Scott Walker, the lazy-eyed Republican Wisconsin governor who doesn't care for unions but will always answer a big donor's call, got caught in an eensy lie today, when he insisted he'd voted for conservative hero Ronald Reagan, and forgot he was too young to vote for Reagan.

Walker made the very basic error in an interview with an ideologically friendly website last month, according to Talking Points Memo:

"I remember, I was a teenager, had just become a teenager and voted for Ronald Reagan — limited government, you know, smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense," he said. "You knew what you were getting. You knew how a Reagan administration, a Reagan presidency was going to be better for you."

However, as James Rowen and Blogging Blue note, Walker was born on Nov. 2, 1967. He would have been age 13 for the 1980 election and age 17 for the 1984 election — both times Reagan ran.

How do you forget who the fuck you could and couldn't vote for? You don't. This isn't a simple misunderstanding. This is a coded message of solidarity to other past-worshiping conservatives that says:

1) Voting is ostentatious! When it's easy to vote, it's easy to forget the details, just as it's easy to forget who does your lawn work or valet service at the country club. It's just awesome how easy it is for people like Scott Walker to vote, and occasionally forget the details.

2) Truth is aspirational! It is not important to get the facts right as long as the worldview is right. Facts are downright attracted to the right worldview, will in fact align themselves to that worldview, like metal shavings moving in neat lines when placed near a magnet.

Manmade global warming; the darker aspects of corporate citizenship; the sources and consequences of economic inequality; the status of women, minorities, and gays; not voting for Reagan: If the facts on these issues simply aren't compatible with the conservative outlook, jettison the facts. Jettison them publicly. Make a show of it. You have proven your faith. Watch your coreligionists battle to outdo you. They can't. They'll have to affect a racial animus just to keep pace with you.

Being wrong in highly public, highly trollish ways is the new red elephant pin of the conservative Rotarian, the new Vera Bradley bag of the Escalade-driving GOP mama. Quick, get your own bullshit anachronistic self-myth before they're all sold out!

Update: John Hawkins, the "Right Wing News" editor who published the interview in question with Scott Walker, is now saying he reported Walker's statement incorrectly because of an error by his transcriptionist. (Which, bully for him for having a transcriptionist, something even we don't have over here.) He now claims that Walker said, "A vote for Ronald Reagan meant limited government, you know, smaller government, lower taxes..." and included a short video clip that begins with the quote, somewhat truncated.

"[A]n excerpt from that interview which seemed insignificant at the time that has gotten a lot of attention from liberal blogs today," Hawkins wrote, by way of explaining why he was double-checking the tape of his already-published interview with the governor just now.

It's impossible to tell what was said before that point in the audio clip and weird that Hawkins omitted it. His original transcript and story remain uncorrected. The Walker administration never offered any comment, not even to say that the governor had been misquoted.

[Photo credit: AP]

I'm sure we've all been, um, inexplicably aroused at certain inappropriate times, and that causes us to make some bad decisions. Like hitting on third cousins at your great uncle's funeral or something like that. But I'm not sure I've ever known inappropriate, aggressive horniness to cause a plane to land. Until now.

A Delta flight from Baltimore-Washington to Salt Lake City — widely considered America's two sexiest metro areas and the corridor between them is usually thought of as the Bermuda Triangle of Arousal — was the setting for the attempted sexytime that went so very, very wrong.

The woman, who was described as "very intoxicated" reportedly made several sexual advances to her male seatmate, who refused. This allegedly made the woman intensely angry, as you'd expect from almost any drunk, horny, sexually aggressive citizen. As you can hear in the video, she then became loud and abusive, threatening to "fucking kill" the man, and then once she was restrained with handcuffs, things got even worse. Here, watch for yourself:

In the end, the pilot decided maybe everyone would enjoy the flight a bit more if the crazed, drunk, aroused, screaming person was dropped off somewhere, so an emergency landing was made in Minneapolis-St.Paul. The woman was taken off the plane and may be facing federal charges.

