NASCAR driver Jason Leffler was gravely injured in a horrific Sprint Car crash at Bridgeport Speedway this evening. He was extricated from his car and reportedly died of his injuries once he reached the hospital. Our thoughts are with the Leffler family.

Leffler was involved in a terrible accident at Bridgeport Speedway in NJ, his car totally demolished. He was taken via helicopter to Cooper Trauma Center where he died of his injuries. It's unclear what caused the accident at this time, but it is reported that the NJ State Police are launching an investigation into the crash.

Leffler was 37 years old and a veteran of the NASCAR Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series. He ran 72 races in Sprint Cup over 9 years, with one pole. He also ran 12 years in Nationwide with two wins, and participated in the 2000 Indy 500.

NASCAR released the following statement on Leffler's passing:

NASCAR extends its thoughts, prayers and deepest sympathies to the family of Jason Leffler who passed away earlier this evening. For more than a decade, Jason was a fierce competitor in our sport and he will be missed.

Leffler is survived by his son, Charlie. Rest in peace.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

A Bluffton, South Carolina, man who admitted to growing pot plants to help his sick wife was charged with marijuana trafficking after turning himself in this week.

66-year-old Frank Dennis Peters told police the marijuana was being used for medicinal purposes by his wife, who suffers from multiple medical conditions including fibromyalgia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The marijuana enhances her appetite and also works as a necessary sleep aid.

"I have a moral obligation to make my wife as comfortable as possible," Peters is quoted as saying.

According to Sgt. Robin McIntosh, some 137 marijuana plants were removed from Peters' home after he voluntarily let investigators in, and brewed them a pot of coffee.

McIntosh told the Beaufort Gazette that police were tipped off to the plants by a neighbor, but Peters believes his neighbors knew and were fine with plants, and it was a guest at one of their recent parties who called the cops.

Though Peters was charged with a crime that carries a possible 10 years behind bars, medical marijuana is not actually illegal in South Carolina.

A law has been on the books since the early '80s which permits the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, but only if purchased from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

The catch: The DHEC has never actually sold anyone any weed because it is illegal to do so under Federal law.

Peters, who is his wife's sole caregiver, was allowed some time to make the necessary arrangements before turning himself in to the Beaufort County Detention Center this past Tuesday.

He was released on his own recognizance later in the day.

[H/T: Opposing Views, mug shot via The Island Packet, photo via Shutterstock]

Jelly Roll, a 28-year-old white rapper from Antioch, Tennessee, has eaten at Waffle House more times than he can possibly remember. Hundreds of visits, but more likely thousands, to an inestimable percentage of America’s 1,600 Southern franchises. He orders the same meal every time, his particular variation of an All-Star Breakfast: scrambled eggs with cheese and wheat toast; hash browns that are double scattered, smothered, covered, and chunked (splattered with cheese, onions, and ham); a side of sausage; and a chocolate-chip waffle.

“I've been smothering, covering, and chunking shit for 28 years!” Jelly Roll, whose real name is Jason DeFord, told me recently over the phone. “Hell, I had to look at my birth certificate the other day to make sure I wasn't born in a Waffle House!”

Jelly Roll, who jokingly describes himself as "a regular fat piece of white trash," has been so devoted to Waffle House that the restaurant became a muse. Earlier this year, he released Whiskey, Weed & Waffle House, a 21-track free mixtape that also functioned as a hometown nod to the song “Whiskey, Weed, & Women,” a mewling country lament by fellow Tennessean Hank Williams III. He printed up roughly 10,000 copies for a street-team to give away.

WW&WH’s front cover depicted a glowing bottle of Crown Royal, a radiant pot leaf, and Waffle House’s distinct yellow-tiled logo. The back-cover design mimicked the chain’s menu. The title homage, a drawling ode to Jelly’s routine of weekend vices, featured a guest spot from a relative unknown named Grizz, whose involvement reflected the chain’s surprising potential for networking. “Oddly enough, we met that motherfucker at a Waffle House,” recalled Jelly. “This dude cooking with tattoos everywhere—smells like a fresh-lit cigarette mixed with some bad weed—he looks over and goes, ‘Y'all are Jelly Roll's people.’” Jelly Roll ended up signing Grizz to his upstart label, Crash Out Music, teasing, “Waffle House: Where Careers Are Started.”

Or stalled, as would be the case. Within a month of WW&WH’s release, Waffle House’s legal firm Kilpatrick, Townsend, and Stockton sent DeFord a cease and desist for infringing on the corporate trademark, thereby giving him 10 days to eradicate everything using the company’s name and logo. Soon after, he couldn't even access his Facebook and YouTube profiles—Waffle House’s reps concurrently filed trademark claims that shut him out of his accounts for more than a week.

