Hasta La Gadget!

Kylie Jenner knows how to ensure all eyes are on her at the club. 

The 18-year-old wore a sheer lace jumpsuit with matching shoes for a Sunday night out with Tyga and her family. Jenner wore her long hair in waves and added a black and gold belt to finish her look. 

Kylie, who turns 19 on Aug. 10, was as close to her birthday suit as she could get. 

She showed off the curve-hugging look in a series of Snapchats and photos with her sisters, who also joined her for the night out. Kim wore yet another T-shirt look with a corset and what appeared to be a wig, while Kendall opted for a tiny black bandeau top, a black skirt and thigh-high boots. 

Khloe, who appeared to be emceeing Kylie’s lip-kit-themed early birthday bash, unfortunately wore her hair in cornrows, a hairstyle that has sparked criticism of the Kardashians before. 

For her upcoming birthday, Jenner already got a new addition to her family ― a cute little puppy named Penny.

She also sent fans into a tizzy when she announced a special Birthday Edition Collection of Kylie Cosmetics products that will only be available until she turns 19. 

Though the announcement excited fans, it seems like Jenner isn’t too thrilled herself about another birthday. 

Just a few days ago, the 18-year-old posted a sad Instagram “I’ll be 19 in 2 weeks .”

In a 2015 interview with the Sunday Times, Kylie previously said, “I’m scared of the day I turn 19. I really don’t want to grow past 18.” 

She’s got about 10 days to soak it up! 

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Note: this column first appeared in The Hill.

It’s been a good couple of weeks for voting rights. Judicial opinions have struck down or limited strict voter ID laws in several states, showing that politicians cannot be trusted to write laws that effect our elections.

In the past two weeks, courts in Wisconsin, Texas, and North Carolina have rooted out partisan abuses by invalidating or limiting strict voter ID laws. These decisions show that politicians do a poor job of crafting election rules. Most often, the main motivation is to discriminate against members of the opposite political party, often with racial overtones as well. Indeed, North Carolina argued (unsuccessfully) that benign politics, not race, motivated its voter ID law. But why should the issue of how best to run our elections turn into partisan warfare? Why must litigants and the courts spend their resources to root out these abuses?

Politicians think they can win by rigging the election system in their favor. A Republican staffer in Wisconsin revealed that state Republicans were “giddy” when they passed a new voter ID law that they believed would help Republicans win in the state. A Pennsylvania lawmaker was quoted in 2012 saying that the state’s new voter ID law would help win the state for Governor Romney. Democrats have sued Arizona because they fear that the state’s voting rules will harm their supporters come November.

Election laws should be above politics. Whether to enact an election regulation should be about only one thing: will the law improve the democratic process for all voters? Yet the history of voter ID laws, among most significant and partisan issues infecting our elections, has always involved politics.

As I recount in a new book, Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missouri slipped a voter ID provision for first-time voters who register by mail into the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, Congress’s overall response to the 2000 presidential debacle, marking the country’s first voter ID law. His stated goal was to root out supposed fraud that had occurred during the 2000 Senate election in Missouri between Republican John Ashcroft and Democrat Mel Carnahan (who died a few weeks before the election), which Carnahan won by only a handful of votes. On Election Night, Bond appeared at a Republican rally and pounded the podium, screaming “this is an outrage!” He blamed dogs and dead people voting for Ashcroft’s loss. During the Congressional debate over HAVA, he spoke of a Springer-Spaniel named “Ritzy Mekler” who was supposedly registered to vote in St. Louis. (There is no evidence that Ritzy ever actually voted.) Yet Bond never pointed to a single instance of in-person voter impersonation, the only kind of voter fraud that an ID law can address. His impetus for the law was political: Ashcroft’s close loss in 2000.

States then took Bond’s lead, passing their own, stricter voter ID laws. But this activity occurred only once Republicans took charge of state legislative houses. In 2004, Indiana Republicans won both state houses and the Governor’s mansion for the first time since 1982, and they quickly went to work on a voter ID provision. Then-Secretary of State (and now Congressman) Todd Rokita took the mantle, as did then-Senator (and now Indiana Secretary of State) Connie Lawson. They claimed that the law would root out voter fraud, but when I pressed them in interviews years later, they still could not identify any instances of in-person voter impersonation in the state’s elections. Political gain was the underlying, if unstated, motivation.

Democrats, for their part, fought the new law vigorously, arguing that burdens of the voter ID rule would fall disproportionately on certain voters – conveniently those more likely to vote for Democratic candidates, such as minorities, poor people, and the elderly. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld Indiana’s voter ID law in 2008, but it left the door open to future legal challenges, which have continued to this day as more and more states have passed strict voter ID requirements.

And it is not just Republicans who are at fault. Democrats, too, enact rules they think will help them at the ballot box. From redistricting maps that entrench Democratic majorities in Maryland and other states to ballot access rules that make it harder for outsiders to mount successful challenges to mainstream candidates, Democrats also too readily consider partisan ramifications in adopting election laws.

The solution is to explicitly remove partisan considerations from election rules. Courts should look beyond the mere general justifications of “improving election integrity” to the true motivation for a voting law. If the actual, underlying rationale for a law is to create a partisan effect, then courts should invalidate the law as violating the fundamental right to vote – unless the law actually expands the franchise for all voters in a non-discriminatory fashion. The North Carolina court did just that, making the extraordinary finding that the Republican-led state legislature had one main purpose when enacting its restrictive voter ID law: racial discrimination, albeit as a means of achieving partisan gain.

