Friday, February 24, 2017

TV tonight: Mama June is back � ready or not!


What Do Mama June, Chris Pratt and Khloe Kardashian Have In Common? | TMZ
WATCH THIS:

Grimm (8 p.m., NBC): As the final season of the creep show continues, deadly attacks against scientists lead Nick, Hank and Wu on an investigation unlike no other. Meanwhile, as the research continues into the origins of the cloth, Monroe and Rosalee learn that Eve is feeling the effects of the death grip.

Shark Tank (9 p.m., ABC): Its a milestone episode for this reality series. One of the millennial entrepreneurs featured tonight will make the deal that takes Shark Tank across the $100 million threshold of deals made in the Tank since the series began in 2009. Immediately following the episode, 20/20 will take a closer look at the success of Shark Tank, highlighting the greatest hits, biggest misses and best behind-the-scenes moments.

Dateline NBC (10 p.m., NBC): In her first-ever TV interview, recently exonerated Michelle Hadley tells speaks about being falsely accused of attempted forcible rape of Angela Diaz. Hadley spent three months in jail last year, accused of stalking Diaz online and responding to rape fantasy ads under Angelas name. Hadley was exonerated in January, after Diaz was charged with multiple felony counts and accused of framing Hadley. Angela has pleaded not guilty. Hadley was previously engaged to Ian Diaz, Angelas husband.

Mama June: From Not to Hot (10 p.m., WE tv): This new reality series followsMama June as she embarks on a quest of self-discovery that will redefine who she is as a woman, mother, lover and celebrity. throughout the transformative journey mama June will find much needed support and a little tough love from daughters, Alana Honey Boo Boo Shannon and Lauryn Pumpkin Shannon, as well as other close family and friends. Season one intimately documents Mama Junes entire journey, from the moment she learns that her Ex (Sugar Bear) is getting hitched, right up to her shocking reveal in front of the universe. During this extraordinary process, she will undergo not only a series of extensive plastic surgeries, but also intensive workouts with an unlikely trainer, Kenya Crooks, who forces her to change her entire way of thinking.

STREAM THIS:

Patriot (Amazon Prime): This darkly comedic new series follows the complicated life of intelligence officer John Tavner (Michael Dorman). His latest assignment is to prevent Iran from going nuclear, requiring him to forgo all safety nets and assume a perilous non-official coverthat of a mid-level employee at a Midwestern industrial piping firm. A bout with PTSD, the Federal governments incompetence and the intricacies of keeping a day job in the front industrial piping company cause a barrage of ever-escalating fiascos that jeopardize Tavners mission. The cast also includes Terry O Quinn, Kurtwood Smith and Michael Chenus.

Ultimate Beastmaster (Netflix): Thisinternational competition series claims to be the first of its kind with six customized local versions featuring local languages, competitors and hosts from each competing country Brazil, Germany, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and the U.S. Each hourlong episode will feature 12 competitors, two from each country, who will take their shot at running one of the most physically demanding obstacle courses ever devised.

Also on Friday:

Rosewood (8 p.m., Fox)

MacGyver (8 p.m., CBS)

Last Man Standing (8 p.m., ABC)

The Vampire Diaries (8 p.m., The CW)

Washington Week (8 p.m., PBS)

Bring It! (8 p.m., Lifetime)

Charlie Rose: The Week (8:30 p.m., PBS)

Hawaii Five-0 (9 p.m., CBS)

Sleepy Hollow (9 p.m., Fox)

Emerald City (9 p.m., NBC)

Reign (9 p.m., The CW)

Gold Rush (9 p.m., Discovery)

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (9 p.m., Food Network)

Blue Bloods (10 p.m., CBS)

20/20 (10 p.m., ABC)

Real Time With Bill Maher (10 p.m., HBO)

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/24/tv-tonight-mama-june-is-back-ready-or-not/

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Predicting The Future: With "HNDRXX," Mixtape Culture Infiltrates The Music Industry


Future - Use Me (HNDRXX ALBUM)

The cover art of Future"s HNDRXX, released just one week after his chart-topping self-titled album. Courtesy of the artist hide caption

toggle caption Courtesy of the artist

The industry has finally seen the light... at least, that"s one way to interpret Future"s second major-label release in the span of two weeks.