Being a loyal customer, he was initially flattered by the attention. “I was calling everybody, like, ‘We're popular! Waffle House is trying to sue us!’” But then he visited his lawyer. “He was like”—here Jelly adopted a solemn tone—“This is very serious. Waffle House really sues people. I was like, ‘Fuck, you're kidding me!’” If only he’d thought of this approach first. “I'm 450 pounds—I should have sued Waffle House 10 years ago! Do you know how many All-Star Breakfasts I bought in my life? I might’ve stopped at 330!”

Jelly Roll is hardly the first rapper to reference Waffle House. Lil’ Wayne, 2 Chainz, Gucci Mane, Cam’Ron, Yelawolf, and Jean Grae are among the many lyricists who've acknowledged the always-open makeshift community center. Even lifelong New Yorker Jay-Z used the grub joint as a four-in-the-morning pit-stop before taking the girl from the club home in his 1999 single “Do It Again (Put Ya Hands Up).” The brand's creative influence extends beyond hip-hop: Chisel, the beloved college-rock band of DIY saint Ted Leo, named a 1995 song “Waffle House.”

Jelly Roll is also not the first songwriter to cast Waffle House in an unflattering, or even illegal, context. On iTunes alone, there’s “Sex in the Waffle House” from joke-funk group Mr. Tibbs and “Waffle House Murders” from Floridian stoner-metal band Junior Bruce. Country-rapper Colt Ford cast the restaurant as a cuckolded counseling center in “Waffle House,” a gruff wail in which the narrator finds out his wife's been unfaithful and begs a friend to meet him there with a gun before he kills somebody. Half-Asian Alabaman emcee Jackie Chain pretty much equates the place with the same scurrilous activities as Jelly Roll (trading “hoes,” “smoking bomb dank,” and sipping liquor) in his 2008 track “Waffle House Pimpin."

“There is at least some distinction between an artist referencing ‘Waffle House’ in a song, parody or other work, and someone who infringes on our trademarks without our consent,” clarified a Waffle House spokesperson over email. “Jelly Roll’s use of those trademarks was one of the more flagrant violations we have seen, and actions were taken to protect owner’s rights.”

This also isn't the first time Waffle House's legal representatives have enforced such a distinction. In 2011, the company issued a cease-and-desist to Atlanta emcee J.R. Bricks, for his song "Waffle House," demanding that he stop using their logo and change the track's title—after grousing the gesture was "cultural discrimination," he complied. Fearing similar repercussions, Austin-based hip-hop jokers Dem Waffle House Boyz proactively abridged their name to DWHB, a reasoning they confirmed via email. “Despite our name being spelled differently, it is very clearly a reference to the restaurant (which we love), and a majority of our lyrics could be described as profane, so we figured the chain would probably not want to be associated with us (sadly, haha) and that it'd be best to change it before any unfortunate legal action was taken.”

Jelly Roll, for his part, had never considered such a possibility. “I didn’t even think I was a blip on their radar,” he explained on a recent weeknight, on his cell in a waiting area of the Nashville Criminal Justice Center. He’d gone to visit a friend facing a charge for conspiracy to distribute 2,500 pounds of marijuana—his friend’s second federal offense, one that would likely keep him imprisoned for the next decade or two. Many of Jelly’s friends are incarcerated, a consequence of his having spent almost exactly half his life in the penal system.

“Here goes another sad rapper story,” DeFord groaned. His father left his mother when he was a teenager; he first went to juvenile hall for an armed robbery case at 14. “My mother didn’t have shit, nobody had shit at all. People around me who did have shit got it from drugs.” So he sold drugs to have shit while experimenting with rap, which he’d loved since he nearly wore out the cassingle of Wreckz-N-Effect’s “Rump Shaker.” In his rhymes, he emphasized the banalities of slinging dope—always driving around the block, always waiting in the car, etc.—for a handful of inconsequential mixtapes. “I rolled around and sold eightballs of cocaine and crack all day and rapped about it. I should have just called it The Stories of the Unsuccessful Drug Dealer.”

The Stories of the Unsuccessful Drug Dealer, had Jelly Roll released it, could have featured rhymes about serving time for marijuana and cocaine possession after dropping out of school, earning his GED at 24, or fathering a daughter, Bailee, now five, with a bartender who came out as a lesbian while still pregnant. It might also talk about the pitfalls of growing up poor in South Nashville, like how everybody in his Antioch neighborhood always wants to borrow money for cigarettes or gas. It might also describe the professional opportunities now available to a heavily tattooed, 400-pound-plus paroled felon with a little girl to support financially, employment options mostly limited to lucrative recidivism (Jelly’s merch line includes a shirt that reads, IF MY P.O. ASKS, I HANG DRYWALL) or low-paying manual labor. “If I go to work in a factory, Bailee ends up in a trailer. You know what I’m saying? This story gets bad quick.”

