‘The Glee Project’ Season 2: Tyler Ford, Transgender Contestant, Talks Sexuality Week, Naya Rivera And More

Tyler Ford seemed like a shoe-in to make it to “The Glee Project” Season 2 finale. The 21-year-old was the show’s first-ever transgender contestant, and “Glee” mastermind Ryan Murphy was immediately drawn to Ford’s charisma and unbreakable spirit.

Unfortunately, during this week’s episode, which challenged the “Glee” hopefuls to showcase their sexy sides, Ford just couldn’t stand out among his fellow competitors, and for the third time, he was asked to perform in front of Murphy. Despite being praised by “Glee Project” mentors Zach Woodlee and Robert Ulrich for his growth throughout the competition, Ford wasn’t on Murphy’s call-back list.

HuffPost TV chatted with the recent “Glee Project” castoff about his time on the show, his embarrassing moment in front of “Glee” star Naya Rivera and how he dealt with being told that he wasn’t as vocally talented as everyone else.

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Watch Google’s I/O Keynote in 90 Seconds [Video]

For the first day of I/O, Google dropped a long, action-packed keynote on us, complete with the Nexus tablet unveiling, the Android Jelly Bean reveal, and parachuters jumping out of planes wearing the company’s futuristic augmented reality glasses. If you weren’t able to tune in, we’ve got you covered, with the entire two and a half hour talk condensed into 90 seconds in the above clip. More »

Obama Health Care Law Predictions: A Roundup

On Thursday, just after 10 a.m., the big moment will finally arrive: The Supreme Court will hand down its ruling on the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature piece of domestic legislation.

The central question about the proceedings: Will the court strike down the law or its key component, the individual mandate, as March’s contentious oral arguments signaled it might do? Or will the court uphold its constitutionality?

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HUFFPOST HILL – Congress To Disclose ALL Its Illegitimate Children Tomorrow

The media prepared to pour all its resources into coverage of tomorrow’s healthcare ruling or, as we’re calling it, “news dump-palooza.” A New Hampshire lawmaker is convinced that kindergarten is responsible for a great deal of crime in his district, meaning people were WAY MORE upset about losing nap time than we originally thought. And members of the House Progressive Caucus are ready to introduce a single-payer healthcare bill, thrilling liberals and masochists alike. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Wednesday, June 27th, 2012:

THOUSANDS MAY LOSE ACCESS TO CRAPTASTIC PROGRAM IF JOHN BOEHNER GETS HIS WAY – House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) vowed Wednesday that Republicans would repeal whatever parts of health care reform remain standing following Thursday’s highly anticipated Supreme Court ruling — even if doing so would jeopardize insurance coverage for thousands of people. “We’ve made it pretty clear and I’ll make it clear one more time: If the court does not strike down the entire law, the House will move to repeal what’s left of it,” Boehner said. A House Republican leadership aide confirmed that Boehner would not spare the law’s fledgling high-risk pool program. The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, as it is formally known, is a Republican-inspired component of the Affordable Care Act currently insuring 67,000 Americans. A similar high-risk pool program formed a major plank of the GOP alternative to health care reform in 2009. “The White House did a truly craptastically lousy job designing their high-risk pools,” the Republican aide said. “If we do something on this topic, it would be based on our better policy solutions, like the one in the House Republican alternative during the debate in 2009. So starting with repealing everything is the best option.” [HuffPost]

INSIGHT FROM MUDCAT – “We are pussies, good God you can quote me on that,” said David “Mudcat” Saunders, the longtime Democratic consultant. “There is nothing wrong with having a fine car and a fine house and living the American dream. But the greed! Bain Capital is about greed. … It stinks morally.” [HuffPost]

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Ethan Nadelmann: Chicago to Decriminalize Marijuana

The Chicago City Council passed — by a vote of 43 to 2 — an ordinance today that will decriminalize small amounts of marijuana.
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Nora Ephron’s ‘Heartburn’: How It Changed The Conversation about Divorce

Nora Ephron’s novel “Heartburn,” a roman à clef loosely based on her discovery of husband Carl Bernstein’s affair and its aftermath, was published in 1982. That same year, the U.S. divorce rate was higher than it had ever been.