That second album, HNDRXX, is the "album I always wanted to make," he wrote in an Instagram post and, as its famous features including Rihanna and The Weeknd seem to show, is said to be more radio-ready than last week"s FUTURE. And get this: There are already unconfirmed reports that the Atlanta rapper and his label Epic will follow up this second release with a third album.

While this windfall means plenty of new Future for fans to digest, it also begs a question: What does this disruption to old release strategies suggest about the present and future of the industry?

After years of pushback, the suits in the c-suites may be ready to take their lead from the streets by flooding the market with product. Multiple releases within short windows traditionally viewed skeptically by an industry which saw them as potentially devaluing and shortening a given album"s lifespan have always been embraced in hip-hop"s mixtape culture. Toronto rapper Tory Lanez kicked off 2017 by releasing two mixtapes on New Year"s Day, repeating the same trick from one year prior. The notoriously prolific and independent-labeled Lil B has released more than 50 in the past decade (and only one album).

Even before the internet, the immediacy of mixtape culture has always been an inseparable part of its appeal. The digital market is essentially built on the same innovation. The industrywide shift to streaming which has almost fully supplanted the model of selling music in units, has enabled and required labels to become nimbler. But the strategy could also signal the industry"s growing desperation to command attention in a saturated market. Now that unannounced album releases have become the norm, multiple drops could be the new way to grab attention. (As the existence of this article shows, it"s clearly working to some degree.)

Hip-hop certainly isn"t new to multiple album releases but it looked a lot different 20 years ago.

In 1998, DMX became the first living rapper to release two albums in the same calendar year, both of which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. (Tupac was first in 1996, with the posthumous release of The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory nine months after double-album All Eyez On Me.) DMX garnered a $1 million bonus from his label for doubling up with the release of It"s Dark and h**l Is Hot and Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood in one year, helping to drive up the value of Def Jam and putting in the perfect position to negotiate a then-hefty $100 million buyout from Universal Music Group the following year.

Future heightened his own stock with a three-mixtape buildup to his third major-label release, DS2, in 2015 the preceding tapes were so popular that the album itself was essentially a best-of-the-three compilation. That in itself was different from classic label strategy, which typically forces artists to craft more rhythmic and radio-friendly songs for stronger commercial appeal. Epic"s L.A. Reid learned this lesson after trying that approach on Future for his sophomore album Honest, which generated disappointing first-week numbers a year prior to DS2. When Drake and Future collaborated to release What A Time To Be Alive later in 2015, it was planned as a mixtape. But Reid, smartly, insisted it be sold as a label release as a result, it became Future"s third to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Last week, FUTURE became the fourth.

Reid and Epic are certainly banking on HNDRXX repeating that success which would be unprecedented. If so, multiple album drops truly could become the wave of the future.

Listen to HNDRXX:

Source: http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/02/24/516874443/future-hndrxx-mixtape-culture-infiltrates-music-industry

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President Trump At CPAC: "The Era Of Empty Talk Is Over"


LIVE: Nigel Farage Talks Brexit @ CPAC 2017 - Conservative Political Action Conference LIVESTREAM

President Trump may have skipped the annual Conservative Political Action Conference last year, but this year he was the annual gathering"s hero who had finally returned the White House to Republicans.

Trump"s stem-winder of just under an hour that he delivered to the adoring crowd Friday morning felt more like a campaign speech than a presidential address, reliving many of his greatest hits and applause lines on the campaign trail even down to the crowd breaking out in chants of "lock her up" about his vanquished rival, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The president boasted to attendees that "the era of empty talk is over" as he began to tick off each of his campaign promises.

"We"re going to repeal and replace Obamacare," he promised, despite the fact that Republicans have not yet settled on an alternative plan.

"We"re going to build a wall. Don"t worry about it," Trump crowed to the crowd, saying the plans were "way ahead of schedule."