For now, Jelly Roll has been playing the rap-career longshot, which is why he's so disappointed by the Waffle House setback. He's funneled everything he has into the uncertain prospect of rapping, and because of the cease-and-desist, he's had to scrap a video he paid to shoot and edit at a Nashville Waffle House, rename the digital version of the mixtape Whiskey Weed & Women, and re-make the cover art. Though he'll release a full-length in July with friend and frequent collaborator Lil' Wyte, Jelly Roll's summer tour plans have been screwed by the financial uncertainty, he had to stop circulating what was left of the 10,000 copies he’d had printed up as free promotion, and every time his lawyer communicates with the chain, the transaction costs him $500. He estimates that he lost more than $10,000 in investments. And even though he's done everything they've asked, Waffle House still isn't backing down—someone at the company found a copy of his CD at one of their locations and continue to demand some form of compensation for the trademark dilution.

Jelly Roll now knows he messed up by using their logo. "That was unprofessional," he admitted. But he's particularly annoyed because, after all, this is Waffle House! The place is so sketchy Kid Rock got into a brawl there! A business whose employees make headlines for faking robberies, where people get stabbed or live on the roof, and even the CEO has been accused of sexual harassment! "Have you all ever went into a Waffle House after 8pm? It looks like an old pregnant woman strip club that sells hash browns! Dude, ya hire cooks without teeth! And then, like, me putting a little pot leaf beside their logo—that's the worst you've ever looked? If we piss-tested everybody who went to Waffle House on drugs and wouldn't let them inside, they'd be out of business!”

Perhaps most frustrating of all, Jelly Roll hasn't been able to stay away from the damn place. “I swore I wouldn't tell too many people—I promise you're the only reporter I’ll tell—I just ate at a Waffle House! Even after I vowed I'd never eat at one again, I found myself hungry at an odd hour, under the intoxication of a little whiskey and a little weed, and I wound up in a Waffle House.” He was nervous the whole time. “I'm kind of in there, like, 'Am I allowed in here? Y'all have a picture of me somewhere—like a Waffle House bulletin that says I'm banned?”

[Jelly Roll in front of Waffle House mixtape art via Datpiff.com// Waffle House employees via Jelly Roll's Instagram // Waffle House exterior by AP/Ric Feld]

To contact the author, email camille@gawker.com.

Taking the saying "I'd give my left testicle" to its illogical conclusion, veteran poet Raffael Medina Brochero has offered to give both of his testicles in exchange for money to fund his upcoming European tour.

After finding himself broke on a 2012 tour of South America and having to break a few laws to get by, the Colombian native decided to prevent a repeat by gathering up the sufficient funds for his next trip in advance.

According to Colombia Reports, Brochero, 52, is looking to sell his balls for at least $20,000 — but another source claims he is asking for closer to $200,000, which sounds more reasonable, but not by much.

Brochero, who is a married father of one, reportedly told a local radio station he welcomes the transplantation of his testicles into the body of a man who needs them more than he does, or, failing that, their use in the preparation of soup.

[file photo via Todelar]

While the *total* wealth of Americans has recovered from the hit of the recession, those gains are, of course, not evenly distributed. The rich are doing great. Regular Joes, however, are not nearly back to where they started. And young people are truly fucked.

Floyd Norris today notes that the average household wealth in America is— you ready for this?—$613,635. We're doing great! But the median wealth, the actual midpoint between the top and bottom halves, is about one-sixth of that, which is a lower proportion than has been seen in the past two decades.

That means the rich are getting richer and the poor are, etc. etc., god bless America.

Even among the regular folks, the recovery is not equally distributed: "While all age groups have yet to recover to their 2007 wealth, when adjusted for inflation, older households are down just 3 percent on average, while those headed by middle-age people are down about 10 percent. But the decline is nearly 40 percent for the younger group."

Good luck with that student debt, yall.

[NYT. Photo: Fred Benenson/ Flickr]

A large quantity of marijuana was found inside a residence in Leicester, England, thanks to the incessant farting of a police officer who had recently started a high-protein diet.

The gassy policeman had apparently gone on the diet after taking up body building.

According to the a report in the Police Federation's magazine quoted in the UK's Metro, the flatulent cop had released so much noxious gas into the squad car that his fellow officers had to crack open a window to get away from the smell.

