In a scientific discovery at Dartmouth recently hailed as "highly shareable" by the internet, cat poop is being mentioned in connection with a newly discovered potential cancer treatment.

Toxoplasma gondii, a single-celled parasite found in the guts of cats, has been used in a lab to treat cancer. It might, after enough testing turn out to be a viable cancer therapy. However, toxoplasma is a strange, shape-shifting organism, and the kind cats poop out won't shrink your tumors one bit. Still, Dartmouth recently publicized the very promising discovery: A modified version of toxoplasma, when injected into mice with certain kinds of cancer, switched on an immune response that the cancer had deactivated, which then allowed the body to fight the disease itself.

David J. Bzik, Ph.D. of Dartmouth's Geisel Medical School has been experimenting with toxoplasma for at least a decade. He says the discovery that an altered form of the parasite might cure cancer is a big deal, but that toxoplama is weird and wonderful microbe that still has surprises in store for humanity, none of which involved ingesting cat poop by any stretch of the imagination. 

He also schooled me on some interesting trivia I thought I knew about toxoplasma. What follows is an edited version of my conversation with him.

Via Flickr user Yale Rosen

I'm reading a lot of headlines about cat poop curing cancer.
Oh of course. They're sensationalist. 

What should they be reporting?
We developed this strain of toxoplasma that doesn't replicate. 

Could you remind us what toxoplasma is?
It's a protozoan. Its closest relative is malaria, it's in the same phylum. 

And what happens when it can't reproduce?
It doesn't cause disease in mice. It's a great vaccine for toxoplasmosis [which], in AIDS patients is a really big disease. Also in cancer patients, when their immune systems are suppressed, they're vulnerable to natural infections by toxoplasma. So having a vaccine is a good idea. This has not been tested as a vaccine yet in humans or cats, and we also haven't tested the anti-cancer effects in humans either. This has all been mouse work. 

If you've seen Trainspotting, you might remeber what happens when someone with AIDS gets toxoplasmosis. (Spoiler warning)

But in doing that work, we've realized that there were a lot of immune signatures that were anti-cancer in nature. So we did some trial studies in cancer models in mice. We've now looked at three cancer models, and we find very potent anti-cancer responses[…]. In one, our ovarian cancer model, we showed that we observed 100 percent survival.

You injected the parasite into the tumors, and it treated cancer?
In melanoma cells we injected the parasite right into the tumor in the skin, and in the ovarian we injected it into the peritoneum—into the gut—where the ovarian cancer is growing. If we can understand what the fundamental mechanisms are, that will create new strategies for cancer therapeutics that attack the cancer biology. So you can imagine pharmarmacologically, you may not even need this parasite down the road. 

Could these cell responses mean it could do things other than treat cancer?
As a scientist, I'm much more excited about the biology, because what this parasite is telling these innate immune cells is a remarkable piece of biology. So by understanding the network, the signaling pathway and the communication, that the parasite is doing inside of the cell, we'll actually get at more fundamental mechanisms that we don't understand about how to manipulate these cell types to make them do the types of immune responses that we need. Not just for vaccines, but even potentially for other types of diseases that we don't have appropriate treatments for yet. 

But as for it being a cancer treatment, should we really be getting that excited?
I'm really excited about it from a practical perspective. And this is based in part on the history of vaccine development. The FDA just approved the first cancer vaccine, just two years ago. […]That [treatment's] exact strategy provides one potential mechanism for delivering the cancer vaccine to patients. So we do see that with appropriate safety testing, and phase 1, 2, 3 clinical trials showing efficacy in some form of human cancer, that there is some promise for that strategy. 

But to be clear, the form that cats poop out, that won't treat your cancer, right?That's correct. That will give you toxoplasmosis, unless you have it already. What we're using in the laboratory is called the asexual form. 

Via Flickr user Goodiesfirst

What does the form that's in cat poop do, if not cure cancer?
When cats are on farms, it gets into the farm mud, into the field, into the rainwater runoff, and it's a very stable form. If it's in a field and it rains, it will float, it'll stick to a blade of grass, and then a grazing animal, like a sheep, will eat it, and then be infected, and if that sheep is infected, then it can cause abortion in sheep. That's an agricultural cost, and that's why we need a vaccine to protect sheep, so we don't lose baby sheep. Humans though, are a dead-end host, because we're not eaten by cats.

No. Not often.
So when that cat poops in a field, and a rodent eats something that's coated in cat poop, it gets reinfected. And then it just goes around and around. 

Right. There is that factoid that gets passed around online that says that cats actually benefit from having in their gut. 
I know. There are a lot of evolutionary theories out there, and that is indeed one of them. You know, there are other theories also, asking the question as to whether this latent infection with toxoplasma affects the behavior of the infected animal, including humans. I mean there's almost a cult of scientists who are looking into some of these issues. 

Does that hold water, in your opinion?
I think some of the science is solid. But if you look at it from a practical point of view, the penetrance, meaning the fraction of that disease—like say for example schizophrenia. [...] Some of the behavioral phenotypes are commonly caused by other things, so teasing out when toxoplasma is causing it, and how much, and why, is going to be challenging. 

Thanks Dr. Bzik!

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Mexico's narcocorrido music genre and subculture openly celebrates the most extreme aspects of the country's drug war. The songs are filled with catchy, detailed narrations of beheadings, executions, coked-out nights, and a strangely consistent obsession with Buchanan's whiskey.

With lyrics like "We're bloddy and a little twisted / We love killing / Mass kidnappings are the way they should be done / All my crew with gold-plated AKs / Shooting up their bodies until they fall to pieces / A sharpened knife on hand for beheadings," the movimiento alterado—literally the "altered movement"—is more of a "we're-fucking-crazy-and-we-will-cut-you-up" movement.

The music scene originated in the old cartel citadel of Mexico's western Sinaloa state, and it's an open secret that most of the artists identified with the genre are tied to the local cartel.

VICE went to Mexico to talk to some of the genre's major producers and see whether they're as hard as their songs suggest.

Photo via Flickr user jordanschulz.
In another win for privacy rights, the Supreme Court decided unanimously last Wednesday that people accused of sexual assault will not get automatic access to their victims’ personal records.

Vincent Quesnelle was charged with assault, sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon, robbery, threatening to kill, and threatening serious bodily harm. He and his lawyer argued they should have access to past police records of the women making the allegations—and the Court of Appeal agreed and ordered a new trial for his case. The decision Wednesday undid this and reinstated his conviction, along with a sentence of six and a half years in prison.

Two advocacy lawyers, Karen Steward and Bernadette Maheandiran, wrote about the decision's possible impact on the Ontario Bar Association’s website in March. “If Quesnelle stands, there may be a chilling effect on the reporting of sexual offences by persons with mental illness who have had prior police contact,” they wrote. “They will be forced to make an impossible choice between reporting these offences and maintaining the privacy of records that may reveal exceptionally intimate details about their lives.”

The last thing we need is yet another barrier for women who want to report sexual assault. Already, only about 8 percent of these crimes are ever reported to police. Of those, only half result in criminal charges and of those, only one in four leads to a guilty verdict. And research shows that only about 2 to 8 percent of rape accusations are false.

Going after the victim’s credibility is often the only defence an alleged offender has. It’s a common strategy, and one that often works—especially in the U.S. where some high-profile cases get a lot of media attention and there aren’t automatic publication bans on the names of sexual assault victims. Remember Nafissatou Diallo? She’s the New York woman who accused then-French presidential hopeful and head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn of molesting her and forcing her to perform oral sex. The case never even got to trial because the prosecution decided that a jury wouldn’t find her credible. Her reliability was pivotal, despite physical evidence (his semen on the carpet of a hotel room she was cleaning) and multiple witnesses who said she’d told them what happened and was visibly upset. Strauss-Kahn settled with Diallo out of court and returned to France to face charges of aggravated pimping.