"As we speak today, immigration officers are finding gang members, drug dealers & criminal aliens and throwing them the h**l out," the president said. The comments follow memos earlier this week from the Department of Homeland Security on how it will be enforcing executive orders on immigration and border security.

Attendees loved Trump"s strongman approach as he promised to rebuild the military and take on terrorism.

"As part of my pledge to restore safety for the American people, I have also directed the defense community to develop a plan to totally obliterate ISIS," he said to cheers. "Working with our allies, we will eradicate this evil from the face of the Earth."

And of course he threw plenty of jabs at his favorite punching bag the media.

Trump claimed that the "dishonest media" would say he didn"t receive a standing ovation because everyone was standing in the room and never sat down.

And then he doubled down on his tweet a week ago calling the media the "enemy of the people."

Trump claimed his comments had been misrepresented because he didn"t call all media the enemy just the "fake news," though he cited mainstream news sources that do not print fake news stories, such as CNN, NBC News, CBS News and others.

And he took aim at the use of anonymous or unnamed background sources in the media even though a "senior administration official" had just briefed reporters Friday morning.

"I"m against the people that make up stories and make up sources," Trump said. "They shouldn"t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody"s name. Let their name be put out there. Let their name be put out."

With his usual bombast, the president boasted that "nobody loves [the 1st Amendment] better than me. Nobody." But then he went on to issue an ominous warning: "So just in finishing, I say [the fake news] doesn"t represent the people, it ... never will represent the people, and we"re going to do something about it because we have to go out and have to speak our minds and we have to be honest. Our victory was a win like nobody has ever seen before."

Overall, the love was palpable from both sides as Trump addressed a capacity CPAC crowd.

"I love this place. Love you people," the president said as he took the stage. "I wouldn"t miss a chance to talk to my friends. These are my friends."

That wasn"t always the case. A year ago he wasn"t most attendees" first choice at the gathering, which is typically more libertarian-leaning and hews more closely to conservative orthodoxy than the Trump brand of populism he campaigned on. Trump ultimately did not attend.

A rising "Never Trump" movement was forming at that time in the campaign, but Trump said Friday that the reason he skipped out was that he "was worried that I would be, at that time, too controversial" given his desire for border security and a "very, very strong military."

Trump acknowledged that it was this very conference that may well have launched his electoral career six years ago when he made a last-minute appearance at CPAC in 2011. The way the president told it, that"s where he caught the political bug, loving the people there and the "commotion."

"But it gave me an idea. And I got a little bit concerned when I saw what was happening in the country. And I said, "Let"s go to it," " Trump said. "So, it was very exciting. I walked the stage on cpac. i"ll never forget it, really. I had very little notes and even less preparation. So when you have practically no notes and no preparation and then you leave and everybody was thrilled, I said, "I think I like this business." "

Now, as White House counselor Kellyanne Conway joked during her remarks Thursday morning, the conference is beginning to feel like "TPAC" in honor of Trump.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2017/02/24/517009754/watch-live-president-trump-addresses-cpac

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Legal scholarship highlight: The Supreme Court, the media and public opinion


MOM REACTS TO ME SPENDING "$500" ON A SUPREME JACKET

Katerina Linos is a professor at UC Berkeley Law School. Kimberly Twist is an assistant professor of political science at San Diego State University.

Does the Supreme Court, the most trusted branch of the federal government, influence ordinary Americans opinions? When the Supreme Court upholds same-s*x marriage, Obamacare or controversial immigration restrictions, does it increase public support for these policies? The answers to these questions are vitally important, because they shape the legitimacy of the court and the likelihood that court decisions will meet political resistance.

If Americans take cues from Supreme Court rulings when forming or updating their opinions on policy, this would suggest that initially unpopular policies may gain widespread public acceptance if they come before the court and are upheld. Exerting this kind of influence would enable the court to function as a Republican schoolmaster and as a vehicle for social change, as scholars from Robert Dahl in 1957 to Nate Persily in 2013 have suggested. Court decisions are less likely to be resisted by bureaucrats and politicians if those decisions are supported by a majority of the American public. Legal scholars have argued that this in turn could allow for greater judicial independence and for an effective system of checks and balances in American politics.