"They asked their colleague in the back what he had been eating, and after fits of giggles and denials, they realised the cannabis smell was in the air in the street outside," the report stated.

Ssuspicious, the cops exited the vehicle and proceeded on foot towards a house down the street.

"Imagine the surprise on the faces of the occupants of the house further along the road when the officers, following their noses, found a cannabis factory with a crop worth £12,000 [$18784]," the magazine continued.

The officers confiscated the pot and arrested seven individuals.

[H/T: MSN Now, photos via Leicester Police, Shutterstock]

You may click here to read a news story about the results of a hot dog eating contest between advertising agency employees.

Journalists nationwide were miffed on Wednesday after New York Congressman and Super Mario Bros. Mini-boss Peter King explicitly called on the Department of Justice to go after Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald for publishing classified documents revealing how much the NSA has been spying on all of us. This is almost certainly not going to happen, and would be a huge injustice if it did. But it got us wondering: Since the Obama Administration is clamping down on leaks with the dangerous zeal of a snapping turtle latching onto a toddler's pinky at a petting zoo, what is the best way for enterprising journalists to reveal important classified information to the world without being caught up in a nasty espionage investigation?

Know the Law

The first thing to understand is that the Administration's War On Leaks has been pursued under an expansive reading of the poorly written Espionage Act of 1917, which makes it illegal to leak "defense information" with the intent of harming the U.S. or aiding it enemies. (Back in 1917, it was probably leaking by... steam engine?)

Obama has charged six people who leaked classified information to the media under the law, more than all others presidents combined. The biggest possible liability for journalists would probably be a conspiracy charge under the Espionage Act. This was driven home in the case of Fox News reporter James Rosen, who was labled and treated like "an aider, an abettor, and/or co-conspirator" during an investigation into a leak of North Korean intelligence, basically for doing an especially good job at grooming a source inside the State Department. (He was never charged with a crime, and Attorney General Eric Holder later said that was never the plan.)

Don't Worry About It

But even with the War On Leaks in full swing, one veteran national security reporter I spoke to told me he doesn't worry about possible legal fallout while reporting on classified stories, and with good reason: No journalist has ever been charged under the Espionage Act, and it doesn't seem like they will soon. Even the Obama Administration's Department of Justice almost certainly won't risk the political furor of prosecuting a journalist under the Espionage Act, said Columbia Law School Professor David Pozen, who specializes in government leaks. Pozen told me there is a strong and long-standing notion in D.C. that journalists should be protected under the 1st Amendment, even when it comes to leaks.

"The legal risk to Greenwald seems minimal to me," Pozen said. "[Peter] King's statement seems to me an old trope that surfaces on all these controversies. It never goes there." Instead, Pozen said, it's the government sources who leak to journalists are really at risk.

Don't Brag About Classified Information

Still, the national security reporter said that it's probably a good idea to keep any classified information safely in your pocket unless it's absolutely necessary. He suggested that Rosen unnecessarily put himself in the DOJ's crosshairs by reporting the fact that the CIA had learned of a possible North Korean nuclear test from a CIA source inside North Korea, even though the CIA source bit wasn't central to the story. Fred Kaplan, in Slate, also criticized Rosen's choice to reveal the CIA source:

He could have written his story without revealing that nugget about the inside source. The story might have been a little less compelling; his audience might have wondered how he or his official contacts knew that a test was coming. But the U.S. government might also still have a decent intelligence source inside North Korea.

Don't Pay for Secrets

Probably the one really explicit bit of advice is: Don't try to buy classified documents as if they were so many videos of Canadian mayors smoking crack cocaine. Pozen told me some Constitutional scholars hypothesize that First Amendment protections would not suffice if journalists went beyond a typical journalist-source relationship. "A situation where it came out that a journalist enticed an otherwise unwilling source to reveal information—that might be a legally difficult one," he said. When I asked national security attorney Bradley Moss for his advice to journalists dealing with classified information, it was simple: "Don't offer money."

Documents Are More Dangerous Than Words

Moss also suggested that classified documents could probably get you in trouble more than classified gossip. As of 2009, there had only been one espionage case in history in which private citizens were prosecuted for alleged spying that didn't involve documents, according to the New York Times. That was the the case of Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, two lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) charged in 2004 with leaking government secrets to journalists and Israeli diplomats. They'd learned the information in conversations with U.S. officials then passed it along, in their role as lobbyists. The case fell apart in 2009, after it became clear that sending them to jail would basically criminalize all of D.C.