Here in Canada, it became commonplace in the 1980s for defence lawyers in sexual assault trials to seek personal records of the victim, like therapeutic or medical records, Steward said. “Because a lot of the time it’s a he said/she said with no other witnesses, it’s a strategy to go after the credibility of the person who’s complaining of the offence, and that’s why going after someone’s medical or psychiatric records is something the defence would be interested in. And sometimes legitimately so.”

In this case, Quesnelle was seeking old police records unrelated to his charges. The Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions were basically about what counts as a “record” and whether that extends to a police occurrence report that mentions the complainant but has nothing to do with the case at hand. 

“It’s so weird that a statutory interpretation of a simple word would have such repercussions,” Maheandiran said. Quesnelle and his lawyer argued that the police should just have to hand over the records with no hearing or discussion of their relevance whatsoever. “If the Court of Appeal decision stood, it would have meant that they didn’t have to go through this procedure. The Supreme Court decision says that they do,” said Maheandiran. “Now it may go forward anyway but at least [the victim] got to have a say.”

The Barbra Schlifer Clinic, a legal clinic for women in Toronto that intervened in this case, put out a statement saying, “we are thrilled… that highly private and potentially prejudicial police records about complainants (such as suicidal 911 calls or reports of sexual assault that have nothing to do with the accused) will not now be automatically produced to men without consideration of the complainants’ equality and privacy rights.”

Women who are more vulnerable to sexual assault also tend to have more government records about them. This includes childhood sexual assault survivors, women with mental and physical disabilities, aboriginal women, and poor or homeless women. So if the ruling had gone the other way, the people most likely to suffer sexual assault would've had one more reason not to report it.

“Women’s fears that their private information will be disclosed to the men who have abused them has always been—and continues to be—a major reason for not reporting sexual assault,” the clinic's statement said. “This is true for the women that the Barbra Schlifer Clinic serves, and is confirmed by the experience of sexual assault front-line service providers across the country. Women are reluctant to endure re-victimization through exposure and scrutiny of their personal lives and private records, particularly in a criminal justice system where gendered and race based biases and stereotypes still permeate the investigation, prosecution, and adjudication of sexual assault.”

In this climate, where victim-blaming is still prevalent and ignorance about sexual assault is abundant, a ruling the other way would have literally added insult to injury. A Court of Appeal judge had actually decided that men accused of sexual assault deserve unlimited, automatic access to records about their victims. This would’ve made it pretty easy for defence lawyers to argue a woman is a liar--and they don't need to prove she lied about sexual assault before, mixing up some dates, or lying about when she last used Match.com have been good enough to discredit victims in Canadian courts this year.

Now, lawyers must prove in a hearing that specific records are “likely relevant” and “necessary in the interests of justice,” the court ruling said. “People are entitled to provide information to police with confidence that the police will only disclose it for good reason.”

At least now victims can report sexual assault without fear that their entire history is going to be laid before the court. “Privacy is not an all or nothing right,” the decision said.

 

@emmapaling

An classic example of classic Quebecois fashion. All photos via the author.
When I first moved to Montreal I was expecting to find sophistication and good taste like all the other assholes that move here. The city is generally regarded as the fashion hub of Canada, with many local trendsetters having emerged onto international platforms. One thing people don’t talk about, however, is the severity of the phenomena that is true Quebecois women’s fashion. Balloon pants, useless seams, mosaics of patched textiles that don’t match… It’s all a part of this strange, unspoken subculture, primarily found amongst the francophone community, ou les Montréalaise vrais (no one says that). Before you go shitting on me in the comments saying that I’m just isolating a few rare, terribly "funky" examples of Quebecois style, just ask anyone who’s spent time in Quebec—this style is EVERYWHERE. In honour of this precious homegrown secret, I am going to give you a probably-somewhat-racist tour of the staple boutiques in the city.

Who wears this stuff?
First, pictured above, is a small shop on St. Denis near Rachel, the heart of francophone Montreal. As you can see, we have six very loose-fitting garments, and one mannequin is sporting a neck-scarf. What does it look like at first glance? Three granola moms. The window says something about loving silk, even though nothing but the scarf looks like its made out of silk, unless maybe it’s raw. There are some impractical seams going on in the shirts, especially to the left, while contrarily the pants seem very practical in terms of venting out your cooch. Generally, this place looks like it’s attempting to pull from Indo-Eastern-European culture more than anything else, with its viney embroidery and billowy fabrics. However in our next example, you can see how the Quebecois image is beginning to take shape.

Here is a classic example of what has been going on in la belle province FOR YEARS. Look at all of this shit. Fake-ripped fabric across the stomach, a child’s lunch bag as a purse, semi-tie-dyed stripes, and accents of detailed floral print. The pants. What are they? What is this contour along the calf? The horizontal pleats exaggerating the knee. I’m also picking up Lululemon vibes. I don’t get it. I’ve never gotten it. I used to walk around and see these boutiques and think, “Oh, it’s hippies.” Then I started encountering people from Cirque du Soliel, and Les FrancoFolies, and Montreal East, and then it occurred to me that it is not hippies at all. It’s something uniquely Canadian that I have literally never been aware of until now. As you can see, juxtaposing the playful style of the pants, which seem like they should be animating a hacky-sack, are more slightly sophisticated flavors, like the dramatically angular shirt-dress, and the form-fitting knee-length dress. It’s fundamentally confusing—that's maybe the best and only way to describe it.

Here we have Kaliyana, which I’ve only recently developed an affinity for. I’ve walked by this window at least a hundred of times in my adult life and after nearly gagging from repulsion, in the beginning I’d learned to eventually ignore it for the solace of my eyeballs. First of all, why was my hatred so passionate? Second of all, what the fuck is going on here? Oversized draping garments haven’t been in style for western women for maybe two centuries. There’s nothing sexy about obscuring your body in an expensive garbage bag—but then again—maybe that’s what’s so enticing. I feel like this brand mostly appeals to post-menopausal empty-nesters who don’t care about fucking anymore, or circus lesbians, or mythological creatures. Maybe I just hate it so much because I’m a closet circus lesbian.

Kaliyana has been around for a while—I just Googled it and it’s been around since 1987. The designer, Jana Kalous, sounds fucking rad. I quote: “If you haven’t discovered us yet, it’s probably because we prefer spending our time creating great designs, rather than wasting our days with endless self-promotion.” What a refreshing outlook!

I don’t know why this seemed so "Quebecois" to me. I guess it’s the mix of bad textiles with ridiculous contours? This also originated in Ottawa, which technically is not Quebecois at all. I would say that although this does exude the general aesthetic of Quebecois women’s fashion, Jana Kalous has carved out a specific, recognizable brand amongst the near-comparable competitors. This is maybe an enormous digression. In short, I want to drape myself in this woman.

The more I look at these photos, the more I feel 47. Notice how many of the mannequins are plus-sized? This window says “not your daughter’s” and I can’t tell what the rest of it says. When my mother came to visit me from our hometown, 800 km south of the Quebecois border, she was distracted by all of the boutique windows and we spent an entire afternoon contemplating how diagonal lines of thick stiches accent her D-cup.

This store, which may or may not actually be local, has a nice subdued appeal, keeping the colour scheme monochromatic while still participating in the strange culture, with its love for harem pants and totally impractical details. Take for example the vulva-esque pockets on this transparent black shirt. Why would someone spend time making these? Why would anyone spend time making anything?

