oregon? If this model is effective in Oregon it could be copied all over America, so, hey, great.

[Photo: Oregon DOT/ Flickr]

The photos on Britney Spears’s Instagram are generally a much-needed reprieve from the circus (not that Circus) that is the 2016 election. She uses the platform to share photos of herself, her kids, her milkshakes, art, Mars, water—you know, anything but presidential candidates. Until last night, that is, when she got political...and then suddenly didn’t.

Spears posted two photos of her with Hillary Clinton, whom she called an “inspiration” for women around the world. But in addition to the apolitical comments on Clinton’s character (she also called her an “intense presence”), The Daily Mail reports one caption originally included the hashtag “#ImWithHer.”

They write:

A short time after posting the picture, Spears removed her endorsement and deleted the hashtag ‘ImWithHer’

If asked for a comment, I imagine she’ll say, “It may have seemed like a crush, but it doesn’t mean that I was serious. ‘Cause to trim all my captions, that is just so typically me!”

[Daily Mail]

Khloe to Rob: “I miss you.”

Blac Chyna to Rob: I kiss you.

[Snapchat]

• Gwyneth lets her 11-year-old daughter get facials. [Daily Mail]
• Have you ever rolled your eyes at Ginnifer Goodwin? [Celebitchy]
  
• Kristen Stewart : Dancing like no one’s watching :: Ariel : Being part of our world [People]
  
• It feels like half of the stories on Radar Online are about Nicole Brown Simpson. [Radar Online]
  
• Rose McGowan sells weed now. Sort of. I mean, in a way. [Page Six]
  
• We’ve known this was coming for some time, but Miley Cyrus has finally declared war on Canada. [Gossip Cop]
  

Contact the author at bobby@jezebel.com.

Images via Instagram / Snapchat.

Citing multiple sources in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, AL.com is reporting that Harper Lee has died. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Kill a Mockingbird was 89 years old.

Lee had been living in Monroeville, AL.com reports, since she suffered a stroke in 2007. Lee’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman, was controversially published last year.

Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that Aaron Sorkin is adapting To Kill a Mockingbird for Broadway. Lee’s literary agent Andrew Nurnberg told the Times that “while Nelle had always had misgivings about anyone who might want to bring To Kill a Mockingbird to Broadway—and there have been many approaches over the years—she finally decided that [producer] Scott [Rudin] would be the right person to embrace this.”

According to AL.com, services for Lee have yet to be announced.

Photo via Getty. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.

Below, we have a 10-minute segment from today’s Morning Joe in which co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski address the criticism that they are too friendly with Donald Trump to cover him objectively. To give you a sense of the tenor of the video, Mika shouts about pizza within the first three minutes, and Joe closes it by whispering like a comic book villain.

The segment is ostensibly about Joe Biden when it begins, but the other Joe takes it off the rails almost immediately. You have to feel bad for Michael Steele and the guests who flanked the hosts this morning, who I can only imagine spent much of the 10 minutes staring at their laps, waiting for it to be over.

I don’t want to spoil any more of the drama for you—just watch the clip.

Screenshot via Morning Joe/MSNBC. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

A few weeks ago, a man emailed me to “congratulate” me for “overcoming my gender” and voting for Bernie Sanders. After reading a short blog post I wrote here, he incorrectly assumed that I was one of the many youngish women voting for Sanders. It was an odd turn of phrase, one that simultaneously implied that gender is something that can be rendered politically irrelevant by a single vote while also suggesting that being a woman was something that can and should be mastered. By this line of thinking, I suppose I was owed a congratulatory note.

Since the long slog of the Presidential primaries began, I’ve received many emails from men. But this particular one struck me: it seemed to get to the very heart of the increasingly frustrating conversation that has formed around young feminists, and their decision to support Sanders over Clinton by a margin of 20 percent.

This decision is framed as either inexplicable or essential; there are two separate narratives in play here, each based on a distinct set of assumptions about how a feminist should vote.