Don't Be a Megalomaniacal Albino Australian Hacker

There have been some reports that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been secretly indicted or targeted under the Espionage Act by a grand jury convened to investigate Bradley Manning's massive document dump. These are unconfirmed, but, according to Pozen, if he was charged it might be under the (wrong) idea that Wikileaks was not practicing journalism in its State Department cable leaks. "The government may have looked at: Is he a member of the media? I think there's some sense [in the government] that he may not qualify and then he wouldn't receive as much protection under the 1st Amendment," Pozen said. Greenwald is less likely to be the first journalist charged under the Espionage Act, because he works for a respected news agency.

[Photo via Getty; Image by Jim Cooke]

Finding a good parking spot in one of the country's most congested cities is commonly known to be ridiculous. But this ridiculous?

Apparently: A Boston woman won a contentious bidding war against her affluent Back Bay neighbors to purchase two "primo" parking spots in what the Boston Globe calls "one of the most parking unfriendly sections of the city."

The tandem spots were seized by the IRS from a man who owed $600,000 in back taxes, and sold at an auction yesterday to Commonwealth Ave. resident Lisa Blumenthal.

Though the asking price for the spots was a "measly" $42,000, the Globe's Katie Johnston says bidding entered six-figure territory in seconds and ended up at over half a million dollars some 15 minutes later.

For the sake of perspective, the median price for a single-family home in the Boston Metro area is around $320,000.

"It was a little more heated than I thought it would have been," said Blumenthal, who owned a single-family home valued at over $5.8 million.

She told the Globe she already has a place to park but plans to use the extra parking spaces "for guests and workers."

For the record, the most ever paid for a single parking spot remains $300,000 for another slice of Commonwealth Ave. asphalt back in 2009.

[screengrab via NECN]

In honor of Father's Day, a day when mothers across America buy cards for their husbands and then search all over the house for their children so that they can sign the card—they literally don't have to do anything but sign the card, look, here I already bought it—TIME magazine assembled a team of famous fathers to write open letters to their daughters. There were old dads and young dads and politician dads and musician dads and good dads and Bruce Jenner. Most of the letters were sweet, if a little dull.

One of them was a passive-agressive master class in embarrassment.

TOM. BROKAW.

Unlike most of the daughter letter recipients, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's three children are grown. He opens his note with standard fare about how privileged he is to be their dad, and encourages them to use the holiday to reach out to people who have lost their fathers.

Then he segues into a litany of complaints disguised as story time.

His beautiful daughter Andrea is careless with other people's belongings.

Andrea, did I yell when you left the keys to the family car on a back tire in the Bronx and it was promptly stolen? Maybe I would have been angrier had it not been just as promptly recovered.

His brilliant daughter Sarah hooks up with déclassé thieves.

Sarah, we’ll always have that New Year’s eve where I encountered your boyfriend walking through our house, drinking my precious magnum of Dom Perignon straight from the bottle.

Then he just starts talking about their menses.

The physical changes, the onset of menstruation, the attitude of adolescent boys, the hair, the cosmetics, the shoes (!)—and then, the greatest gift of all, pregnancy and birth.

Classic Brokaw dinner table fodder. Reminiscences about the onset of menstruation. A "hilarious" story about the time Andrea got the fucking car stolen in the Bronx. What ever happened to that boy Sarah used to date? The disrespectful one with a drinking problem. Oh, right, she married him. You girls sure are something. And look at those shoes. How much did those shoes cost me? Pass the scotch. Happy Thanksgiving.

Father's Day, whatever.

[TIME // Image via Getty]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

A top commander for a Nazi SS-led unit has been found hiding out in a Ukranian enclave in northeast Minneapolis. Asked by the Associated Press about his time as a Nazi, the 94-year-old Michael Karkoc said, "I don't think I can explain."

The first golden age of floating dirigibles ended on approximately May 6, 1937. The new golden age of blimpity bleep bloop blimps starts right now!

Why fly something in an airplane when you could float that thing in a blimp, for a fraction of the price? Good question. Real good question. A company called Aeroscraft, with the help of the Defense Department's $$$, is ready to bring back blimps, as a "thing." And not a moment too soon! Bloomberg reports:

Pasternak, the company’s chief executive officer, wants to be the first to harness helium for multi-ton deliveries. He envisions thousands of 500-foot-long zeppelins capable of traversing the U.S. at speeds of more than 100 miles per hour, ferrying mining equipment to roadless stretches of Alaska and bringing organic strawberries to gourmet supermarkets in Manhattan, at a quarter the cost of a cargo plane.

Now all this guy needs is $3 billion to build his fleet of futuristic modern blimps. Just imagine: looking up in the sky and seeing blimps. Sounds cool, right? Just some big old blimps, floating as easy as can be.