Of course there are wonderful things about Quebec's neverland culture: a carefree environment where artists can feel free to gestate and experiment, a rejection of capitalist values and embracing of European joie de vivre, cheap rent. But all of this comes at a price, namely a heinously whimsical approach to women's clothing. Ultimately, the francophone women of Eastern Canada seem to have an impressive grasp on not-caring about attracting anyone to their bodies but preschool children, hippies, and LARPers. If I had to guess I would imagine that the appeal could be attributed to: pride rooted in the gestation of Cirque du Soliel, a resistance against anything typically anglophone or Americanized, a historical appreciation or lack of progression from early French settlement, and something secret that only true Quebecois know about. 

@karacrabb

Zach Braff’s new movie, Wish I Was Here, ends with the milquetoast, whiny protagonist (played by Braff, because who else could play this role?) proclaiming that it’s OK to abandon your dreams and just be a normal person. That might be the most controversial part of the most annoying movie of the summer. Whereas Braff’s last film, the equally irritating navel-gaze-athon, Garden State, famously encouraged its audience to “Let Go” as the credits rolled, this new weenie roast of a movie implores you to give up. Of course, there’s one guy out there who stubbornly continues to push his monotonous artistic agenda on a culture that has long since moved on: Zach Braff. Kickstarter and online donations will allow Zach Braff to keep making movies, even if most of us don’t want him to.

Photos via Merie Weismiller Wallace, SMPSP / Focus Features

Wish I Was Here became infamous last year for being partially funded through 46,520 donations to his Kickstarter page that promised Braff-aholics across the country that they would get the unvarnished vision of their hero. At last, the Hollywood fat cats will get out of Zach Braff’s way to make the movie he wants! We’ve waited too long to get the Real McCoy!

The problem with that is those Hollywood fat cats get paid millions of dollars to make the movies lots of people want to see. This is why no one will give me $2 million to make a sci-fi romantic comedy set in the 25th century that features me falling in love with a talking salmon. OK, actually, it’s very possible that this movie could get made if certain directives were put in place:

• My character is to be played by Robert Downey Jr. or hot up-and-coming African American actor Michael B. Jordan.
• The talking salmon will be voiced by Cameron Diaz or Melissa McCarthy.
• Instead of being set in the distant future, all the action takes place in a hot-shot San Francisco tech start-up.
• James Cameron or Christopher Nolan has to direct.

What do all of these elements have in common? They are people, places, or things the general public has already made clear that they enjoy. It’s been a long time since Zach Braff did anything that the general public enjoyed. Did you see The Ex? Were you enthralled by The Last Kiss? Did you obsessively blog about the last few tedious seasons of Scrubs? Do you sometimes punch yourself in the face just to feel something real? Of course no one who gave a shit about the bottom line would give Zach Braff more than a pat on the back to make a passion project. Braff was hot shit on a gold-plated serving dish after Garden State, but I am here to offer a rather startling, potentially earth-shattering revelation: It is not 2004.

A bevy of online commentators has made much of the 2000s Bush era as some kind of safe haven for macho white men to swing their dicks around with impunity. Trucker hats! Cheap domestic beer! Two foreign wars fought under false pretenses! Pro wrestling! Dick Cheney! Reality TV! Tucker Max! And yet, in 2004, a modest, cloying film about love conquering all influenced a sizeable portion of the country that was still coming of age. It shamelessly aped sad bastard classics like The Graduate, Harold & Maude, and Annie Hall like the principal’s kid in your history class who brazenly cheats on every exam because he can get away with it.

For you youngsters, Garden State was kind of like The Fault in Our Stars, but with way fewer Anne Frank references. It was the perfect young adult romance for the time in which it came out. If you were in college back then, like I was, it was an ideal outlet for the kind of introspection and malaise that most of us go through when your parents are no longer around to fold your laundry and prevent you from binge-drinking yourself into depression. Also, you're welcome to infer any post-9/11 trauma connections you want. That's probably there too. It sure was a bummer back then, eh!

Sometimes, all it takes is kissing a cute girl, going on whimsical adventures, walking in slow-motion, and listening to meaningful music to help you deal with a dead parent. Or, at least that’s true in the world of Garden State. I didn’t just eat that stuff up, I unhinged my jaw and let Zach Braff feed it to me like a little baby bird, then begged for seconds when it was all over. Dude, I was sad.

In the ten years since Braff first unleashed a hoard of horny, chronically mopey Shins fans upon an unsuspecting nation, he apparently has not changed much. Yes, Wish I Was Here features the same musical equivalent of tepid green tea as its soundtrack, though I doubt this one is winning a Grammy. Yes, the movie also has a lot of slow-motion shots. Yes, there are sunsets. There are many sunsets. The dad’s a dick. Zach Braff’s character is yet again a failed actor from Los Angeles, but this time, ol’ Zachie’s an aimless married father instead of an aimless single 20-something. A parent’s death is a key plot point, and through the magical power of self-actualization and positive thinking, all problems can be solved. This isn't like the Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment to Garden State's Police Academy, but it’s pretty close.

As Wish I Was Here spilled out onto my eyeballs, I pondered why a movie that was so clearly just more of the fucking same would get made. Well, 46,520 of you demanded it. The 46,520 of you that demanded Zach Braff remake Garden State for adults instead of college students got your wish. I guess that would be just fine and dandy if in the last ten years, the critical and public perception of Garden State hadn’t suffered so much. Just like in his new work, Garden State has on-the-nose, obnoxious greeting card dialogue, a simplistic view of how the world works, and characters so thin that Kate Moss is currently asking Andrew Largeman for diet tips. 

As with the Veronica Mars movie, nostalgia—the current drug of choice in America—convinced a very, very small subsection of the country to fund a movie that had very little chance of being financially successful, just because it reminded them of something they used to really like. Perhaps this is the future of Zach Braff’s career. No one will see his films, but he’ll have enough artistic patrons to allow him to continue working as a director. Fellow former hot-shot wunderkinds Henry Jaglom and Eric Schaeffer (he of the abominable 1990s Sarah Jessica Parker suicide-themed indie rom-com If Lucy Fell) have refused to stop making the same movie over and over again, for an increasingly miniature audience. Maybe that’s what he wants, because even if his protagonist in Wish I Was Here is willing to quit on his career aspirations, Zach Braff doesn’t seem willing to afford himself the same opportunity. Because why the fuck should he?

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Kim Kardashian is a great life coach. Photo via Glu Mobile

A friend of mine recently told me there was a cell phone game that I needed to try. He said it was more than a game—it was an addiction and a revelation. He explained that by the end of the year, the app has been projected to make $200 million in revenue.

Still, I’m not usually into cell phone games. I missed Angry Birds and Candy Crush. I loved Snake on my flip phone and I remember borrowing my dad’s early version of the Blackberry to play Brick Breaker, but that was as far as I’d ever fallen into the phone gaming life.

That is, until I found a game worth playing, a game that could teach me how to change my life for the better. I’m talking, of course, about Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.

I am a 25-year-old freelancer struggling to stay afloat in San Francisco. In other words, I’m poor. My style ranges from jeans and a t-shirt to jeans and a sweatshirt, and I tell the story of running into "E" from Entourage in a bathroom in Vegas and unsuccessfully attempting a handshake too often to consider myself the kind of guy who rubs shoulders with A-list celebs. I had a lot to learn from Kim, and luckily, with this app, she has made herself a willing Sherpa to the top of the celebrity world.   