If Americans do not respond to court rulings, however, each of these possibilities is, at best, a hollow hope. And indeed, many believe that the court is both counter-majoritarian because unelected justices review the actions of popularly elected politicians and unresponsive to shifts in public opinion.

Existing scholarship on whether the Supreme Court can actually affect public opinion is extensive, but divided. Our study overcomes measurement issues that prior work faced: The biggest problem has been a lack of survey data from just before and after court rulings. Researchers have, in the past, needed to rely on data collected months or years on either side of court decisions. This has made causal claims difficult, if not impossible, as changes in opinion could be due to court rulings or to dozens of other intervening events.

Substantively, the work on the court and public opinion has overlooked a major actor: the media. How newspapers, television programs and Internet sources translate and disseminate court decisions is a critical question. Unlike the president or members of Congress, Supreme Court justices do not hire publicists to reduce their opinions to soundbites, nor do they buy advertisements to spread messages widely. Instead, Supreme Court justices write long and technical opinions, which then must be interpreted and distilled for public consumption by the media. Indeed, research on the Supreme Court has called the media, and, in particular, television, the most critical conduit by which the American public learns about the courts actions.

In a recent article published in the Journal of Legal Studies, we conducted studies of public opinion before and after two major 2012 supreme court rulings: national federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius and Arizona v. United States. In the first ruling, the court upheld the most controversial Obamacare provision the individual mandate while striking down other parts of the law, such as Medicare expansion. In the second ruling, the court upheld the most controversial provision of Arizonas restrictive immigration law the show-your-papers provision while striking down other important provisions. We surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,000 respondents in May 2012, right before the decisions were released, and re-interviewed these respondents in the days following the June 2012 court rulings. We asked all respondents about their level of support for or opposition to the relevant provision for that study: For health care, we asked whether federal legislation should require all Americans to purchase health insurance, and for immigration, whether state laws should require police to investigate a persons immigration status during a traffic stop (given reasonable suspicion that person was in the United States unlawfully).

Before asking for the respondents opinions during the second survey in June, we randomly assigned respondents to receive either no further information about the ruling, or one of three experimental treatment messages: 1) that the court had upheld the individual mandate (or the show-your-papers provision); 2) the first message, plus an argument from the courts majority opinion; or 3) the second message, plus an argument from the courts health-care dissent or immigration concurrence.

In addition, to evaluate the effects of real-world media exposure, student coders classified the evening news transcripts from six networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC) on the days of the health care and immigration rulings. We identified commonly-used frames in these transcripts, such as reporters discussing the individual mandate as a tax or talking about the potential for racial profiling in Arizona, and, based on the coders reports, tagged each as either positive (supportive of the court ruling), negative (critical of the court ruling), or neutral. Using a survey question about news attentiveness and the television news programs watched by respondents, paired with our content analysis of the evening news programs, we then categorized respondents based on the messages they received from our study and from their real-world news sources no news, uncritical coverage of the court ruling, or critical coverage of the court ruling.

Through the combination of experimental data and content analysis of television news, we were able not only to explore how the media cover court rulings, but also to analyze the effects that media outlets translations of court decisions have on public opinion. First, we found that journalists are unusually deferential to the Supreme Court. Whereas two-sided coverage of executive and legislative decisions is fundamental to journalistic ethics, one-sided coverage of court decisions is surprisingly common. Journalists often present only the frame chosen by the court majority, and ignore the frame chosen by dissenting justices.

Even partisan networks, such as Fox News and MSNBC, did not choose to devote all of their time to criticisms of court decisions with which they vehemently disagreed (such as MSNBC on the show-your-papers provision and Fox News on the individual mandate). Instead, we saw reporting based on the court majoritys opinion mixed with criticisms of the decision. Fox News and MSNBC opted for more heavily one-sided coverage when they agreed with the courts decision. The other four networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN) consistently presented the courts ruling alongside mostly positive arguments from politicians.