Blimps!

[Bloomberg. Photo: AP]

The Pixies have announced that singer/bassist/McCartney Kim Deal has quit the band, or at least that Kim Deal perceives herself as having quit the band, while the other three Pixies "will always consider her a member." Given that the Pixies had never really re-formed as an album-making unit after 1991's Trompe le Monde, either take on the transaction makes sense. Rather than her spotlight turn on "Gigantic," which could suggest Deal's role was isolable or separable, here's the band in youth and unison doing "Bone Machine":

How much are the kids on Reddit making in a year? A wide range, yeah, but generally: way more than you expect and certainly more than you did at their age and in many cases more than you are right now.

At least, the ones in New York City. A thread on the social link-sharing site's New York subsection asks a pretty simple question: "NYC residents: what do you do and what is your salary?"

The first poster, who works "in Telecom Expense Management" at a $40,000 salary, ends up being toward the low end; judging by the thread most New York Redditors work in IT or software development and make a lot more than that. (The second-largest group of contributors to the thread, after people working with computers, is people going "I need a raise.")

And if the ones who share their ages are any indication, they're young, too—lots of people "just out of school" or in their 20s.

Here are the rest, arranged by "upvotes." Share yours in the comments, if you want to make people jealous/sympathetic:

I need to make an announcement regarding my credibility as a potential future professional woman and as a human being capable of empathy. I read the Daily Mail. Every single day.

That feels good to say. I once admitted that I read the Daily Mail (or “DM” as us regular readers call it) to a lawyer friend of mine, and she scoffed so hard I thought she broke her jaw. “Why don’t you just read The Independent?” she scoffy scoff scoffed. Why don’t I read The Independent?! Who am I, some fancy prince? A wise little lord parading around in my tailcoat and cravat, filling my elegant mind with news of the day? No. No, ma’am. I AM A MONSTER.

I’m admitting this to you now because I know I’m not the only one who suffers from this particular affliction. I want you fellow DM beasts to know you’re not alone. But guys, that website is awful and we should probably stop reading it. We have to stop reading it! I can’t stop reading it. Why can’t I stop reading it?

DM represents everything that a self-identified feminist and crusader for social justice ought to despise. DM snarks harder than anyone in the game. Everyone is either too fat or worryingly thin. The site makes sure to point out when someone is gay, lesbian, or transgender, almost delightedly so when that particular detail provides no relevant context to the story. Female celebrities don’t just go to events, they flaunt their lady bodies all over the red carpet! In DM’s universe, body parts are shoved in, spilled out, flashed, or displayed.

The “reporting” is lazy—often stories are copied from other sites or follow a predictable script. It’s like a celebrity gossip MadLibs of doom: “[Lady Celebrity] looked [emotion] as she cavorted through [glamorous city/charming European hamlet] with [Male Celebrity].” Nowhere is this more evident than the “post-baby body” template, which reads thusly: “Just [measurement of time] after giving birth to her [son/daughter], [Lady Celebrity] has already bounced back to her pre-baby shape!” If the Lady Celebrity has failed to bounce back or if DM has determined her weight loss is implausible, then Lady Celebrity is either “embracing her new curves” or is wearing Spanx.

DM is truly a grotesque spectacle of humanity from which I cannot turn. Alongside the run-of-the-mill celebrity tabloid stuff, DM runs the “outrageous” news stories that reputable outlets tend to ignore. This includes in-depth stories about lady chainsaw murderers, satanic sex cults, animals experiencing emotions, and racist Dunkin’ Donuts customers. Suck on that, CNN!

Why the hell am I visiting this garbage site? It’s all terrible! Not worthy of my eyeballs, any of it! Well, for one thing, the (creepily anonymous) staff writes some of the most hilariously fictional copy I’ve ever read. They really take you on a journey. First they find and publish a photo where a celebrity’s face happens to be doing something weird. They then construct an entire narrative based on that face. For example, Lady Gaga is clearly “downcast” after being spotted under an umbrella in New York. Cara Delevingne is “absolutely shattered” while waiting for her luggage at baggage claim. Kanye West is “grumpy” because he’s “pining” for Kim Kardashian. And this incredible photo set of Katherine Heigl “looking a bit confused, possibly having an inquisitive conversation”…well, if you saw a thumbnail of that and didn’t click on it, you’re a better man than I.

Perhaps it’s the pleasure of looking itself that’s so satisfying about a site like DM. I won’t lie—there’s something really marvelous about turning off the “intelligence” part of my brain and turning on the part that wants to participate in some light-hearted narcissistic scopophilia. I also feel a sense of perverse bliss in reading an outrageously sexist headline because sometimes it’s good to remember that EVERYTHING IS AWFUL. Or maybe I love DM so much because one time they ran a picture of Ryan Reynolds sitting in a dunk tank with a caption that described him as “chilling in the hot tub.”