I’m not into gimmicky apps. I believe that, at its best, my smartphone can make me a more efficient and effective human being. My Google Maps App helps me never get lost. My Yelp App keeps from eating at bad restaurants. And now my Kim App would guarantee that I don’t dress wrong or stay poor. This felt big—Flappy Bird big.  

To begin, I “kustomized” my character to look like a squarer-jawed version of myself. I realized pretty quickly that cutely misspelling words with Ks in the place of Cs would be a motif throughout the game. I was charmed and impressed. It took me a while to remove the default goatee that my avatar came with, but when I did, I felt ready to climb the social ladder. Anyone can be famous with an angular chin covering—I needed to do it my way.

My cyber-boss at the clothing store was a sassy black guy with a bowtie, a paperboy hat and forearm tattoos, which seemed fitting. I didn’t like his body language at first, but when he explained he was late for an appointment to look at a Beverly Hills apartment, I could empathize. My non-digital self was stressed looking for apartments in Oakland—I could only imagine what the competition for a chic Beverly Hills place was like. When he left, I was apprehensive for a moment about what I had to do. But luckily, green arrows popped up over every task that needed completing. And when I clicked on them, rolls of dollar bills fell onto the floor. If all else failed, this job at the clothing store didn’t seem so bad.

But wait, this was the same lack of ambition that had put me into this rut to begin with. What would Kim do? She would hustle her way to the top by any means necessary. I finished locking up and got on with my ascent.

When I left, I ran into Kim Kardashian right outside. So this is what LA is like! She asked me to reopen the store so she could pick something out. My boss might not like this, but who cares? Kim comes first.

I helped her pick out a dress, and when she asked how much, I told her it was on the house. I felt uncomfortable saying it, but there was only one choice in my speech bubble. When she said she couldn’t accept it, I was relieved. I loved Kim and she was probably famous enough to deserve free things—this country’s notorious for giving the rich and beloved stuff they don’t need—but I really didn’t want to get fired on my first day. Unfortunately, the only available response was to insist that she take it. I didn’t feel good about giving the expensive dress away, but I liked that Kim hadn’t just accepted it without some pushback. She totally would have paid for it if I hadn’t insisted, which showed that she really was a good person. And Kim appreciated the free dress so much that she invited me to a photo shoot at the Metropolitan Magazine building. This felt like the first big moment to earmark for my own real life—loser bosses don’t matter; if you want to make it, give shit away to any celebrity you meet.

I had to go back to my apartment to get ready for the shoot, but suddenly began to feel self-conscious about my look. People like me don’t get invited to model—what was I thinking making my avatar look like a freelance reporter? I changed my hair from parted to spiked up in front and put on a denim button-down and pink shoes. People wear these types of things, I think. Maybe real-life me should try colorful shoes—I made a note to go the Vans store tomorrow. I underlined the word “Vans”—Kim liked Vans.

I looked completely different, which felt right. I left my apartment and was told to take the bus to Beverly Hills. I usually like the bus—when I ride it, I feel a part of the city. The scene through the big, scratched windows is like a moving painting. But now it felt below me.

When I arrived, the photographer asked me my name. The default name in the speech bubble was “Nathaniel” and I wanted so badly to be named Nathaniel, but I knew it wasn’t me. I wrote in “Joe” and then erased it, and put in “Joey” and erased that, too. I finally settled on “Joseph.” It wasn’t Nathaniel, but at least Kim wouldn’t be embarrassed by it.

Kim looked amazing in the red dress I had picked out for her. And her photographer friend wanted to take pictures of me. I posed for him and he told me he thought I should model! This was big—my decision to dress the opposite of what my instincts told me was working. And after the shoot, Kim invited me to meet her at a party at the Brew Palms. I felt like I’d earned it too. I could have worn those boring clothes and none of this would have happened. But I wore a denim button-down, rolled up to my elbows, and I put the time in with my hair. This party with Kim was the reward I deserved.

At the bus stop, a good-looking guy in a white tuxedo top and camo pants asked me about the party at the Brew Palms. I told him that he wouldn’t get in and instantly regretted being so rude. But, I mean, he didn’t know Kim like I knew Kim. And I would be embarrassed if he showed up and Kim asked why he was there and I had to explain that I met him while waiting for the bus and he seemed nice enough and I didn’t know that the Brew Palms event was exclusive. I had done the right thing; it was better not to lead him on about the party.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that poor Kim must go through this every day. I realized how hard it must be for Kim to always say no to all these clingers with kind faces but bad motives. I realized that Kim was a saint for even making this game, for sharing all her knowledge with little old me. I quickly closed the app so I could give Kim the five-star rating she deserved. 40,000 others had felt the same way and beat me to the punch. They knew what I knew: it’s hard to make it to the top, but it’s even harder to remember the little people with bad style once you do.

I don’t know if people can ever change themselves completely. I don’t know if we are who we are, or if we are what we make ourselves. And even with this newfound knowledge, I’ll never be Kim, because I wasn’t blessed with that it factor. But I do feel wiser. And I will be buying those pink Vans, because it’d be wrong not to. It’s what my better self would do.

Strangers with candy: Modern-day Klansmen are desperate for new recruits. Photo via Flickr user arete13

The Ku Klux Klan is having some trouble with recruitment. After all, competition is getting pretty fierce among the various right-wing militias and bunker-dwellers looking to build up armies to fight the fast-approaching Race War Apocalypse. Last weekend, Klansmen in South Carolina tried to sweeten their pitch by dropping off goody bags stuffed with candy and nativist propaganda in the driveways of unsuspecting exurbanites.

Residents were unsurprisingly alarmed by the gift, which included mints, Smarties, and a flyer invite to “SAVE OUR LAND / JOIN THE KLAN,” accompanied by a website and a hotline number for the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a southern sect based in North Carolina. The number lead callers to a recorded rant about Mexicans and their “third-world diseases.”

“It is time to enforce our immigration laws and send them back, and put troops on our border with a shoot-to-kill policy,” says a man with a thick Southern accent. “Always remember, if it ain’t white, it ain’t right. White power.”

In an interview with FOX Carolina, Robert Jones, the Imperial Klaliff of the sect, said that the racist candy bags were part of a larger recruitment effort in advance of the Klan’s tri-annual “national night ride.”

Because this is Obama’s America, where black people sometimes live next door to white people, some of the flyers ended up in the yards of minority residents. But Jones explained that the group didn’t target specific houses, because obviously that would be racist.

"I mean, we can't tell who lives in a house, whether they're black, white, Mexican, gay—we can't tell that," he told the TV station. "And if you were to look at somebody's house like that, that means you'd be pretty much a racist." He added that residents don’t need to be scared of the Klansmen, unless they’re doing something wrong—which, according to the LWK website, includes “drugs, homosexuality, abortion, and race-mixing.”

The South Carolina charm offensive is not an isolated incident. Despite being the country’s most notorious hate group, the KKK’s membership has been steadily falling for decades, thanks to infighting, scandals, and a generally bad reputation. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that membership in the KKK now numbers between 5,000 and 8,000, spread across isolated (and frequently warring) sects.

In a sense, the Klan has become the Windows of hate groups. They enjoy great brand recognition and customer loyalty among racist grandfathers, but are rapidly losing market share to savvier, more aggressive right-wing fear-mongers.

But in the past few months, various KKK sects and chapters in several states have tried to step up their recruitment efforts. Using social media and other digital strategies, along with traditional tactics like late-night leafleting, they are targeting new members—particularly nascent racists between the ages of 13 and 17. In Pennsylvania, for example, a local KKK group announced in April that it was launching a “neighborhood watch,” informing residents of Fairview Township that they could “sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake.” Even more alarmingly, Barcroft TV reported this spring that some chapters in West Virginia and the Midwest are even starting to train members in military-style combat—a first for the modern KKK.

