Hasta La Gadget!

Upset at what her office called the “final straw” by Republicans refusing to proceed on her plan to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) responded Tuesday by calling a special session to force lawmakers to advance the issue.

Brewer’s move followed an announcement by top Republicans that they would delay further debate on budget plans including Brewer’s Medicaid expansion proposal. Earlier in the week, a panel in the state House controlled by conservative Republicans rejected her plan outright.

With Arizona law requiring the state to have a budget in place by July 1, Brewer was apparently running out of patience. Her spokesman, Matthew Benson, told reporters that Republicans’ latest move to extend the already months-long skirmish over the Medicaid provision had forced Brewer’s hand.

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While her sister updates us quite regularly with generous skin shots, Nicky Hilton has been rather reserved in recent years. So you can imagine our surprise, and delight, to see her flaunting her never-ending legs in New York City.

The 29-year-old heiress looked absolutely stunning in a printed, three-quarter sleeve mini dress, red ballet flats and those mandatory giant celebrity sunglasses.

Nicky, always the fashionista, recently contributed her designs to Vans as part of the brand’s 4th annual nationwide art contest. By adorning a pair of sneakers with kittens, Hilton supported the contest’s intention of drawing attention to the importance of art as an integral part of school.

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Magnets are pretty basic – some poles attract, some repel, and you can use them to hold stuff up on your fridge. However, what happens when magnets can be “programmed” to react in different ways? Huntsville, Ala.-based Correlated Magnetics Research has some magnets that can do some amazing – and slightly spooky – things.

These magnets can “hold together” while still not touching, release from each other with a twist, and even act as a sort of magnetic motor. In one cool demo Stephen Straus, VP of CMR, shows us magnets that repel each other from a certain distance and then, when pushed close enough, snap together. Before you run away screaming “perpetual motion machine,” understand that the laws of physics still apply.

CMR essentially programs the magnets as they’re built and the company creates magnetic solutions for companies around the world who need to control torque and movement but want to maintain an “air gap” between metals. Fortunately, they have a web store so we can try these things at home and attempt to build wild, non-intuitive magnetic interaction machines.

BANGOR, Maine — Lawyers for a transgender girl and an elementary school that required the fifth-grader to use a staff bathroom instead of the girls restroom clashed before Maine’s highest court Wednesday over whether her rights were violated, a case that lays bare the difficult decisions facing school administrators.

The family and the Maine Human Rights Commission sued, but a judge in the state’s lower Superior Court ruled that the Orono school district acted within its discretion by requiring her to use a staff bathroom after there was a complaint about the student using the girls bathroom.

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Contestant Jonathan Allen took to the stage of “America’s Got Talent” last night to display some seriously operatic pipes.

Standing onstage, he revealed that his parents had kicked him out of the house on his 18th birthday for being gay. After cheers from the audience, he stunned the crowd with an incredible performance, after which his singing judge Howie Mandel offered some words of support:

“Let me just say, you seem like a good person, and you have a dream, and a talent, and your own family disowned you, but with your talent, this show has become your family, and we’d like to say ‘welcome home.’ We love you, we accept you, and we are so proud that you came here.”

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