So, if anyone's around the St.Paul area and looking for a good time, boy do I have a tip for you.

(Thanks, Ersin!)

The Nybro Action Team consists of Hjalmar Sveinbjőrnsson and Alex Bejerstrand, two under-employed friends and former Nybro residents now living in northern Sweden. Hjalmar is a student and a chef; Alex helps run his father's talent agency. They will be recapping Season 3 of HBO's Girls.

Today is a celebration. We are halfway through season three, its been an interesting journey recapping a television show based on someones life's events, but writing without experience is utterly pointless so thus we depart with another half an hour of our life as the opening scene in GIRLS as we are thrust forward into the future:

Our anti-hero Hannah holds a cup of Ray's aloft while she shouts out the name of the buyer Maori, Moira, Maria? "I made that already" Ray announces. "Ohh" who was that for? Hannah asks, "Alex" he answers "but keep up the good work", she seems stressed and has asked him if they could talk. He wants to know what it is about, but she thinks it should be discussed in the office but our hero Ray sees right through her act; "oh, I am so sorry you wont be gracing us with your present anymore and... I will see you in about a week when you quit what ever bullshit gig you are leaving for and come back for your old job again."

But Hannah explains its not a bullshit job, its for GQ magazine. Ray insults Hannah with the standard "you so fugly" stick, kind of sick that being the staple diet of this sitcom but I guess it sparks from Lena need to write about her insecurity, making it even more of a "mind-fuck" because insecure people tent not to broadcast their problems, if her insecurity sparks from her side-fat, I am sorry Lena Dunham but I got side-flaps and starting to grow a bit of man boobs, but that is my fault not the existence of the human race, Alex has started to go to the gym because he fells out of shape, thankfully I will spend the next months shoveling dirt at a farm if not I would find means not to wreck my body through diet and static behavior because we kind of just get one to work with until the day we die

Back to the episode, I just needed to vent out how sick I am of the the "fugly" factor, people that have the need to find fabricated beauty through surgery or other often incredible unhealthy means will never be as beautiful as the people that find their inner beauty and strengths, so why the hell are you writing for GQ magazine?, apparently as I am typing on my amazing and robust [insert product name] Ray has spotted the gimmick and its an advertorial piece, there will be a sponsor that wants her to weave in a ad to her literary arts and he is outraged and wants to know who it is?, we are not going to mention the name because they make nothing we want.

We are outside next to a basketball field where Ray is playing a game with couple of friends, Shoshanna walks by in some pointlessly expansive garment probably made by sweaty children and a pair of sunglasses pressed in a factory in China for 1/8 out of a cent while she stalks passed the court staring down Ray, he nods his head and she walks on.

In the standard GIRLS style of a 5 second unrelated shot we cut to Hannah and her new life in the cubical hell of the corporate world where she answers the phone in her "box" but the person hangs up before she finish saying "I am new here..."

We are at the Cafe while Ray is yelling at Dean (background character) for fucking up a cappuccino "fucking animal" he proclaims and heads into the back-office to use the phone in private, to call Marnie and check in with her, the conversation drags on for about 5 min of her being freaked out about him saying "check in" all the time and him being mad at her for not noting his gentleman attention. Ray is the perfect example of an extroverted introvert because he is great with words but sucks at using them, this conversation ends up with Marnie telling him to prove that he cares because she is far to busy watching an incredible exciting television program.

We are back in corporate-hell while some guy is trying to get attentions from Hannah while walking back and forth passed her cubical while butchering the classical "escalator" and among others, he explains to Hannah no ones tells anyone anything here and then brings her to the break area where there are free snacks, she is blown away with that facts and in next scene we see her stumble into the meeting room with her arms full of snacks that she then dumps over the table

"HA HA HA" she is a pig!