More recently, KKK groups like the Loyal White Knights have been capitalizing on the current border crisis in an effort to swell their flagging ranks. Fliers similar to those that popped up South Carolina have materialized on suburban doorsteps and windshields in Atlanta, Texas, Tennessee, and Florida in the past few weeks, scaring local residents and raising fears that the hooded hate group is undergoing another resurgence.

Whether that is the case isn’t clear yet, according to SPLC’s Mark Potok. The KKK has successfully parlayed nativism into new members in the past, most famously during the wave of Catholic and Jewish immigrants in the 1920s, but also during the Bush-era debates over immigration reform. But according to the SPLC, the number of KKK chapters has declined significantly since 2010, amidst a proliferation of other right-wing terrorist groups.

Of course, the Klansmen aren’t the only ones exploiting the plight of detained migrant children. In addition to the various Tea Party politicians fundraising off amnesty fear-mongering, Patriot militias and other Cliven Bundy fans have been patrolling the border for weeks: setting up “command post,” blockading buses full of Guatemalan children, and drawing in new conscripts who see the current influx of unaccompanied minors at the border as another harbinger of some vague but imminent collapse.

Here again, the KKK finds itself at a disadvantage—because who wants to eat candy and play dress-up when there’s a war going on? 

Rick Perry in 2012. Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

In April, as a Texas state grand jury began hearing testimony for a criminal investigation of Governor Rick Perry of Texas, the politician sought to defend himself by hiring a high-powered attorney named David Botsford. That raised some eyebrows, to say the least. Perry, a conservative Republican, had hired a politically active progressive Democrat as his defense attorney. But within Austin’s tight-knit legal community, Perry’s hiring of Botsford made perfect sense. Austin, where the grand jury is seated, is a rare progressive enclave in the reddest of states—and the majority of the grand jurors now determining Perry’s fate are Democrats.

Perhaps Perry’s supporters had reasons to be concerned about his choice of attorney. An investigation by VICE has found that Botsford, in the late 1990s, had secretly provided what Botsford claimed was potentially damning information on Perry to the FBI in the hope of instigating a federal criminal investigation of his now client. At one point, Botsford even described himself as an informer for the FBI in regard to the information he was providing to the agency about Perry and spoke of furtive meetings with FBI agents. He strongly expressed his belief that he had brought the Feds hard evidence of an allegedly illegal stock-trading scheme involving Perry. In 2011, the Huffington Post even ran a false and erroneous account that Perry had been targeted by a federal criminal investigation, based in part on information Botsford provided to the website.

In short, the man now entrusted with preventing a grand jury from bringing criminal charges against Perry once worked just as hard to put Perry in jail.

Botsford did not respond to several phone messages and emails seeking comment for this story. At the time of publication a spokesman for Perry did not respond, either. A secretary for Botsford told VICE: “Mr. Botsford is a very busy man. Do you know he is currently representing the governor of Texas? If you really wanted an interview, you should have contacted him like six weeks ago.”

Perry has good reason to want to hire the most able—and loyal—attorney to defend him. A special prosecutor, Michael McCrum, impaneled the state grand jury to hear evidence as to whether Perry had broken any laws while using the powers of his office to curtail the funding of the anti-corruption unit of the Travis County district attorney’s office at a time when it was investigating an agency of the Perry administration. The Travis County Public Integrity Unit had been investigating whether officials at a Texas anti-cancer state agency had violated any laws by showing favoritism in the awarding of grants to wealthy political supporters and contributors to the campaign of Governor Perry.

In June 2013, Perry vetoed an annual $7.5 million appropriation by the state legislature to fund the Travis County Public Integrity Unit. The veto of the funds for the anti-corruption unit was apparently legal and within Perry’s power as governor. But Perry had allegedly offered to withhold the veto of the funds in exchange for the resignation of the Travis County district attorney, who had been arrested on DUI charges. Unsuccessful in his attempt to unseat the district attorney, he pushed the veto through while simultaneously offering to reinstate the funding for the unit if the district attorney resigned. Because of Perry’s pressure on the district attorney and the anti-corruption unit, and his offer of a quid pro quo of forgoing a veto of the funding or reinstating it in exchange for her resignation, the grand jury is investigating whether Perry allegedly abused his oversight and misused his office in what may constitute illegal coercion and bribery of a public official.

“I’m investigating the circumstances surrounding the veto and whether the governor’s actions were appropriate or not under the law,” McCrum, a former federal prosecutor for the Western District of Texas who is now a prominent San Antonio defense attorney, said in a recent phone interview. “My duty is to look at all of the laws and determine whether any were broken by the governor or anyone else.”

Solomon Wisenberg, who worked as a federal prosecutor alongside McCrum in San Antonio, said McCrum is a “stellar person and attorney in every sense of the word.” Wisenberg and others described him as meticulous and thorough—a prosecutor “who will leave no stone unturned.”

Botsford is similarly highly regarded among his peers as one of Austin’s best defense attorneys. Colleagues and adversaries alike describe Botsford as “bookish” and “congenial” and someone who works zealously but within the rules to defend his clients—descriptions echoed about his temporary adversary, McCrum.

“I think if Governor Perry had chosen a Republican lawyer from Houston or Dallas, that would have been a mistake,” Ben Florey, a former Travis County assistant district attorney, said. “David knows the nuances and practices of law in Travis County.”

Although experts say that Botsford apparently did not break any ethical rules if he did not inform Perry of his covert meetings with the FBI, Wisenberg said he believed that Botsford should have told Perry about his actions: “I think you should disclose something like this this to your client. If I were the client, I would certainly want to know.”

Federal law enforcement authorities provide a very different account of their interactions with Botsford than the more heroic one that Botsford has privately given over the years to colleagues: They say that they never conducted any criminal investigation of Perry, let alone one based on information Botsford had provided them. They say that the information Botsford turned over to the FBI about Perry allegedly being involved in insider trading was very similar to accounts that had already appeared in the Dallas Morning News. And they say that the FBI hears out virtually anyone out who has a complaint, which is what they claim they did with Botsford—and after hearing out Botsford, they saw no reason to follow up.

William Blagg, then the United States attorney for the Western District of Texas, the place where Botsford had taken his information about Perry in the late 1990s, said in an interview that he was concerned—“wary,” in Blagg’s words—that Botsford’s efforts to instigate a criminal investigation of Perry were done to affect the outcome of a state election.

Perry was at the time locked in a razor-thin race to be lieutenant governor against a Democrat named John Sharp. Perry had Karl Rove on his side, advising his campaign. And Republicans were increasingly winning office in the once Democratic state. But Sharp was proving to be a tough adversary. With Election Day growing closer, both campaigns pulled out all the stops searching for an advantage. That’s when Botsford came forward with his information for the federal authorities.

In fact, Blagg told me in an interview, Sharp had personally come to him to request that he open a criminal investigation of Perry in the closing days of the campaign. Sharp’s obvious motive aside, Blagg pointed out to Sharp that he had brought him little of substance. Sharp told Blagg that an attorney working with him—who turned out to be Botsford—would soon be in touch and have much more detailed information.

Sharp, who is today the chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, declined to comment for this story.

Today Blagg is an assistant district attorney in Bexar County, Texas. He said that he had been naturally wary of Sharp and Botsford’s entreaties because they “occurred during a political time.” The former US attorney continued: “You don’t want an investigation to further a political agenda… Even if there had been anything there, we would have waited the short time until after the election is over.”