One narrative makes young women voters the problem. As presumed feminists, they are voting for the wrong presidential candidate, and incorrectly choosing a man over a woman. At best, this decision is a betrayal of some hazy fundamentals of feminism. At worst, it’s kind of false consciousness—a vote driven by a youthful delusion that gender is a meaningless construction. Feminism, the narrative says, is about supporting other women, and Hillary Clinton is a woman. A vote for Clinton is a vote to make history, to fundamentally change the look of the presidency. With such high stakes, how could young women possibly cast their lot with a white man?

That narrative is, and has always been, an impoverished one. “Supporting other women” is an empty phrase that poses as ideology. It sounds nice, yet it assumes that women are a homogenous group—that we easily agree on all issues simply because we are women, and that we are all positioned in the world within the same way.

But the phrase—the idea of women supporting women as if the act were as simple as saying it—is politically and culturally intoxicating. It was certainly a driving force when John McCain nominated Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential candidate in 2008. “Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all!” Palin told an Ohio crowd in 2008. And, the broad hollowness of “supporting other women”—the amount of non-support that phrase can cover—showed in the end. Despite the McCain/Palin attempt to make history, Barack Obama won women by 12 points.

Yet this line of inquiry continues to be pursued. “Young women are choosing Bernie Sanders over the first serious female presidential contender in history? What’s going on?” a Politico article breathlessly teased. Likewise, Cosmopolitan surveyed four female college students and Time returned to Clinton’s alma mater, the women’s college Wellesley, to ask how the sisterhood could possibly support Sanders. A piece at New York Magazine more diplomatically explored that same question. “The idea of voting for a woman purely for the fact that she’s a woman—that’s really almost the opposite of what we’re talking about in our feminist movement,” a Wesleyan University freshman told the magazine.

There’s a particular, biased demand in all of the stories about the “irrational” decision of young women to support Sanders. They each require from young women a defense of their politics, one which is assumed to be irrationally estranged from the fibers of their person; they ask women to explain their interpretations, as if by default they are divorced from objective truths about gender and history.

These stories leave a bad taste in my mouth, not because they are poorly written or because the women in them aren’t articulate and informed (they are)—but because their very framing is built on an old presumption that young women could not possibly be making rational decisions. We don’t write the same articles or talk the same way about men: from a young age, it’s assumed that their political ideologies emerge from their rational nature, from the natural order of things. Men vote for men not out of some allegiance to gender, but simply because that is how the universe works. Men’s individuality needs no defense.

Women, on the other hand, must need education. The underlying idea that a feminist should vote a certain way is prevalent among so-called Berniebros and Hillarybots, easy shorthand for those who insist on convincing nearly anyone the public on the objective correctness of their choice. If young women are irrational, then they need guidance either from older feminists or well-meaning men on the internet. To borrow Rebecca Solnit’s phrase, they are “an empty vessel to be filled...with wisdom and knowledge.”

And women, usually the recipients of unsolicited moral advice, are on this issue giving plenty of it. “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” Madeleine Albright recently said while introducing Clinton at a New Hampshire rally. There’s no doubt that when Albright started using that phrase 25 years ago, it had a sharper, more urgent resonance. The landscape of gender diversity was apocalyptically bleak, and supporting other women a much easier dictum when there were so few to support. But Albright still stands firmly by her catchphrase. In a recent New York Times op-ed, she wrote:

In a society where women often feel pressured to tear one another down, our saving grace lies in our willingness to lift one another up. And while young women may not want to hear anything more from this aging feminist, I feel it is important to speak to women coming of age at a time when a viable female presidential candidate, once inconceivable, is a reality.

Note the phrase “our saving grace,” so overloaded with religious devotion. We are still within the first narrative, where it is a positive, necessary act of faith to vote for Clinton. A vote against her, for Sanders, is to be graceless, metaphorically cast to hell.

But again, this ideology collapses on itself. It expects women to divorce the personal and the political—a particularly odd mandate in American culture, which almost obscenely values individuality. Women who believe their lives would be better under Sanders are allotted none of this individual conviction, particularly women of color who are consistently to the left of their white counterparts.

