Aaron Hernandez is due in court today where he is likely to be indicted by a grand jury.
Alex Rodriguez told his lawyers to stop talking to the press and says he will no longer talk about non-baseball related news. Good decision.
Jason Heyward was hit in the jaw and will miss 4-6 weeks. The Braves beat the Mets 4-1.
Ichiro got his 4,000th career hit between the Japanese League and MLB.
Former Vanderbilt football players all plead not guilty to rape charges.
EA Sports paid schools for royalties based on their AP ranking.
St. Louis Rams backup RB Terrance Ganaway gave up his NFL career to pursue his education.
Grateful for the opportunity and honored to play a game that I love on every level!! What an experience!! Wish my mom was here!!
— Terrance Ganaway (@TerranceGanaway) August 21, 2013
Speaking of running backs ditching the norm, Cardinals RB Rashard Mendenhall doesn't exactly fit the bill as a prototypical NFL player.
"I'm really into literature and reading, just that peaceful time, quiet time away from things," Mendenhall said, "whether I'm writing or reading a story, learning something, kind of growing in that way."
After a standout career at Illinois, Mendenhall was selected by the Steelers in the first round of the 2008 draft, the 23rd selection overall. Arians was Pittsburgh's offensive coordinator and over the next few seasons, the two hit it off. "
Once you got to know him, you knew he was a thinking man, that he had ideas and wasn't afraid to show them, or share them," Arians said. "That's one of the things I liked about him."
Rex Ryan praised Geno Smith's "great" practice. Progress!
Chiefs WR Dwayne Bowe has a refreshed outlook on life.
Tarell Brown is still trying to recoup that $2 million he lost out on by skipping voluntary workouts.
Chris Paul was named president of the NBPA.
Ray Felton discusses how he thinks former teammate Jason Kidd will do as a coach.
Maria Sharapova withdrew from the US Open citing shoulder injury.
FLASHING LIGHTS
Janelle Monae discusses her ideal man.
Katt Williams gave $1,000 to a fan for a kidney transplant.
Kanye West is getting sued for his altercation with a photographer at LAX.
Raekwon says Kendrick Lamar knows he's not the King of New York. K. Dot's album, GKMC, went platinum yesterday.
Check out video of Tyler, the Creator and Hodgy Beats making "Jamba," which appeared on Tyler's Wolf, from scratch.
Jhene Aiko released an extension of "Comfort Inn Ending."
DID YOU REALIZE?
The Navy is doing more to deter sexual abuse by making training for sexual abuse prevention a part of the daily routine.
The Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow them to search cell phones without a warrant. Cell phone companies are largely staying silent on their role in the spying.
“The telecommunications companies are ordered to comply with this,” a senior U.S. intelligence official told reporters on a conference call Wednesday. “That’s their role in this. As in a wide variety of other contexts, they get served with an order and they comply with the court’s order.” The official declined to either confirm or deny whether any of the telecommunications companies had ever objected to participating in the program.
Bradley Manning received 35 years in prison for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, with an option for parole after seven years.
UPS will end healthcare benefits for the spouses of around 15,000 employees citing "money, money, money, moooonneeeeeey." #cantgetenough
Here are the 30 richest members of Congress.
Congressman Chris Van Hollen is suing the IRS in order to mitigate the damage done by the Citizens United ruling which allowed so much dark money to enter politics in the 2012 election.
The root of the problem,” Van Hollen explained, “is that the IRS is currently in the business of trying to determine whether the primary purpose of an organization seeking 501(c)(4) status is social welfare or whether their primary purpose is political.” But the challenge boils down to a dispute over whether the IRS twisted an ancient federal law limiting tax-exempt groups from engaging in political activity.
In 1913, Congress passed the so-called Revenue Act, which first granted special tax benefits to a new class of nonprofit organizations. Congress defined such groups narrowly, noting they should be “operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.” But more than 50 years ago, “that plain meaning somehow got tortured,” Van Hollen says, by an IRS decision to allow those groups to engage in political activity as long as it wasn’t their “primary purpose.” Primary has never been officially defined; in practice, it’s often interpreted to mean 501(c)(4) groups are allowed to spend up to 49% of their time influencing elections.
It falls to the IRS to scrutinize these groups to determine where to draw the line. After the Citizens United ruling, the scope of that task ballooned as groups rushed to take advantage of the Justices’ ruling that extended new free-speech protections to corporations. Drowning in paperwork, the organization erred, adopting a system that filtered for specific keywords — terms like tea party and patriot — as a kind of shortcut. ”The IRS was never intended to be in that business,” Van Hollen says.
EVERYTHING I AM
President Obama will give a speech on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial next week.
Mr. Favreau said that his successors in the speechwriting office are sure to have reread Mr. King’s speech as preparation for Mr. Obama’s remarks next week. He said the president would typically go back and read the speech again, too.
They are words that Mr. Obama already knows well, Mr. Favreau said. In his 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama borrowed from Dr. King’s speech to help convey his impatience with the slow pace of change. He often paraphrased Dr. King’s comment that “we have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.”
While declining to preview the president’s remarks ahead of next week’s event, Mr. Obama’s aides made one thing clear.
“Spoiler alert,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “It will be good, but it won’t be the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”
GOTTA HAVE IT
Chris Webby and CyHi the Prynce spit over an MIA sample.