I know I should be ashamed of my Daily Mail addiction, because that whole site is a shrine to everything that our dumb culture needs to deconstruct. But I’m not ashamed! Every decent freedom fighter worth their salt needs a break every now and again. Maybe I read DM for one hour a day (umm), but I spend the rest of my time calling out racists, sexists, and body-shamers in real life. (That’s how I got invited to all the cool law school parties.) I mean, I bet Gloria Steinem reads Daily Mail! She wants to see Miley’s twerking video just as badly as the rest of us! Okay, probably not. But you know what? I still have to live in this society, even though I’m trying to dismantle the unsavory parts. And sometimes society wants me to look at Taylor Armstrong’s butt.

Meagan Hatcher-Mays is a recent graduate of Washington University Law School in Saint Louis. She does a significant amount of yelling on Twitter.

Image by Jim Cooke.

Today is Flag Day, America's most important holiday. And while it might seem like a good idea to wear flag wings over your bikini or use a tattered Old Glory as a summer blouse, such actions are illegal. But because there's no enforcement or punishment for hurting the American flag, freedom is constantly under assault.

You might think Flag Day is in the Constitution or something, but in fact it was made up by a young loser not so different than today's people on Twitter. From the Flag Day Foundation comes this stirring tale of a minor day of observance somebody just made up in Wisconsin:

In Waubeka, Wisconsin, in 1885 Bernard John Cigrand a nineteen year old school teacher in a one room school placed a 10” 38 star flag in an inkwell and had his students write essays on what the flag meant to them. He called June 14th the flag’s birthday. Stony Hill School is now a historical site. From that day on Bernard J. Cigrand dedicated himself to inspire not only his students but also all Americans in the real meaning and majesty of our flag.

That even sounds like something a schoolteacher would write today!

It took a very long time for the idea of honoring the flag to catch on, but by 1949 Congress made it official: June 14 was Flag Day, part of "National Flag Week," and also not a real holiday. This is why so few people care about the flag—as we've seen from the popular Memorial Day and Veterans Day observations, giving Americans a three-day weekend goes a long way toward creating an understanding of these annual rituals.

As important American "cultural ambassadors," iconic talents such as Ke$ha and the Victoria's Secret underwear models and Howard Stern's superhero characters should know more than anyone that the flag is not to be draped over one's back, boobs or butt. Please don't do that! Children look up to such influencers. And until there's a death penalty for flag desecration, the best we can do is use a "bully pulpit" as a crude weapon.

Flag desecration by hippies and radicals used to upset regular Americans because all citizens were taught to honor the flag. A dirty stoner girl in a flag bikini top was an outrage, instead of something Republican high-schoolers do on July 4 with the best of intentions. As times and morals change and the populace de-evolves, there are new threats to this nation's most precious freedoms and institutions. Today's criminals who treat the Stars and Stripes like an enemy combatant are so often our beloved entertainers, or just old patriotic people who don't know any better.

On the occasion of Flag Day 2013, here are some common flag desecrations by people who should know better. Whether due to senility, ignorance, brain damage, porn values, crippling drug addiction or even an honest mistake, these so-called Americans are doing more damage to our democracy than any hundred Edward Snowdens could ever do with all the computers in the world.

When you see something like this, say something.

There were no real rules about the flag until (unofficial) Flag Day of 1923, only 90 years ago! And that didn't even become part of the United States legal code until 1943. Until then, people could do whatever they wanted with the flag and still be patriotic. Anything. A diaper? Why not? What is anyone going to do about it? Plus it's kind of cute! [Diaper by SoStinkinCute via Etsy.]

But now there are rules. Is there a punishment for treating an American flag improperly? Not yet. Congress periodically attempts to protect the flag from arsonists and maniacs, but thus far the U.S. Flag Code is an advisory set of federal laws—and this means the citizenry must deliver punishment when an offender is found harming Old Glory, even by accident. [Photo via Facebook.]

"The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning." [Photo via Wonkette.]

"The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free." [Bikini by Lemibono via Etsy.]

"The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything." [Photo via LoveItSoMuch.]

We should not drape an American flag over anything other than a coffin. The only time it's okay to have a flag draped over something is if you are inside that something, dead, and are also some kind of military person. Do not drape flags over lecterns, pulpits, picnic tables, vaginas, baby changing stations, or homeless people who are freezing to death. It's not allowed. Before you even think of draping a flag over something, simply ask yourself a question: "Is this a coffin with a dead U.S. soldier inside?" If the answer is no, go ahead and turn yourself in at the nearest police station or military garrison.

