Did Bazillionaire Bruce Rauner Bully A Reporter Out Of His Job? Yes. Yes, He Did.

• Bruce Rauner, the Republican candidate for Illinois governor, is just a regular guy with a van.Oh, and a $100,000 wine club membership . And some Cayman Islands cash. And a charming disposition , by which we mean he allegedly said of a former employee who was suing him that he'd bury her, and hurt her and her family, and make her "radioactive." Nice guy! (That is sarcasm.) And also, it seems, he is a first-rate bully. And we don't mean the kind who steals your lunch money. The now-former Chicago Sun-Times reporter David McKinney posted his resignation letter online, in which he describes the consequences he faced after reporting on the lawsuit we just mentioned. The one over which Rauner allegedly made those nice-guy threats. It's pretty un-freaking-believable:

  Prior to publication, the Rauner campaign used multiple tactics to block it, including having campaign staffers vowing to “go over” our heads. We are accustomed to such tactics.

  But what does not come with the territory is a campaign sending to my boss an opposition-research hit piece–rife with errors–about my wife, Ann Liston. The campaign falsely claimed she was working with a PAC to defeat Rauner and demanded a disclaimer be attached to our story that would have been untrue. It was a last-ditch act of intimidation.

  If that seems like an extreme measure to take just to avoid some bad press, you're right! It is! But it got much more extreme:

  I was told to go on leave, a kind of house arrest that lasted almost a week. It was pure hell. Kirk told me that his bosses were considering taking me away permanently from the political and Springfield beats. He offered up other potential jobs at the paper, all of which I considered demotions. Because of my unexplained absence from my beat, colleagues started calling, asking if I had been suspended. Or fired.

  It gets more extreme than that. You should go read the whole letter. And hope that scumbag piece of scum Bruce Rauner is not elected in November.

• You wanna look at pictures ofPlayboyPlaymates? Of course you do! But you have to read the article too:

  There is a lot of talk of ever-more-microgenerational differences these days, but if you want to get down to the brass tacks of it, the American population can more or less be divided into two groups: those who snuck their first illicit looks at flesh-for-the-ogling in print, and those of us who had the bawdy cornucopia of the internet for such endeavors. (Attention, porn profiteers: bawdycornucopia.com is not yet registered.) Playmates, in retrospect, seem awfully innocent.

• Unless you have a rare blood type, you probably haven't given much thought to what that means for your entire way of life:  

  Over tea, he described the impact of his blood on his life. As a child he couldn’t go to summer camp because his parents feared he might have an accident. As an adult he takes reasonable precautions: he drives carefully and doesn’t travel to countries without modern hospitals. He keeps a card from the French National Immunohematology Reference Laboratory in Paris, confirming his Rhnull blood type, in his wallet in case he is ever hospitalised. But one thing that is in his blood – and that of almost everyone growing up in the shadow of the Alps – is skiing. Abstaining seems to have been an option he never even considered.

• Per our pal over at Happy Nice Time People, TLC, which we olds used to know as The Learning Channel, when it was supposed to teach you stuff, has officially become The Jesus Channel:  

  Your prayers have been answered! TLC is adding more ultra-evangelical programming to its schedule with a reality show about people who prayed for stuff and actually got it, because our Heavenly Father is kind of like a slot machine. Hosted byThat Angel Touched Me in My Swimsuit Areastar Roma Downey, the series will feature stories about all those times the Big Guy really did answer knee-mail.

• Is George Will the worst or The Worst or THE WORST? The answer is all of the above :

  Barack Obama lost Kentucky in 2012 by 23 points, yet the state remains closely divided about reelecting the man whose parliamentary skills uniquely qualify him to restrain Obama’s executive overreach. So Kentucky’s Senate contest is a constitutional moment that will determine whether the separation of powers will be reasserted by a Congress revitalized by restoration of the Senate’s dignity.

  And that's just his opening paragraph. Please invent all the most clever insults for this latest piece of oh-so-droll drivel in the comments.