I have spent so much time thinking about gender and obligation, “supporting other women”—the first narrative—that the man’s email surprised me; it reminded me of the second narrative thread that’s run through the primaries, in which the seemingly rational choice is to support Sanders, and to support Clinton is to be again an empty vessel, again waiting for enlightenment. “Congratulations,” my inbox rang; you found that enlightenment. You have shed the defect of your gender; you are rational.

The implication, of course, is that any woman who votes for Clinton is not—that they’re moved solely by gender and not a clear-purposed political ideology. Women who acknowledge that voting for a woman is indeed part of the reason that they are supporting Clinton are lectured and harassed. Their harassment, in turn, is painted as a figment of their imagination; after all, young women are voting for Bernie Sanders, and they’re making out just fine.

Take, for example, Michelle Goldberg’s almost ambivalent support of Clinton. “I know [the] case against Clinton,” Goldberg writes, and then dutifully lists virtually all of the drawbacks that Clinton poses as a candidate. Yet she comes to the conclusion that Clinton is her candidate; a conclusion drawn neither from gender nor history-making:

[In 2007] I wrote article after article inveighing against the idea that Clinton was a feminist standard-bearer. In fact, I argued, she exemplified “a phenomenon seen in many developing and crisis-ridden countries: the great man’s wife or daughter promising to continue his legacy.” I was livid when older feminists like Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan, and Linda Hirshman denigrated the young feminists supporting Obama. “If feminism equaled supporting Hillary Clinton, I’m not the only one who wouldn’t want anything to do with it,” I sniffed.

Goldberg’s decision is made with knowledge of issues and in full possession of reason—something that seems nearly inexplicable to men who disdainfully offer “actually” and “congratulations.”

The Democratic primary has left me fatigued. I am tired of being a woman, I am tired of being condescended to. I am tired of being told how a feminist should vote, rather than simply being allowed to stake out my own political ideologies. “The assertion that ‘the personal is political’ is surely one of feminism’s major achievements,” Maggie Nelson wrote, in 2012's The Art of Cruelty. “Even so, predictably enough, women still struggle to lay their claim to it.”

Photos via Getty

As the presidential primaries heat up, the men running to win them are starting to crack. Have these senators and governors and Donald Trumps gone under the knife to keep up with the competition? One plastic surgeon shares with us his shocking opinions!

Dr. Lyle Back, an esteemed plastic surgeon from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, has not personally treated any of the presidential candidates, but he knows a nose job when he sees one. Ranked South Jersey’s “Top Doc” by South Jersey magazine nine years running, Dr. Back found that three candidates have suspicious signs of a little facial rejuvenation.

MARCO RUBIO: EYELID SURGERY? NOSE JOB?

After examining the above undoctored photos of Rubio from 2010 (left) and 2016 (right), Dr. Back, who has not treated Marco Rubio, issued the following professional opinion: “Mr. Rubio has had some cosmetic surgery done.” He continued, “The most dramatic is his eye. If you look at his before and after photos, you can see the signs—I think it was done very well—but you can see the signs that he had both an upper eyelid and a lower eyelid blepharoplasty.”

Doc, what are the signs? “If you look at his upper eyelids in the before photo, you’ll see overhanging redundant skin, that almost is keeping you from seeing the eyelashes on the outer aspect of each eye. It’s starting to kind of hang almost into the eye. And if you look at the after photos you’ll see he has nice, crisp upper eyelids that are clearly visible and clearly open,” Dr. Back said.

“And if you look at the lower eyelids on either side on the before picture,” he continued, “you’ll see he has not advanced case, but a little bit of some bags, a little extra skin under his eyes that can make you look a little bit tired. If you look at the after photo you’ll see they are as smooth as can be. There’s no bag, there’s no anything.”

Eye-mazing!

Dr. Back added, cautiously: “I think there’s also a possibility that he had a very conservative, very mild form of a rhinoplasty or a nose job.”

MARTIN O’MALLEY: LASER RESURFACING?