Attempting to have opposing candidates investigated by federal or state authorities during election season is a time-honored tradition in Texas and other parts of the country. Greg Cox, the director of the Public Integrity Unit of the Travis County district attorney's office, said in an interview that “political opponents file complaints against each other one after another” just prior to Election Day. Investigations are routinely “deferred until after the election.”

When Botsford met with the FBI in 1998, the information he brought the agents was nothing more than similar information that had already appeared in a newspaper article: a story written by veteran political reporter Wayne Slater in the Dallas Morning News on May 15, 1998, in which he raised questions about whether Perry had benefited from an insider stock tip.

Slater and the Dallas Morning News reported that back in 1996, Perry had purchased stock in a company called Kinetic Concepts, Inc., which was owned by a wealthy contributor to Perry’s campaigns named James Leininger.

On the same day stock was purchased on Perry’s behalf by a stockbroker, Slater reported, “a California investment group began buying 2.2 million shares in the company, boosting the stock's value.” This suggested that Perry might have been given insider information that the stock’s value was going to skyrocket, a suspicion that was further fueled by the fact that Perry had spoken at a luncheon attended by Leininger. Perry and Leininger admitted speaking together the day of the stock purchase, but the two mean denied ever discussing the stock or engaging in collusion.

During a meeting with the FBI, Botsford did little more than provide agents with “any information [other] than what was in the newspaper,” a federal law enforcement official said. “The whole thing was very amateurish. You initially had Sharp himself come in. He didn’t even use a proxy or cutout or send someone else to make it appear that it had nothing to do with the campaign. And then you have a guy Sharp sends us who has nothing.”

Blagg and two other federal law enforcement officials told us in interviews that neither the FBI nor the Justice Department had ever opened any formal investigation of Perry for the insider trades. “I never heard back anything from the FBI,” Blagg said. “And we never opened a file. There just was never any investigation.”

A second law enforcement official questioned about the matter added: “Anyone can come in and file a complaint, which is what Botsford did. But you can’t go out and say because someone listened to you that someone is under criminal investigation.”

Still, that didn’t stop the Sharp campaign and Botsford from peddling a story to Texas reporters in the final days of the campaign that Perry might be under investigation by the FBI for insider trading. But not a single news organization published a story about it—because it was impossible to confirm. It was impossible to confirm, of course, because it was untrue. Sharp and Botsford had simply been unable to convince federal authorities to investigate Perry.

In the end, Perry was elected lieutenant governor, winning 50 percent of the 3.6 million ballots cast to Sharp’s 48 percent. Had Sharp and Botsford succeeded in having the FBI open a criminal investigation of Perry—or even managed to get a major Texas newspaper to erroneously report that that was the case—the outcome could have easily been different.

While Sharp and Botsford were unable to affect the outcome of Perry’s 1998 race to be lieutenant governor, more than a decade later Botsford was presented with a second shot at harming Perry’s electoral prospects when Perry decided to run for president. For a while, Perry was a first-tier candidate and, briefly, the front-runner. Political opponents and opposition researchers scurried for not-yet-public information to discredit him.

At a pivotal moment in the campaign, on September 11, 2011, the Huffington Post published a story alleging there once had been a federal criminal investigation of Perry: “In the late 90s, federal law enforcement authorities investigated allegations that Perry had engaged in insider trading, sources involved in the inquiry tell the Huffington Post,” the news site erroneously reported.

The primary source for the Huffington Post article was Botsford, who was quoted at length in the article as an anonymous source:

It took at least two years for an Austin attorney to uncover the suspicious trade. The attorney, who would only discuss the matter on condition of anonymity… said he spoke with two sources who corroborated that Perry and Leininger had met on the day in question and that the donor had advised the politician on the stock purchase.

“Perry bought immediately,” the attorney recalled. “I mean it was immediately. It was immediately after that that the transaction was announced and the stock went up considerably. My source was telling me that Leininger told [Perry] to go buy some stock.

“I was told that such a private conversation took place and in that private conversation, Leininger told him he needed to invest a little money,” the attorney added.

The attorney took his findings to federal prosecutors. They met in an Austin ice cream parlor and he related what he knew.

Reporters for other news organizations attempted to confirm the allegations, but were initially skeptical. How could the governor of the nation’s second-largest state have been the target of a federal criminal investigation more than a full decade earlier, but somehow nobody heard about it? They were assured by their sources that there never had been any such criminal investigation, and there the matter died.

David Botsford amid a scrum of reporters in 1998, during the trial of Karla Faye Tucker, a murderer who was represented by Botsford in her ultimately unsuccessful attempt to have her death sentence commuted to life in prison. Photo by Paul K. Buck/AFP/Getty Images

The current—and very real—state criminal investigation of Perry by a special prosecutor, appointed by the Travis County district attorney, is a complex tale:

It begins with a 2012 investigation by the Travis County DA's office of a state-run agency: the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, or CPRIT, which was set up in 2007 to dispense more than $3 billion in grants for cancer research over ten years. The little-known agency provides more funds for cancer research than any other government agency except for the National Cancer Institute.

An activist agency such as CPRIT would seem, at first glance, to be an aberration for a state with a fondness for limited government, anti-spending sentiments, and a Tea Party senator in Ted Cruz. But long before he was disgraced for doping, champion cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong was one of the state’s most respected and beloved residents, and Armstrong and his foundation pushed for the creation of the agency. Perry saw this as an opportunity to cross ideological fault lines and burnish his credentials for a presidential run. Eventually, the two became political partners in creating CPRIT.

Instead of awarding grants based on the potential of projects to save lives, however, CPRIT quickly became known for mismanagement, cronyism, and insider dealing. Preferential treatment was allegedly given to the political backers and major campaign contributors of Perry and other Republican state officeholders, according to the findings of a state audit and other official internal and governmental investigations of the agency.

Dr. Alfred Gilman, the agency’s chief scientific officer and a Nobel laureate, resigned in protest following a grant being awarded without a full scientific review, a sidestepping of the agency’s internal regulations. Almost three dozen other scientists also eventually resigned, complaining of “suspicion of favoritism” and “hucksterism.” Many of them sat on peer-review committees tasked with evaluating applications for scientific merit. Too often, they said, the committees’ recommendations were ignored and qualified applicants were turned down in favor of the politically connected.

Some former CPRIT officials said in interviews that the favoritism shown to biotech firms and companies associated with Perry came with a price. “It wasn’t like one person just got rich who should have never qualified," said one. "The money was taken from somewhere else. Some program that might help save the lives of children with a rare type of cancer didn’t get funded because someone else wanted to line their pockets.” After temporarily suspending its grant-giving, overhauling its upper management, and putting in place new safeguards to prevent similar abuses, CPRIT says the agency has now turned a corner.

In 2012, Greg Cox, the director of the Travis County Public Integrity Unit, confirmed that it had opened a criminal investigation of the agency. The Travis County DA's office is unique in Texas: It prosecutes local criminal offenses like most other district attorneys or state prosecuting attorneys. But because it is in Austin, the Texas capital, it also has jurisdiction to investigate political corruption in state government, which is what the Public Integrity Unit was created to do.

Most famously, the unit is known for having prosecuted former US House of Representatives majority leader Tom DeLay for allegedly laundering money to conceal corporate campaign contributions. The Travis County DA won a conviction of DeLay in 2011, which resulted in a three-year prison sentence, but that decision was later overturned by an appeals court. As things currently stand, the Travis County DA has appealed that ruling to yet a higher court.