Only thing that saved that scene for me is the incredible attractive Jessica Williams, Senior youth corresponded of the Daily show and hottest women on television at the moment and … apparently the first black female character of this show after the standard "google" researches. Do I need to be "racially aware" to write about this? because that weirdly enough just makes me feel like an racist, I think I accidentally started hitting on Jessica with my "white guy is cool like a brotha" speech so lets move away from the shame and to the children clothes store.

Ms No-shame (Jessa) and Shoshanna are having a conversation while Jessa gets women to buy a black christening dress that is way to small on a one year old with the line "chic and unless your child has obesity."

Shosh is trying to explain that she maybe should get back with Ray because he has money now and Jessa is trying to point out that he is "Jewish" while the conversation steers to Shosh current lover slash maybe boyfriend that apparently is dumb as a rock, but chiseled like a statue, her only worried is that their children will be retarded, kind of a double edge statement coming from the worlds most naïve person.

We are taking back at GQ offices, sitting in the meeting room is the editorial chief and Hannah's co-workers get ready for today meeting. Her boss noticed that Hannah found the snack-room and then starts the meeting with brainstorming about article ideas for the segment; "field guide for the urban man", our anti-hero does a fantastic job, sprouting ideas like a potato in the sun while over shadowing her coworkers creativity, specially this one guy that later on will explain that he hates her face but just to note his idea sucked.\

Hannah and her new friend are gossiping on the phone where he "prep-school style" blurts out that he likes Karin played by one and only Jessica Williams but that conversation does not really go anywhere so let's cut to Ray's attempt with connecting with Marnie both emotionally and internally, he brought some coffee and muffins, ready to get to know her better while they watch "reality tv", the lowest form of TV.

We are in Hannah and Adams apartment where she dumps out all the snack-room candy she manage to stuff down her purse, Adam tells her its all shit, full off chemicals and fake salt, he continuous to make the dream catcher he has been working on since he came home earlier from a casting audition that he didn't get a call back from because he refused to smile and walked out, she tries to convince him to just take the job so they can pay the rent and such, he refuses because he don't want to, he can sell those on Etsy for 20 bucks a piece because people are idiots, Hannah's look says it all; a relationship with both participants being artistic is fiscally not sound.

We cut for 4 sec to Ray and Marnie fucking and of course I told Alex to draw that scene, Ray's ass glistering as the after noon's sun shines through the blinds

We are back in that evil diabetic spawning hell hole of a snack-room where the writers are having a discussion, mainly Hannah saying she might quit because she does not want to be a writer, she is a writers writer, fancy writer you might say, but the gang explains to her that they to have had great pieces... before they got stuck in the corporate world, free snacks and gym members ships, health care and dental, they still write, just not emotionally fulfilling pieces but they are trying to figure how to get back into the fancy writing game. Hannah asks how long they have been with GQ and their answer is "5 years to forever."

We are now at the library of the university where Shoshanna goes to school, she is having an conversation with her dumb boyfriend that seems to have an extra chromosome but saying that would be an insult to people with down syndrome, Shosh upper hand is her learned fascist intellect and "big words," otherwise she is on the same playing field as her lover, why? because she asks this man if he would like to be her boyfriend.

We are back at GQ where Hanna tries to quit her job because she does not want to become a corporate advertiser…. unless its for Prada or something "fancy" like, she changes her mind and tells her boss she is not quitting, the boss has no time for her bullshit and tells her to email if she works there or not.

We are now on the city streets of Brooklyn? Where Marnie and Ray are heading for lunch, seated at a china restaurant they start discussing regrets in life. Hers was she didn't spend a semester in Africa doing volunteer work and stuff like that, Ray argues how foreign aid is bad and outrages Marnie that proceeds to call him a racist, maybe if Marnie would have done that semester in Africa she might understand that Ray is partially right and if you are wondering what I am talking about then look up; Dambisa Moyo or learn about the horrendously top heavy inner workings of the U.N, discover Africa through other means then a seeing an ad for a starving African child and making up your whole conclusion about Africa from that one tiny racist narrow view point that some of those so called NGO broadcast in western countries and NEVER EVER give money to religious charities.