Dr. Back has not treated former Governor Martin O’Malley, who dropped out of the Democratic primary earlier this month. But after considering the above photos of O’Malley from 2010 (left) and 2016 (right), Dr. Back told us, “I think [he] has had maybe, I’ll say like, either a chemical peel or a facial or two, or probably a laser resurfacing.”

Dr. Back explained the signs: “In his before picture he has a...weathered look, for lack of a better word, almost like a Marlboro Man kind of look. You know, the sun, the elements, the wind, time, have taken a little bit of toll on the skin...If you look at the after photo there, the skin looks a little smoother. It looks a little lighter in color. It has a brighter appearance. It looks a little less beaten up.”

What do these signs mean, Doc? “These are classic characteristic features when someone has had facial resurfacing of some kind,” Dr. Back said. “And that could be as little of a thing as a couple good facials, or a chemical peel. But I suspect, because he’s a man and [the skin] is heavier and thicker, that this type of result couldn’t be achieved unless he had a laser resurfacing.”

Fancy!

RAND PAUL: HAIR PIECE?

Dr. Back, who has not treated Sen. Rand Paul, said that in his opinion, Paul has not had any plastic surgery. But when he looked at the above photos of Paul in 2010 (left) and 2016 (right), he had questions.

“Does he wear a hair piece of some kind?” Dr. Back asked. “I’m not sure, but something about it in both the before and after photos...it kind of, sort of has that look to it a little bit. It doesn’t quite look right.”

Sure doesn’t!

OTHER CANDIDATES: NEED HELP!

Dr. Back examined photos of all the other presidential candidates and determined that they have not had plastic surgery. They need it, however. “Especially Bernie,” Dr. Back said. “I would like to help Bernie.”

We have reached out to Rubio, O’Malley, and Paul to ask whether or not they’ve had any plastic surgery or cosmetic procedures, and we will update this post if we hear back.

Magazine cover by Bobby Finger. All photos via Getty. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.

Affluenza teen Ethan Couch—who was previously detained in beautiful, sunny Puerto Vallarta before being sent off to juvie in Texas—got some bad news this morning. A Texas judge has ruled to move the 18-year-old’s case to adult court, meaning he could face actual jail time for his role in the drunk-driving accident that killed four people.

http://gawker.com/report-ya-boy-...

Couch was 16 when he was faced with drunk driving charges back in 2013 but ultimately used an “affluenza” defense to convince the judge to let him off for just being too damned rich. Since violating his probation and running off to Mexico, though, Couch might actually have to deal with the consequences of his actions.

From the The Houston Chronicle:

The Friday ruling means the 18-year-old Couch could face 120 days in jail, then finish his 10-year probation. But if he violates his probation during that time, he could get up to 10 years in prison for each of the four people killed in the accident.

The judge ordered that the case be transferred before Couch turns 19 in April. Couch remains in custody.

One-hundred twenty days in jail might not seem like much, but if history is any indication, the likelihood of ya boy Ethan Couch staying out of trouble for ten years is pretty slim.

Anyway, let him know if you’ve found his dog.

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com. Image via AP.

Folks, get ready for the latest assault on our freedoms by the Barack Uday Qusay Hussein Osama bin Bummer O’Ghazi Libtards for American Communism Administration: they want to take away our hoverboards.

Mashable reports that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission—a federal agency whose chairman was appointed by the desert prince Biraq Obamesopotamia himself—recently distributed a notice to retailers and manufacturers, asking them to take their self-balancing scooters off the market until they can be made to meet a set of voluntary safety standards. The cause of the notice, according to the CPSC, is hoverboard fires.

If hoverboard peddlers fail to bring their wares into compliance, enforcement may be taken against them. “This is us drawing a line in the sand and a notice for the entire hoverboard community,” CPSC chairman Elliott Kaye told Mashable. “From our perspective, a smart retailer will put in place a stop sale to find out if their inventory complies with the UL standard. If they are certain that it doesn’t, they should then issue a recall proposal.”

One of these days, they’re going to come for our guns, too.

Image via AP. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.