The reversal of DeLay’s conviction, the large number of Republican officeholders it has convicted, the fact that the elected DA is a Democrat, and the fact that Travis County votes primarily for Democrats have led to allegations by Perry and other Texas Republicans that the office is partisan. Defenders of the DA and the Public Integrity Unit have pointed out that the office wins convictions of most political corruption cases it brings and a disproportionate number of Republicans are charged because Republicans control the majority of the state’s offices. The Travis County DA's office has won a number of convictions against prominent Democratic politicians as well, including a powerful state legislator and even a Democratic speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

The district attorney’s investigation of the cancer agency in part focused on major campaign contributors and supporters of Perry who allegedly got preferential treatment and thus could indirectly impact the reputations of the Perry administration and even Perry himself, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The investigation initially went well: In December 2013, a former senior official at CPRIT, Jerald Cobb, was indicted on felony charges that he had circumvented normal scientific or financial oversight to award an $11 million grant to a Dallas biotech firm. Cobb is currently awaiting trial.

On April 12, 2014, in the midst of the CPRIT investigation, Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg was arrested for drunk driving. She was three times over the legal limit, and police found an open bottle of vodka in her vehicle. While being placed under arrest, Lehmberg was caught on a tape threatening one of her arresting police officers: “I am not drunk. I am not a criminal. I’m the [bleep] damn district attorney. You better do something pretty quick 'cause I’m getting pretty pissed off.” She was so unruly during her booking that the police felt it necessary to put a net over her head to prevent her from sticking her tongue out in protest, an act that by that point she had already performed for the jailhouse-booking cameras.

Lehmberg pleaded guilty to the drunk-driving charges and agreed to a 45-day jail sentence. There were calls for her resignation, including from Democrats, but she vowed to stay in office until the 2016 election, after which she would retire.

Perry saw an opening and quickly pounced. The governor threatened to veto a planned $7.5 million for the Public Integrity Unit over the next two years unless she agreed to resign. Lehmberg steadfastly refused.

Among the reasons that Lehmberg wouldn't give in to the threats was that Perry, as governor, would be able to appoint her temporary successor if she resigned. This meant that for the first time a Republican might control the Travis County DA's office and would oversee the investigation of CPRIT.

In response to a complaint filed by a watchdog group, a Texas state judge appointed a special prosecutor, McCrum, to investigate whether Perry had broken the law in demanding Lehmberg’s resignation in exchange for not vetoing funds for her office, or, in his later offer, after the veto, to restore them if she resigned. McCrum in turn impaneled a special grand jury, which in late April began hearing evidence.

Powerful public officials—among them governors and even presidents of the United States—have long attacked prosecutors investigating them or their political associates by defunding them or simply firing them—a practice that is usually legal and constitutional.

Richard Nixon fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973 in what has become known as the Saturday Night Massacre, which galvanized public opinion against the president and was a turning point in the Watergate drama that led to his resignation from office. But the House Judiciary Committee, in drawing up articles of impeachment for Nixon, did not include the firing of the special prosecutor as one of them. Nor did Cox’s successor as special prosecutor consider criminal charges against Nixon for firing Cox. The reason: Even though Nixon had allegedly engaged in obstruction of justice and other alleged criminal actions to thwart the criminal investigations of him and the White House—and the firing of Cox was perhaps his most audacious and outrageous attempt to defeat the rule of law—Nixon’s firing of the special prosecutor was both legal and constitutional.

Perry’s vetoing of appropriations for the Travis County district attorney’s office could similarly have irreparably stymied the investigation of Perry’s managements of CPRIT and the alleged favoritism displayed toward political backers and contributors. But such a veto of funds, like Nixon’s firing of Cox, was apparently entirely legal and constitutional.

In defense of the governor’s veto at the time, his spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said, “This veto was made in accordance with the veto power afforded to every governor under the Texas Constitution.” Botsford similarly told reporters just before the grand jury started proceedings that, in his and his client’s opinion, what Perry did “pertains to the power of the governor to issue vetoes as allowed under the Texas Constitution.” The investigation, Botsford said, would vindicate that Perry’s veto and related actions were “carried out in both the spirit and letter of the law.”

Had Perry simply vetoed funding for the Travis County district attorney’s office and stopped with that, there would have been no question that his actions were within the bounds of the law. But Perry did not stop there. Even before the veto, Perry, through intermediaries, informed Lehmberg that he would forgo the veto if she were to resign. In subsequent weeks after the veto, Perry, again through intermediaries, offered to restore the funding almost as quickly as he had withheld it, if Lehmberg were to resign.

While vetoing funds for the office might be legal, offering to forgo the veto or restore the funds in exchange for Lehmberg’s resignation might be a potential crime, the state judge who had appointed the special prosecutor concluded.

The grand jury is investigating whether Perry’s offer of returning funding in exchange for Lehmberg’s resignation and perhaps other things might have constituted a bribe, according to people close to the grand jury. The grand jury is also looking into whether Perry had attempted to “coerce” Lehmberg into undertaking “a specific performance of [her] official duty”—in this case, stepping aside.

The seriousness of the investigation only underscores that Perry needed the best man possible as his legal counsel. In other words, he needed David Botsford.

In 1996, Botsford was recognized for his skill and his good relations with colleagues when he was named president of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Benjamin Blackburn, another Austin defense attorney, said, “Botsford is incredibly smart. He does complicated civil litigation in federal court that requires know-how and intelligence that most attorneys don’t have.”

Botsford is also a well-known figure within Travis County’s Democratic Party, fundraising and donating his time to judges, congressional candidates, and other Democrats. “I see him at fundraisers,” Blackburn said. “You’ll see him at the big fundraisers, but he’s not active at the grassroots level; he’s more moving and shaking from the top down.”

Texas state campaign finance records show that Botsford made more than $24,000 in campaign contributions over the past decade to Texas judges, judicial candidates, and other local officeholders— a majority of whom are Democrats.

It is because of these partisan connections, not in spite of them, that Blackburn and others in the Austin legal community believe it was a shrewd move for Perry to retain Botsford before the Travis County grand jury.

“You have to understand that there are 254 counties in Texas and 253 voted against Obama,” Blackburn said. “Travis County and Austin in general is an island of liberalism within Texas. There’s no politician that has won countywide office as a Republican here in nearly two decades… People, even if they lean more conservatively, give money to the Democrats.” To the uninformed it may appear that, on the surface, Perry’s hiring of Botsford might make strange “bedfellows”; yet Blackburn said it was a “smart move for Perry” that “makes sense.”

A local law enforcement official who wished to remain anonymous agreed with Blackburn’s assessment: “Rick Perry has to be thinking that if he were indicted, and a jury were seated, the jurors would be mostly Democrats in a Democratic county.”

“To me it seems the choice was assessed on merit, and that’s kind of a flat world,” says Kyle Lowe, an Austin defense attorney who has known Botsford for years. “The governor is looking to defend himself before this goes any further. David knows the [Travis County] district attorney, and he also knows Gregg Cox at the Public Integrity Unit. He’s known them for a long time.”

There are recent indications that the grand jury is wrapping up its work, although few if any specifics are known about the investigation’s potential outcome. Texas has some of the toughest grand jury secrecy laws in the country. Those who testify can be jailed for simply revealing what questions they were asked during the proceedings, although some Texas attorneys told us that any prosecution of witnesses for simply talking about their own testimony might be successfully challenged on First Amendment grounds.

In the meantime, Texas taxpayers are footing the bill to defend Perry before the grand jury. Botsford was paid more than $41,000 for his legal work for Perry up to June 18, according to information made public by the Texas state comptroller. (McCrum had submitted invoices for $22,000 over a similar time period.)