Ray screams he loves Africa, we typed in some stuff about Africa, we all decide to but the incredible complicated issue behind us and enjoy some dumplings.

We cut to Hannah crying in her cubicle, her office friend calls her and tries to console her on that she is not going become a corporate drone because in her free time she should become inspirited and devote time into writing, she feels better they hang up and we cut to one incredible non-sexy scene with Sosh and her lover with the extra chromosome.

Hannah just came home and Adam surprises her by telling her that he just got an job, acting job, but she has no time to listen because she is going to devote the next three hours into writing, she jumps in the couch with her laptop only to fall asleep shortly there after, Adam pulls the blanket over her and lets her sleep. The end.

Well that was little bit more exciting, we got Jessica Williams so maybe we wont procrastinate this recap as much, also I am curious to see Ray's love life crash and burn again, maybe he will fake his death.

Jessa I hope will either disappear, overdose, vaporized, explode or just plain die … never hated a character on TV as much as I hate her, maybe it is because she reflects some behaviors I used to have as a teen, but then I "grew up."

Whatever will happen next? Join us next week for some more GIRLS recap and bantering.

Nybro Action Team .. OUT!

Illustrations by Alex Bejerstrand. Read previous installments of Nybro Action Team! here.

Early one morning last October, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai headed home after morning prayers in Tripoli, Libya, and was snatched by U.S. forces for his alleged role in the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa. Thanks to a nearby security camera, we now know what such a kidnapping looks like.

The video, obtained by the Washington Post's Adam Goldman and embedded below, shows how two white vehicles cornered Ruqai's sedan on a street curb, then "at least three men, with guns drawn, jumped out of the van as another car blocked Ruqai's escape while a third idled down the street."

According to Goldman:

Less than two minutes after the Libyan was first cornered, American Special Operations forces sped away with the suspect and his vehicle. Ruqai was taken to a Libyan military base and then to the USS San Antonio, an American warship, waiting off the coast in the Mediterranean Sea.

Ruqai's arrest, carried out in a joint operation by the CIA, the FBI and the U.S. Army's elite Delta Force, ended a 13-year hunt for a man once thought to be close to Osama bin Laden. Ruqai is accused of participating in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, which resulted in more than 200 deaths.

Ruqai, also known as "Anas al-Libi," insists that he broke with Osama bin Laden's group four years before the attacks, and that he most recently worked for a goal the Americans shared: the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi.

The Ruqai operation was unusual in that military troops rarely work on the ground with CIA officers on these sorts of detention missions. Former FBI agent Ali Soufan—who worked on the embassy bombings, and who is no fan of the United States' most controversial methods of intelligence-gathering and prisoner treatment—told the Post that Ruqai's capture was proper.

"He was part of a small group that did the casing for the Nairobi embassy," Soufan said. "I think he is part of the conspiracy to blow up the embassy. You don't do a casing of an embassy because you want to do landscaping. You do it because you want to blow it up."

A woman claims she was assaulted after she discovered her husband and his girlfriend "naked, smoking pot, drinking liquor and having anal sex," apparently at the same time.

According to what she told police, Pamela Lynn Turney walked into her husband Christopher's Spartanbug, South Carolina home on Saturday. She called out his name—"Chris"— and heard... something from his bedroom. She went to investigate, and found her husband in bed with a woman named Vickie Lynn Morgan.

Both were "naked, smoking pot, drinking liquor and having sex," according to the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office report.

Upon being discovered mid-anal sex, Morgan allegedly "jumped from the bed and attacked [Turney]." Turney says she was knocked to the ground three times before she was able to escape. She called police the next day, by which point she had a black eye and bruising on her face.

While the alleged assault is still under investigation, it wouldn't the first time Morgan has been in trouble for violence; last February, she was reportedly arrested for assault and battery.