On a broader scale, we need to remove the foxes from guarding the henhouses and take election administration away from partisan operatives. There is no reason to have an ideological, elected official as a state’s election head. Legislators should also exhibit restraint, recognizing that they do the public a disservice when they enact election rules for partisan gain. The public should vote for candidates who pledge not to use their office to entrench themselves in power.

The voter ID rulings in Wisconsin, Texas, and North Carolina were positive developments, striking down laws that state legislatures enacted for political reasons. But the courts should have said explicitly that politics is an invalid rationale for election laws. Voter ID laws began with a partisan motivation. It is time to remove that partisanship from our election rules.

Professor Joshua A. Douglas of the University of Kentucky College of Law is a leading election law expert, whose research focuses on the constitutional right to vote, election administration, and post-election disputes. His latest co-edited book, Election Law Stories, tells the behind-the-scenes stories of the Supreme Court’s major election law cases.

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In our current society, noise rules. 

We are told the more likes we have, the better life is. 

We are told influencers rule. Get to know them and you can write your own ticket.

Some of our Outlook or Google calendars are filled with back-to-back meetings. We run from one to another, being busy and “working.” 

And at the end of the day, we may feel exhausted (justifiably) and a little bit empty. 

But we keep that newsflash to ourselves. On the outside, we are seen as successful and having the life everyone should aspire to have: the job, the income, the education, the possessions, the friends, and the picket fences.

We don’t dare to share our inner most feelings, sometimes, even with ourselves. 

And that’s where we start our journey of exploring what is deep inside of us. 

Buried like a lost treasure, we dig and excavate through the cobwebs of ourselves. Nothing that anyone prepared us for when they gave us the cookie cutter templates of our lives – go to school, make friends, be popular, dress fashionably, get degrees, find a partner, get a job, buy a house, decorate it well, buy a car, go on vacation, manage a career, have children, be professional, do volunteer work, follow the trends, dress well, eat well, save for tomorrow and oh yeah, have some fun while you are at it.

There are no manuals here. There is work. No one prepares us for this chapter in life when, at any age, we are ready to explore what is in our heart. 

I have been witnessing the masks that some people around me feel they need to wear because they don’t want to appear weak. And underneath the hood, there is pain and shame they are walking around with. Some of it is very deep. You would never think they were hurting. They stay silent as they are supposed to be strong. But the cracks are starting to show and it is so important for us to acknowledge them. New conversations and mindsets can emerge to break the current molds of how life is supposed to be to encompass the new dreams that spark the imagination.

We live in a world where we are celebrating being vulnerable and authentic. And this just makes me wonder how we got here. To be human is to feel. To be human is to have faith. How do we learn if we don’t get in touch with our human vulnerability? Authenticity requires us to feel deeply and be in touch with our biggest dreams and fears. 

All of our systems are starting to crack in front of our eyes and this is an opportunity; not a crisis. New mindsets need to architect a new way forward on a planet where every living being is connected in ways we never imagined. So much is possible.

We will have more 21st century leaders in the world when more of us take a journey into ourselves before we try to fix everyone else. No one needs fixing. No one wants to be fixed. 

What we want and what we have the capacity to do is to be connected to people who care deeply about themselves, us and our planet. When was the last time you practiced this ancient technology that is making a come back? When was the last time you had an open two-way conversation where you can show up with whatever is in your heart; in life and in work? What makes you feel listened to? 

Instead of being addicted to our busyness, what would happen if each of us reached out to someone and truly listened? What is possible when we break down the armor? 

And so much is possible today with technology. We could be having so many conversations via video chats and staying connected to other people despite what the Outlook or Google calendar monsters tell us about who which meetings we need to attend.

21st century leaders are human. We understand that trust, community and relationships are the currencies that sustain life. We don’t need to talk about vulnerability or authenticity as we live the highs and lows of our humanity. 

Our world needs each of us to stop needing to be right in making our arguments and points when we have conversations. Empathy, listening and connecting deeply are our opportunities in every aspect of life.

Like you, I am on this journey. I am exploring, excavating and connecting with the most heart felt people on the planet.

I send you an open invitation to take the first step and join us in co-creating a new path where people matter and we recognize that we are in the business of people.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1996) offers us three suggestions: a brain, a heart, and courage.

1) A Brain

Dorothy: “How can you talk if you don’t have a brain?”
 Scarecrow: “I don’t know… But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking … don’t they?”

2) A heart

Dorothy: “Goodbye Tinman. Oh, don’t cry! You’ll rust so dreadfully.”
Tinman: “Now I know I’ve got a heart ’cause it’s breaking…”

3) Courage

“You have plenty of courage, I am sure,” answered Oz. “All you need is confidence in yourself. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty.”

 ― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

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Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago have created a breakthrough solar cell that can be produced cheaply and is able to efficiently create a usable hydrocarbon fuel using carbon dioxide found in the air and sunlight. The new solar cell literally creates usable fuel from thin air and light. The scientists have reported their findings in the July … Continue reading

If you need a massive SSD for storing data in a business of some sort, Samsung in now shipping the PM1633a SSD with a whopping 15.36TB of storage space inside. The SSD began shipping to select customers back in March and Samsung now has the drive available at select retailers. As you can imagine, an SSD with such massive storage … Continue reading