Second, we found that ordinary Americans will only change their minds when they are exposed to one-sided coverage of court decisions. We found large and significant shifts both when viewers received one-sided messages from the news programs they typically watch, and when we randomly exposed a representative sample of Americans to a one-sided message. This finding suggests that a court decision upholding a particular policy can increase the level of public support for that policy. The one exception to this finding concerned Latino respondents, who consistently showed lower levels of support for the show-your-papers provision after the court ruling.

Two-sided coverage, which discussed both the frame used by the court majority and that used by the dissent (or, in the case of the immigration ruling, the concurrence), reduced the impact of the court decision on opinion change. After hearing a mix of positive and critical coverage, these respondents were likely to keep their original views of the individual mandate and the show-your-papers provision.

We found that the Supreme Court can shift Americans views and did in fact significantly increase the popularity of the individual mandate. This effect, however, is driven by one-sided media coverage by a choice media outlets often make to treat Supreme Court decisions with far more deference than they treat presidential and congressional choices. Given sufficient media coverage for a particular court case, this choice on the part of the media means the court does have the ability to lead public opinion.

Posted in Academic Round-up, Featured

Recommended Citation: Katerina Linos and Kimberly Twist, Legal scholarship highlight: The Supreme Court, the media and public opinion, SCOTUSblog (Feb. 24, 2017, 10:19 AM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/02/legal-scholarship-highlight-supreme-court-media-public-opinion/

Source: http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/02/legal-scholarship-highlight-supreme-court-media-public-opinion/

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Chicago homicide victim identified as second transgender woman ...


I"M TRANSGENDER?

Chicago"s LGBTcommunity and its allies are mourning the loss of a recent homicide victim who they say identified as a transgender woman.

known to friends and family as Tiara Richmond or Keke Collier, the 24-year-old was shot and killed Tuesday about 6:15 a.m. while sitting in a car with a man in Englewood. The gunman fled from the 7300 block of South May Street in a red vehicle, police said.

An autopsy determined Richmond, of the 6800 block of South Normal Boulevard in Englewood, died of multiple gunshot wounds, according to the Cook County medical examiner"s office.

"She loved to dance all the time," said Retta Collins, 26, a good friend of Richmond who knew her for nearly a decade. "She was always the life of the party. Even when we got into fights, she didn"t want to fight."

LaSaia Wade, a transgender rights activist, said she met with Richmond"s family and attended a candlelight vigil with them Wednesday night in Englewood.

Richmond"s family, which includes two sisters and a brother, accepted her for who she was, Wade said. Her family could not be reached Wednesdaynight.

"It was beautiful," Wade, 29, said of the vigil. "They partied, they laughed, they cried trying to remember and hold on to the memories of Keke and knowing that she was loved."

Richmond"s slaying marks the second killing of a transgender woman in Chicagoin six months.

On Sept. 11, T.T. Saffore, 28, was found with her throat slit lying near railroad tracks in the 4500 block of West Monroe Street in West Garfield Park.

Two rallies in the city are planned that will honor Richmond and respond to Trump"s recent rollback of federal protections enacted by the Obama administration for transgender students using bathrooms in public schools.

"It"s a political mess," said Wade, a black transgender woman who runs a nonprofit that helps other gender nonconforming people. "(Trump) pretty much said he is not protecting trans students anymore and also with these last two deaths of Keke and T.T., we need to reunite the transgender and gender nonconforming community now more than ever."

In an earlier Tribune story, police and the medical examiner"soffice identified Richmond with the first name Donnell.

echerney@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ElyssaCherney

Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct--tiara-richmond-transgender-woman-killed20170223-story.html

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Patch Weekend Movie Guide: "Get Out," "Collide" and "My Life As A Zucchini"


Collide - Movie Review

Here"s what you need to know about this weekend"s new movies "Get Out," "Collide," "My Life as a Zucchini" and more. Find out what to see and what to skip, plus check out the trailers.

Opening This Weekend

"Get Out" Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, directed by Jordan Peele

Director Jordan Peele steps behind the camera for the first time, and within his favorite genre: horror. When interracial couple Chris (Kaluuya) and Rose (Williams) embark on a weekend of meet-and-greet with her parents, foreboding vibes turn the trip into a truly horrifying premise. For once, the villains of a racially charged horror film aren"t rural southerners but rather self-congratulatory intellectuals in this intensely thoughtful and gory ride.