[Image of Vickie Lynn Morgan via The Smoking Gun]

Eric Holder "told me that he will leave office sometime this year," Jeffrey Toobin writes in the latest issue of The New Yorker. Holder, the first African-American attorney general in U.S. history and a favorite punching-bag of conservatives, has long been rumored to be on his way out at the Justice Department.

Veteran KTLA entertainment reporter Sam Rubin isn't well known in Los Angeles for being particularly good at his job. But mistaking Samuel L. Jackson for Laurence Fishburne during an interview this morning is a new low, even for Rubin.

While interviewing Jackson this morning about his new movie RoboCop, Rubin also asked him about his new Super Bowl commercial. Too bad the Kia commercial stars Fishburne and not Jackson.

A clearly displeased Jackson then laid into Rubin:

See, you're as crazy as the people on Twitter. I'm not Laurence Fishburne! We don't all look alike!

There's loud laughter in the studio as Rubin, flustered, tries to change the subject back to RoboCop. But Jackson won't let him, pressing, "Oh hell no! Really? I'm the other guy."

Jackson continued:

There's more than one black guy doing commercials. I'm the 'what's in your wallet' black guy. He's the car black guy.

An embarrassed Rubin admitted that Jackson was "100% right" regarding the fact that Samuel L. Jackson is not Laurence Fishburne.

Rubin was forced to end the newscast with this apology about his "well-deserved shellacking" for his "very amateur mistake":

Even the most prestigious historically black colleges and universities are facing financial struggles these days. They would love to bolster their ranks by luring in more white students. But how?

The February issue of US Airways Magazine carries a special advertising section for HBCUs. Do you notice anything... notable, about the ads below, scanned directly from the magazine?

Cheyney College

Jackson State

South Carolina State

Alcorn State

Fisk

West Virginia State

That's right: they each show an educational institution.

A winter storm dumped 13.5 billion gallons of water in Lake Tahoe over the weekend, along with 36 inches of snow at one Sierra Nevada ski resort and more than 10 inches of rain in some parts of the Bay Area. But is the drought over? No.

The National Weather Service says another two months of regular winter storms are needed to get the snowpack and reservoirs back to what was normal for this time of year. Unfortunately, "normal" may have already changed to a hotter and drier California—the way it was 500 years ago.

By looking at the width of tree rings in the Sierra Nevada, scientists know that California had an especially long and terrible drought 500 years ago. If this year remains dry, this current drought will be just as severe.

The high estimate of California's pre-European population is 705,000 people. Today, there are 38,400,000 Californians.

The weather system that arrived on Friday was the first big storm to reach Northern California since December of 2012.

"There's still 40% of the wet season left," California chief hydrologist Maury Roos told the Fresno Bee. "And we're seeing some good signs of a change in the weather pattern. But it is pretty grim at this point."

[Photo via AP.]

Here is a report from a Russian news site (Google translated version here) that claims I intentionally damaged my Sochi hotel room, and as a result have been stripped of my credentials to cover the Olympic games. This was news to me, because I've never been to Sochi in my life.

It took a long, bilingual game of telephone to get to this point, so let's puzzle it out—and maybe thaw frosty Russo-American relations at the same time.

1. On Tuesday, I compiled a bunch of journalists' tweets from Sochi for this post—odd toilets, broken and dirty hotel rooms, stray dogs, and one report of a reporter's hotel room doorknob falling off.

2. On my way out of my apartment that morning, my own doorknob fell off, because I live in an old decrepit building where I can't turn out my bedroom light without wedging a book against the switch. So I tweeted the photo.

Ok, doorknob karma. My apologies, Sochi. pic.twitter.com/OBV8cR3uDA

— Barry Petchesky (@barryap1) February 4, 2014

It was a joke. This is what I get for making fun of Sochi, and I shouldn't do it anymore because look at my own place. Folks seemed to understand.

3. The next day, the wildly popular @SochiProblems Twitter account sent out my photo—but didn't link or RT my tweet—and made it appear as if the picture was taken in Sochi.