When the San Antonio-Express News recently tried to learn more about exactly what services Botsford was providing to Perry at the taxpayer’s expense by filing a public-records request with the Travis County’s attorney’s office, Botsford wrote state officials asking that they not make that information public.

Botsford’s letter to state officials underscores how seriously he and his client are taking the grand jury probe: “Disclosure would provide a road map to strategic and tactical decisions made during the course of my ongoing representation while simultaneously revealing matters subject to grand jury secrecy.”

The Mike Duffy soundboard, in all its glory.
Mike Duffy, former CTV journalist and central figure in the Canadian Senate Scandal, got some very bad news today. The RCMP is charging him with 31 counts of fraud, breach of trust, bribery of a judicial officer, and frauds on the Government. He's expected to show up in court on September 16 to plead his case. And his lawyer is, of course, insisting that Ol' Duff is innocent.

Speaking through a spokesperson, Prime Minster Harper has called Duffy's alleged behaviour "disgraceful," while congratulating the RCMP for their investigative work. Adding: "Those who break the rules must suffer the consequences."

But before you judge the man, we thought we'd remind you about this amazing soundboard developed by a creative computer programmer with too much time on his hands, who discovered that Duffy recorded over 700 soundbites of first names so that donors to the Conservative party could receive a personal message in a thank you video.

So, if your name is Ralph, and you donated to the Conservative party, you'd receive a personalized video wherein the Duffster greeted you: "Ralph! Mike Duffy here."

Or if you're a Pierre, you would get a slightly Frenched up hello: "Pierre, salut! It's Mike Duffy, qui parle."

If you're like us, you'll probably go down a rabbithole clicking on different names. Our personal favourites are Delbert, Manfred, and Floyd. Have fun, and keep Mike Duffy in your thoughts. 

Vintage Budwesier bikini from Ducheese vintage.
Photography: Mandy-Lyn (www.mandy-lyn.com)
Stylist: Mila Franovic
Layout and design: Studio Moross
Hair: Christopher Deagle
Make Up: Jon Hennessy
Assistants: Anna Bonthoux, Kasha Marchiniak
Models: Madi Ross of Rad Kids
Special thanks: Bart at ReFind Classics

Roxy bikini bottoms.

Roxy bikini bottoms.

Vintage Budweiser bikini from Ducheese vintage.

Top Shop tank top.

Top Shop tank top.

American Apparel shorts, vintage socks, North Star rollerskates.

If you ask the linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, the Arab Spring did not begin in Tunisia in 2011—it began with the October 2010 protests in the town of Gdeim Izik, in Western Sahara's occupied territories. The former Spanish colony has been illegally occupied by Morocco since 1975. Its territory is divided in two by a 1,677-mile-long sand wall and surrounded by some 7 million land mines.

The native Sahrawis, led by their independence movement the Polisario, are recognized by the International Court of Justice as the rightful owners of the land. However, Morocco hijacked Western Sahara's decolonization process from Spain in 1975, marching some 300,000 settlers into the territory. This triggered a 16-year war between Morocco and the Polisario, which forced more than 100,000 Sahrawis into exile across the border in Algeria. Technically, Western Sahara is still Spanish and remains Africa's last colony.

Whether adrift in refugee camps and dependent on aid or languishing under Moroccan rule, the Sahrawis are still fighting for their independence in an increasingly volatile region. Meanwhile, the UN has no mandate to monitor human rights in occupied Western Sahara. VICE News travels to Western Sahara's occupied and liberated territories, as well as the Polisario-run refugee camps in Algeria, to find out more about one of the world's least-reported conflicts.

In part three, VICE News finds out how the Polisario tackle the threats of terrorism and drug smuggling in their increasingly volatile part of the Sahara. We look at how the movement has improved security to avoid another event like the 2011 kidnapping of three foreign aid workers from a Polisario complex. Then we speak to the ministers of defense and security, and follow a Polisario anti-terrorism unit on one of their night patrols, going dangerously close to the smuggling routes of the Sahara.

Irish UN soldiers Derek Smallhorne and Thomas Barrett, who were killed in Lebanon in 1980. Photo by Justice for Smallhorne and Barrett, Facebook

Mahmoud Bazzi, the Detroit ice cream truck driver who allegedly participated in the abduction and killing of two Irish UN peacekeeping soldiers in Lebanon 34 years ago, has been arrested and now faces a deportation hearing.

I was with the ill-fated UN patrol on April 18, 1980, when they were abducted by Bazzi and a group of militiamen from the Israeli-supported South Lebanon Army. At the time, I was an Associated Press correspondent based in Beirut.

Bazzi told us he wanted to avenge the death of his younger brother who was killed in a clash between the Irish battalion of the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon a couple of weeks prior.

He took the three Irish drivers in our convoy into an abandoned, bombed-out elementary school and shot one of them, Irish Private John O’Mahony, several times. An American UN officer and I carried O’Mahony to safety. Bazzi then left the scene with two other Irish soldiers, Privates Derek Smallhorn and Thomas Barrett.

The bodies of Smallhorn and Barrett were found hours later. They had been tortured and killed.

One year ago, I was contacted by Homeland Security agents at my business in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Brewery. They told me Bazzi had applied for US citizenship. In the course of their investigation, they discovered that Bazzi had entered the US illegally, with a false passport. They also uncovered information about the slayings of the UN soldiers.

They asked if I would identify Bazzi at a deportation hearing. I said I would. On Tuesday, July 15, Homeland Security spokesman Khaliid Walls in Detroit announced that Bazzi had been arrested and would appear at a removal hearing next week.

I wrote a detailed story about the abduction and Homeland Security’s new interest in the Bazzi case last January for VICE magazine. The article prompted orderly protests by Irish Army veterans of peacekeeping duty in Lebanon. On July 5, several hundred veterans marched in Dublin, demanding the United States bring Bazzi to justice.

One of the leaders of the protest, former Irish Army soldier Robbie Masterson who was posted in Lebanon in 1980, texted me last night: “Heard the news about Bazzi. Unbelievable, after 34 years. Thank you, and VICE.”

The VICE story prompted Irish Central, a US-based newspaper, the Detroit Free Press, the Irish radio station RTE, and other Irish media to investigate and report the incident, putting pressure on Homeland Security to do something.

In 2000, RTE did a one-hour TV special about the abductions and killings. The RTE reporter accosted Bazzi as he left his home for a day selling ice cream. He denied killing the Irishmen, in spite of Lebanese television footage showing him boasting of the murders 34 years ago. He claimed that the leader of his militia, rebel Lebanese Army Major Saad Haddad, had threatened to kill him if he did not confess publicly to the killings.

I interviewed O’Mahony, the Irishman who was shot by Bazzi, a few months ago. Like me, he identified Bazzi as the leader of the abduction team. O’Mahony also said Bazzi was the man who shot him on that day in 1980.

In a recent interview with the Detroit Free Press’s Jim Schaefer, Bazzi again denied killing the Irishmen, but he then admitted to being present during the abduction.

The Homeland Security official would not say what country might receive Bazzi if he is deported. He has been living in Dearborn, Michigan, with his family for 21 years. Some former members of Haddad’s militia have been given refuge in Israel. South Lebanon is now controlled by Hezbollah, a sworn enemy of the Jewish state. In 1980, Hezbollah did not exist.

Sean J Patrick Carney is a concrete comedian, visual artist, and writer based in Brooklyn. He is the founder and director of Social Malpractice Publishing and, since 2012, has been a member of GWC Investigators, a collaborative paranormal research team. Carney has taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art, the Virginia Commonwealth University, the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, and New York University. Follow him on Twitter, here.