See it: Like the best of the genre, biting satire of our world underscores thrills and chills.

"Collide" Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Anthony Hopkins, directed by Eran Creevy

To save his girlfriend"s life, Casey (Hoult) must acquiesce to drug runners" demands and embark on a high-speed escape across the Autobahn highway. "Collide" has been stuck in release limbo after the collapse of Relativity Media, and its years on the shelf don"t seem to have done the film any favors. But it does boast the always epic Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley.

Skip it: This looks like a reproduction of better, cheeky, action-genre fare already out there.

Quick Cuts

"My Life as a Zucchini" (Limited Release) Will Forte, Nick Offerman, Ellen Page, directed by Claude Barras

See it: A talented American voice cast fronts a French director"s stop-motion animation about a set of orphans navigating early life. It"s up for Best Animated Film this weekend, and its crushingly sweet sensibility accompanies a dark comic streak, so consider this PG-13 film only for mature young"uns.

"The Girl With All the Gifts" (Limited Release) Glenn Close, Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, directed by Colm McCarthy

Skip it: A high concept "zombie drama," "Gifts" is set in the future at a rural England military base where a group of children is battling a cannibalism-inducing plague. That"s a h**l of an elevator pitch. I won"t seek this one out, but I will watch at home the zombie genre could use some fresh brain um... ideas.

Netflix Picks

"Quiz Show" (1994) Robert Redford directed this "90s classic about true-to-life game show corruption during the 1950s. It"s full of great performances (particularly John Turturro and Ralph Fiennes) and becomes something greater than historiography. A little slow, but worth it.

"Man On Wire" (2008) A spellbinding story that falls under the category of "truth is stranger than fiction," this documentary follows French acrobat Philippe Petit and his illegal high-wire act between the World Trade Center"s twin towers. The retelling of the crew"s plan to set up safe passage for Petit under the cover of night is as suspenseful as the high-wire act itself.

Watch the trailer for "Get Out"

Watch the trailer for "Collide"

Watch the trailer for "My Life as a Zucchini"

Photo credit: FilmTrailerZone via YouTube

Get free real-time news alerts from the New York City Patch.

Source: http://patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/patch-weekend-movie-guide-get-out-collide-my-life-zucchini

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Teen Mom 2"s Kailyn Lowry Is Pregnant Again


Kailyn Lowry texting another guy while face-timing husband Javi Marroqin and try"s to hide it fast.

UPDATE: In a blog post shared on her personal website, Kailyn Lowryconfirmed she is in fact pregnant.

"Having another child is something I am so happy about and I just can"t wait," she wrote to her readers. "My boys are so excited, those who love me are so excited, and I hope that everyone can just be happy for me during this time."

Kailyn Lowry is about to experience motherhood again.

The 24-year-oldTeen Mom 2star, who rose to fame as one of the stars of16 and Pregnant, is expecting, a source confirms to E! News. lowry is already mom to 7-year-old sonIsaac Elliot Riveraand 3-year-old sonLincoln Marshall Marroquin.

While the reality star has not yet publicly confirmed the personal news, fans have been speculating about Lowry"s pregnancy on social media in recent weeks. Though the baby"s father is currently unknown, the star recently finalized her divorce from her exJavi Marroquin, who is the father of her younger son. The two quietly married in 2012 and confirmed their separation in 2016. Before Marroquin, she dated Jo Rivera, who is the father of Isaac.

Lowry suffered a miscarriage in 2015 and the aftermath of the tragedy was chronicled on television."I like to think that everything kind of happened for a reason," she previously told People. "I"m not really sure what the reason was yet for that, but I"m just constantly reminding myself that there was a reason why this happened."

In addition to her pregnancy, Lowry is also celebrating her upcoming college graduation.

"Just ordered my cap & gown," the proud student tweeted Wednesday.

Source: http://www.eonline.com/news/831498/teen-mom-2-s-kailyn-lowry-is-pregnant-again

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