@SochiProblems has become the runaway meme-hub of the early games. Run by Alex Broad, a 20-year-old journalism student from Toronto, it's garnered 340,000 followers in under a week—more than the official Olympics Twitter account. But it's been iffy with its sourcing. A number of older photos that aren't from Sochi or even from Russia have made its way onto the feed, many of which have already been debunked.

4. Later that day, CNN asked for permission to use my photo. I told them it's not from Sochi. Two days later, I told Reuters the same thing.

5. Russian Twitter users took this as an admission that I faked the photo. I was tweeted many angry things in a language I don't understand.

6. On Friday, Russian news site DNI.ru published an article about foreign journalists resorting to, as the headline reads, "Cheap sensationalism about the Olympics." It is one of many local attempts to debunk the false viral images and claims about the Sochi games. There, in the second paragraph, I made an appearance. Via Google translate:

"So, was recently stripped of accreditation editor of American sports publication Barry Petcheski who tore handles at the hotel, photographed them and lecturing in my social networks."

From "tweeted a photo that isn't from Sochi" to "busted up his own hotel room and got kicked out of the Olympics" is at least three giant leaps. (I asked one Russian journalist how reputable DNI.ru is. "Not very," he said.)

But a search for my name in Cyrillic—plus the mentions on my Twitter feed—convinces me that I'm public enemy No. 1 in Russia, or at least No. 2 to the guy who sent out the photo of the half-toilet. On various blogs, I'm accused of spreading hoaxes, of being caught in a lie, and my favorite, of being a member of the "Russian liberals" out to smear the Putin administration.

We're really not so different, the U.S. and Russia. In their overzealousness to criticize the host city for some very real failings, American commentators have passed along some fakes. And in their overzealousness to defend Sochi, Russian commenters have created some international Russophobe conspiracies. I guess the lesson is this: No matter where you live, don't believe a damn thing you see online.

Five of Guantanamo's worst "forever" detainees plan to open a Yemeni farm business consisting "of 200 families, 100 farmhouses, 10 cows, 500 chickens, 50 sheep, a honey bee subsidiary and computer system powered by windmills," maybe with Kickstarter capital. That is, if they ever see daylight again, obvs.

Last week, Google announced that Eric Schmidt got a $106 million bonus based on the company's 2013 performance. According to the New York Post, he hasn't wasted any time putting it to good use.

Sources told The Post that Schmidt bought a $22 million, 1.3 acre estate in Los Angeles once owned by Gregory Peck's wife.

Conveniently for the tech ladies' man, the estate in the exclusive enclave of Holmby Hills is right nearby Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion. Schmidt's 9,182-square-foot, seven-bedroom "French chateau" was listed for $24.9 million.

Schmidt hardly needed the hefty bonus for the check to clear, of course. Funds for the mansion could have just as easily come out his $8.3 billion net worth. A local real estate expert also told Valleywag that the property hasn't officially closed, so records don't yet show a change in ownership.

Whether or not you think someone who stepped down as CEO three years ago deserves a bonus that would make Lloyd Blankfein blush, we can all agree the executive has impeccable taste in real estate. You can get a more immersive view of the property here. Bunnies not pictured.

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

[Image via Coldwell Bank]

"'The only thing better than the smell of a new car is the smell of a new house,' Ms. Desiderio said. 'Just the 1 percent of buyers seems to want old and antique.'" Every last person who is quoted in last Sunday's New York Times real estate section should be jailed.

This is creepy as hell: A woman realized her house was broken into while she was home after she found the burglar's selfie on her cell phone the next day.

Late last month, a man reportedly broke into a suburban Denver home as its owner was putting her children to bed. The man didn't take anything and left behind only one clue: a selfie on the woman's cell phone.

The woman discovered the photo the next morning and called 911.

According to police, the man walked in the home's back door, took the picture, and then left. The woman said she didn't recognize the man but at least one neighbor told CBS Denver that he'd seen him before.

"Everybody else says they didn't see him but he looks familiar to me, I know I've seen him before," neighbor Richard Gardner told the news station. "He doesn't have glasses when you normally see him walking down the street. Maybe they're a disguise. I don't know."