Enjoy Flag Day ... responsibly.

[Top images via Getty Images.]

Yeezus, the sixth album from rapper/producer/maniac Kanye West, leaked to your favorite Torrent site or scene blog this afternoon—just a few days before its official release on Tuesday. And already, Twitter has a favorite lyric:

hurry up with my damn #croissants

— Rishi Shah (@rks1129) June 14, 2013

'hurry up with my damn croissants' did kanye write this in a burger king

— Brokey McPoverty (@brokeymcpoverty) June 14, 2013

" i am a god so hurry up with my damn massage in a french ass restaurant hurry up with my damn croissants "

— Bunny⚽ (@Naab_blackstar) June 14, 2013

"Hurry up with my damn croissants." #ThankYouKanye

— Jeromme Graham (@JerommeGraham) June 14, 2013

Hurry up with my damn croissants. LOL. FFS.

— Iffat Siddiqui 桜 (@IfIWasFat) June 14, 2013

HURRY UP WITH MY DAMN CROISSANTS!

— Menace Beach (@MenaceBeach) June 14, 2013

i am a god so HURRY UP W/ MY DAM CROISSANTS

— Booker DePennybags (@bennzel) June 14, 2013

HURRY UP WITH MY DAMN CROISSANTS

— Doug (@dschultzla) June 14, 2013

*yeezy voice* Hurry up with my damn croissants

— trapgod☾ (@RadicallyRaddd) June 14, 2013

Last year, Willian Barboza was caught speeding in the Village of Liberty in upstate New York, but he ended up arrested after he mailed in his fine with a note reading, "Fuck your shitty town, bitches." Now the case is developing into a First Amendment lawsuit.

The Capitol Confidential reports that the 22-year-old was ticketed back in May 2012, and Barboza pleaded guilty, mailing in his fine with a note. Barboza crossed out the town's name 'Liberty' and wrote in 'Tyranny' instead, then cussed out the people who ticketed him.

The county government replied to Barboza's message telling him they rejected his payment, and that he would be ordered to appear in court in Liberty, two hours from his home in Connecticut.

When Barboza showed up, the judge lectured him about using foul language, and then had him arrested for "aggravated harassment." The New York Times reports that they handcuffed him in the courtroom, booked him, fingerprinted him, and held him for four or five hours before he posted a $200 bail.

Several months later, another judge dropped the charges. Now, though, the NYCLU is suing on behalf of Barboza in federal court for damages, as well as to have the statute that allowed Barboza's arrest struck from the books.

The statute of "aggravated harassment" states that it is a misdemeanor to act "with intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm" someone "anonymously or otherwise, by telephone, be telegraph, or by mail, or by transmitting or delivering any other form of written communication, in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm."

The NYCLU thinks this is unconstitutional. The lead council on the case said in a statement, "Not liking someone's speech isn't a reason to arrest them. You cannot be arrested and prosecuted for writing a note of displeasure on a traffic ticket. As long as you are not threatening anyone, public officials have to put up with offensive language."

Liberty Lawsuit Barboza v DAgata 6.13.13

Photo Credit: Village of Liberty

The Texas psychic responsible for giving local law enforcement officials a bogus tip on a mass grave at the home of a Liberty County couple will need to pay $7 million for the damage she caused the two.

Presley "Rhonda" Gridley, known professionally as Angel, famously "tipped off" the Liberty County Sheriff's Office back in 2011 to the existence of a mass grave containing the dismembered bodies of 25 to 30 individuals including children on the property of truck drivers Joe Bankson and Gena Charlton.

Bankston and Charlton initially sued several media outlets, including The New York Times and CNN, for spreading made up information about them that has had long-term effects, and has even cost them several friends.

Those lawsuits were subsequently dismissed thanks to a Texas law prohibiting lawsuits against organizations for distributing information concerning "matters of public concern."

Another lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office for unreasonable search and seizure was also dismissed, even though Bankson and Charlton claimed the authorities barged into their residence without just cause while they were away, leaving behind "broken dishes, overturned furniture and animal urine and feces."

The last remaining lawsuit, against Gridley, concluded last month after the defendant failed to show up to court.

Judge Carl Ginsberg ultimately ordered her to pay the plaintiffs a combined sum of $6.85 million, though it remains unclear how the couple intends to collect the money.

Gridley told the Houston Chronicle in 2011 that visions she shared with two of her psychic friends of children in trouble prompted her to call the cops.

People are drinking less orange juice these days.