Media

A very IMC-ish space, with some interesting ideas...

by Alan Feuer

The D.I.Y. arts scene — that illicit and usually itinerant cultural milieu — may have found a legal, if not a permanent, home for this summer in New York. It is called the Silent Barn, and it could be thought of as Brooklyn’s First Church of the Perpetual House Party.

Last weekend, in its renovated warehouse in Bushwick, the Boston band Speedy Ortiz was playing on the kitchen floor while some of the residents were jamming upstairs in a second space known, with ironic misdirection, as the Champagne Room. A barber in a porkpie hat was giving trims in his improvised salon beneath the public record store at the site. In the courtyard, partygoers drank cheap beer beside a vegetable garden and the Canned Ham, a ‘70s mobile home that serves as a small bed-and-breakfast for out-of-town musicians passing through New York.

New revelations about lengths taken by White House to guard secrets troubles First Amendment advocates

New revelations about the manner in which President Obama's Department of Justice has pursued journalists thought to have garnered government secrets is being called not just a "war on whistleblowers," but an assault on "investigative journalism itself."

Last week, uproar followed the Associated Press announcement that the DOJ had sought two months of phone records in order to establish the identity of the government official who may have leaked sensitive information to the news agency.

by Kevin Gosztola

During a press briefing on Tuesday, White House spokesperson Jay Carney mechanically repeated a line when asked about the Justice Department’s seizure of the Associated Press’ phone records, suggesting President Barack Obama supports a “balance” between freedom of the press and national security.
 

“The president feels strongly that we need a—the press to be able to be unfettered in its pursuit of investigative journalism, and you saw, when he was a senator, the president co-sponsor legislation that would have provided further protections for journalists in this regard,” Carney said. “And he is also mindful of the need for secret and classified information to remain secret and classified in order to protect our national security interests. So there are — there is a careful balance here that must be attained.”

The editorial board of the News-Gazette felt compelled to issue an editorial in the May 14 edition blasting a medical marijuana law that, after more than 3 decades, will finally let Illinois citizens have legal access to cannabis.

Make not mistake about it. Just about any patient in Illinois who needs cannabis can get it now. Except for the News-Gazette's editorial board and State's Attorney Julia Rietz, most other citizens of Illinois are not so dorky they can't find a dealer if in need. The ONLY thing the new law does is allow them _legal_ access. It does create a government-regulated monopoly system that requires those participating to give up some fundamental human rights. The state apparently feels it can't compete with the black market, so imposes its use on anyone who participates, as well as a number of ridiculous restrictions.

by Will Bunch

Attytood spoiler: That day was May 7, 2012...but first a quick history lesson.

Sigh...I know, I know, I write too much about the late 1960s and early 1970s, but this time it's really important. Because today that is the rallying cry for any presidential scandal, that this one is "worse than Watergate." But the Watergate break-in happened 41 years ago, which means that more than half of all Americans weren't even born yet, so you can't blame a lot of voters if they don't know much about what Watergate and the related scandals of Richard Milhous Nixon were all about.

by Doug Fine, National Cannabis Coalition

Stigma, the final front in the Drug War, was on my mind as I addressed my colleagues at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Southwest Regional Conference in Santa Fe on a recent brisk spring afternoon. I assumed, since 80% of Americans want the Drug War to end, that I was of like mind with the news anchors, radio hosts and newspaper editors who had traveled to the conference from Wyoming to the Mexican Border. After all, everywhere I go to speak, young and old, left and right, and men and women alike seem to nearly universally recognize that the United States’ longest and most expensive war soon will finally end on the federal level.