Police are still looking for the suspect.

[h/t New York Daily News]

Over the past year, we've learned plenty about what U.S. intelligence agencies do. But how much do we know about what these super-secretive bureaus actually look like? Photographer Trevor Paglen decided to find out.

His photos, published at the launch of of Glenn Greenwald's new media venture, were taken at night from a helicopter. Although he wasn't able to get permission from every agency he wanted to photograph, the shots he did get are impressive. Paglen has long had an interest in government secrecy and has photographed everything from top-secret satellites to black-project logos.

Since news about the NSA's scarily pervasive surveillance efforts broke last year, articles about the agency have mostly seemed to stick to one photo illustration: an undated image of NSA headquarters provided by the agency itself. There were no readily available recent photos of either the NSA or many of the numerous other agencies that make up the country's vast intelligence infrastructure. That's not right, says Paglen:

My intention is to expand the visual vocabulary we use to "see" the U.S. intelligence community. Although the organizing logic of our nation's surveillance apparatus is invisibility and secrecy, its operations occupy the physical world. Digital surveillance programs require concrete data centers; intelligence agencies are based in real buildings; surveillance systems ultimately consist of technologies, people, and the vast network of material resources that supports them.

The photos, commissioned by Creative Time Reports, are free for public use.

[NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE: The NRO is in charge of developing, deploying and operating secret reconnaissance satellites. With a budget request of $10.3 billion, it is the third-largest U.S. intelligence agency. It is headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia.]

[NATIONAL GEOSPATIAL-INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: The NGA is responsible for collecting, analyzing and distributing intelligence derived from maps and imagery. According to documents provided by Edward Snowden, the NGA's budget request was $4.9 billion last year – more than double its funding a decade ago. It is headquartered in Springfield, Virginia.]

[This undated image of NSA headquarters was provided by the agency. Image via Getty.]

[Lead image depicts NSA headquarters in Fort Meade.]

Since announcing his run for governor, Illinois Treasurer Dan Rutherford has been fighting rumors he's gay and sexually inappropriate with his male staffers. Those rumors worsened today after his key accuser revealed his identity and filed a detail-rich civil rights suit in federal court.

The man who filed the suit, Ed Michalowski, served as Rutherford's "director of community affairs and marketing" and says he spent three years facing sexual harassment from his Republican boss—and so did many other coworkers. (Michalowski resigned last week amid fear of retaliation.)

Here are some of the lawsuit's more eyebrow-raising allegations, "including incidents at a Springfield bar, during the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., and at an office party," according to the Chicago Sun-Times:

In August of 2011, at D.H. Brown's, a bar in Springfield, Michalowski alleges that Rutherford approached him and said: "If you go home with me you can have anything you want in the office."

In another instance, the lawsuit alleges that Michalowski and Rutherford were attending the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August 2012 when Rutherford asked Michalowski to go up to his hotel room.

When Michalowski refused, Rutherford allegedly became angry and said: "You just said no to the treasurer," according to the lawsuit.

In December 2013, Rutherford allegedly went over to Michalowski at an office party, rubbed his shoulders and said to him, "You need a full body massage."

"That was creepy," said another person who witnessed what happened, according to the lawsuit.

Gawker reported last week that Rutherford was facing scrutiny over his relationship with another staffer, 28-year-old assistant Joshua Lanning. The duo spent 32 days abroad together on work-related trips that no other staffers attended.

Lanning turned up in Michalowski's complaint, as well. On returning from that awkward RNC trip last year, Michalowski had divulged the encounter to Rutherford's chief of staff, Kyle Ham, who is also named as a defendant.

Ham said he, too, had been harassed, adding: "At least we have job security." But that wasn't all, according to the lawsuit:

Ham told Plaintiff that he was "not a team player." Ham also informed him that "Josh Lanning has the worst job and you should feel lucky."