Though splits were becoming increasingly common, women were still discouraged from openly discussing their divorce experiences. “I think that men were allowed to write about their marriages falling apart, but you weren’t quite supposed to if you were a woman,” Ephron told the Academy of Achievement in 2007 about her experience writing the book. “You were just supposed to curl up into a ball and move to Connecticut.”

Ephron, of course, did no such thing. Despite Bernstein’s request to keep their personal life private, Ephron used her “Heartburn” protagonist, cookbook writer Rachel Samstadt, to expose the heartbreak — and the dark humor — of his affair and their subsequent divorce. Ephron’s willingness to write candidly about her experiences made “Heartburn” especially poignant: Intentionally or not, her book encouraged other women to share their own stories. Without her, would we have writers like Erica Jong, Candace Bushnell and Julie Powell?

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Naveen Andrews Never Watched ‘Lost’ And More TV Stars Who Didn’t Watch Their Own Shows

Former “Lost” star Naveen Andrews appeared on UK TV morning show “Daybreak” to discuss his new fantasy drama “Sinbad” this week, but the conversation soon shifted to the late ABC sci-fi drama series that left many fans scratching their heads.

“We were as confused as I was,” host Kate Garraway asked Andrews, who was fixated on the TV when they rolled a “Lost” clip. “I was very confused, just because I never saw this show,” the actor explained. “I saw the pilot … but I never saw an episode of ‘Lost.'”

If Andrews not watching his own show wasn’t surprising enough, the actor also shared that Marilyn Manson, who he played guitar for (seriously), is a “Lost” aficionado of a special variety. “When the end came, I had people like Marilyn Manson, of all people, trying to convince me that they resolved it really well, it all made sense,” Andrews said. “I mean, he’s a real fan … He has Hurley’s numbers tattooed into his arm.”

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Obama Bain Attacks On Mitt Romney Leave Swooning Democrats In Love Again

WASHINGTON — A slew of new battleground state polls released this week lend credence to the Obama campaign’s argument -– often offered to reporters in private — that attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital are a winning strategy.

While President Barack Obama maintains a small lead nationally, in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere his margins are larger. The reason offered — at least in the NBC/Wall Street Journal survey — is the negative focus on Romney’s private sector career.

For a presidential campaign that endured days of second-guessing over its decision to attack Bain Capital at the general election’s onset, the numbers are being treated as nothing short of vindication. And for those Democrats who watched as their colleagues in the Northeast Corridor openly fretted about attacks on wealth, it was a chance to wonder aloud about the party’s backbone.

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Conservatives To Mitt Romney: ‘More Vision, Please!’

WASHINGTON – The chorus of voices knocking Mitt Romney for running an “anybody but Obama” campaign and calling on him to do more continues to grow louder.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Former Bush White House policy adviser Yuval Levin. The Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan. The Weekly Standard‘s Bill Kristol. National Review‘s Ramesh Ponnuru. The New York TimesDavid Brooks. Politico’s Jonathan Martin. Slate’s John Dickerson. The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin. And Noonan again.

All of these people — either conservative supporters or nonpartisan, credible voices in the media — have said Romney is either failing to provide a compelling vision for his candidacy or failing to lay out sufficient detail to explain how he would govern if elected president.

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Uniqlo Founder: ‘If We Fail, At Least We Can Say We Were Bold’

Who says innovation is only for tech companies? Not Tadashi Yanai!

The CEO and founder of clothing company Uniqlo says innovation is absolutely key to the world’s fourth-largest clothing retailer. “We are not a fashion company,” he insists in a recent Fast Company profile by Jeff Chu. “We are a technology company.” Yana’s attitude is similar to many successful tech startups that have chosen to go big or go home when it comes to new ideas.

“The most serious flaw would be if someone doesn’t have the courage to try new things,” Yanai says of his employees. “At least if we fail, we will fail miserably. At least we can say we were bold.”

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