On the surface, Lanning's job looked pretty cool: His office responsibilities seemed light, and he got to go to Australia, China, South Korea, and Israel for free with his boss. Whatever made Ham consider Lanning's job to be "the worst," it must have been quite significant.

[Photo credit: AP]

A new study of the sex lives of middle-aged women found that "white women were 3.09 times more likely than women of other races to remain sexually active" as they grow older. This amounts to the strongest vindication of the sexiness of pajamas in the history of modern science.

In the Vlad TV interview above, rapper turned singing AutoTune addict T-Pain calls homophobia "terrible" and "weird," says he doesn't "fuck with" people who shun gays, and claims to know artists who won't work with Frank Ocean because he once wrote a Tumblr post about falling in love with a man. Throughout, T-Pain is seemingly tipsy and decidedly animated, which makes his entire spiel delightful. I mean, there's plenty to get offended over here, if you wish to nitpick, so don't fret. T-Pain will give you something to do if you're bored and looking to get mad.

Vlad TV is especially interested in the issue of homophobia in hip-hop (one day, a documentary on the subject could be pieced together using just the site's interviews). For example, here is a Vlad TV interview in which Brand Nubian's Lord Jamar, who blasted Kanye West for wearing a kilt, says astoundingly stupid things about the word "homophobia" and homosexuality.

What's exceptional about the T-Pain interview is his ease with the subject. He's so comfortable that he slips right into generalizing about gay culture. Yeah, this is what we call straightsplaining, but instead of explaining the ways of gays so as to stir up animosity, he's doing so to dispel it. For example, when discussing his gay assistant and people's reaction to him, Pain says:

People don't fuck with me because he's around me. People feel like, 'Oh shit, I wanna go say something to Pain but that gay dude is right there,' and it's like, he ain't lookin' for you, nigga! Nigga, if he was looking for you...let me tell you about these gay niggas, boy. These gay niggas'll get on you. These gay niggas bold. If they want you, they gonna tell you before you even know they in there. They gon' get you for real.

That's funny. Not representative of the entire group, somewhat in service of perpetuating the stereotype of the predatory gay male, but funny.

My gay assistant chilling here, eating some shrimp salad, some...I don't know what gay people eat. Nutella or some shit.

So is that, but mostly because a sugar spread is about the least stereotypically gay food. But Nutella is dainty! Sometimes so are gay men. I get it!

You ain't even got bitches. Why you think this gay dude is gonna like you? Bitches don't even like you! That's stupid, bruh!...Even if they did like you, it's gonna be bottoms, so you would be the one fucking the motherfucker. You ain't gonna be the bottom. Ain't nobody gonna get behind you, 'Hey big boy.' No, they don't do that shit. That's not how that works. Unless you're in prison.

This is also a reasonable argument against gay panic to an extent. I thought of something along these lines when comedian Lil Duval made a joke on Twitter about being paranoid around gay men who want him. (Nobody wants you, dude.) If T-Pain's understanding of top/bottom dynamics were a little more cultivated and lived-in, he'd know that topping tops is a fine hobby indeed, but whatever. He's speaking to stereotypes using stereotypes.

This interview is messy and imperfect. T-Pain calls women "bitches." At one point he says, "I don't fuck with nobody who cut people off because how they choose to live they life," and then, "It's in his fuckin' genes man, it's not a fuckin' choice." He says Frank Ocean is having a hard time getting into the studio with Jay Z after coming out, but Frank was featured on Jay's 2013 album Magna Carta...Holy Grail's "Oceans."

But it's also a snapshot of a continually evolving conversation in hip-hop and R&B from someone who's on the right side of history. Someone who is relaxed enough to be wrong, and someone who sees homophobia for the absurdity that it is.

It looks like the man behind Dumb Starbucks is not Banksy, Nathan Fielder, Jimmy Kimmel, or Shia LaBeouf. It appears that a Los Angeles-based artist named Marc Horowitz is taking credit for the whole dumb thing (unless he's lying too).

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