THE DISSENTER: Toobin’s campaign against Snowden and in defense of the government’s right to protect sensitive national security secrets is incredibly hypocritical, given his past history. In journalist Michael Isikoff’s book, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story, he described how Toobin was caught “having absconded with large loads of classified and grand-jury related documents from the office of Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh” in 1991: Toobin, it turned out, had been using his tenure in Walsh’s office to secretly prepare a tell-all book about the Iran-contra case; the privileged documents, along with a meticulously kept private diary (in which the young […]
Elmore Leonard, Master Noir Naturalist, Dead @ 87
Artwork by JOE CIERDIELLO NEW YORK TIMES: Elmore Leonard, the prolific crime novelist whose louche characters, deadpan dialogue and immaculate prose style in novels like “Get Shorty,” “Freaky Deaky” and “Glitz” established him as a modern master of American genre writing, died on Tuesday at his home in Bloomfield Village, Mich. He was 87. To his admiring peers, Mr. Leonard did not merely validate the popular crime thriller; he stripped the form of its worn-out affectations, reinventing it for a new generation and elevating it to a higher literary shelf. Reviewing “Riding the Rap” for The New York Times Book […]
OPERATION ORANGE FINGERS: Seattle Cops Raid Hempfest, Hand Out Doritos With ‘How Not To Get Busted’ Instructions On Them, Win Internet
ATLANTIC WIRE: The Seattle Police Department’s plan to hand out safety flyers at this weekend’s HempFest that people would actually want seems to have worked beautifully: the free Doritos attached to each flyer were gone in 10 minutes, according to the department. Each mini-package of snacks (they brought 1,000 of them) was adorned with a series of educational tips for the largest marijuana-themed festival in the world. “Don’t drive while high,” they advise, adding, “Don’t give, sell, or shotgun weed to people under 21.” Do, they say, “listen to Dark Side of the Moon at a Reasonable Volume.” MORE […]
BEING THERE: Richard Thompson @ PFF
Richard Thompson, Philadelphia Folk Festival, last night by PETE TROSHAK The Philadelphia Folk Fest is a music institution now in its fifty-second year. The Fest is held on an idyllic patch of moonlight farmland, with a stage housed in a barn-like structure at the bottom of a steep, crowd-filled hill. The fest is a four day event complete with campgrounds and a variety of musical acts, kind of like a mini-Woodstock with less mud and no bad brown acid. Friday night at the Philadelphia Folk Festival was headlined by British guitar and songwriting legend Richard Thompson — a veteran of […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: Ty Segall, Sleeper
NPR: It’s hard to keep up with Ty Segall. The garage-rock revivalist is just 26, but has already released more than a dozen full-length albums, either under his own name or with the eight or nine (we’ve lost track) other bands with which he plays. (Sic Alps, White Fence and Epsilon are just a few of them.) Last year alone, he put out three stellar albums, then promptly kicked off 2013 by announcing in January that he’d formed yet another new band called . A lot of musicians might be ready for a break, but Segall is back again this […]
RONALD RAYGUN: Rat Fink A Boo Boo
FRESH AIR In 1964, students at the University of California, Berkeley, formed a protest movement to repeal a campus rule banning students from engaging in political activities. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover suspected the free speech movement to be evidence of a Communist plot to disrupt U.S. campuses. He “had long been concerned about alleged subversion within the education field,” journalist Seth Rosenfeld tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. So Hoover ordered his agents to look into whether the movement was subversive. When they returned and said that it wasn’t, Hoover not only continued to investigate the group but also […]
Snowden-Leaked Internal NSA Review Reveals Thousands Of Americans Were Illegally Spied On
WASHINGTON POST: The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents. Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls. The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former […]
REALITY CHECK: Your Tax Dollars At Work
This is a mosaic of some of the hundreds — maybe thousands — of protesters killed by the Egyptian military and police yesterday. Remember this picture the next time someone tries to tell you ‘they hate us for our freedom.’ UPDATE: The Egyptian Health Ministry has raised the death toll from the day’s violence that followed a crackdown on two camps housing supporters of the ousted president to 638. Ministry spokesman Mohammed Fathallah told The Associated Press on Thursday that the number of injured in the previous day’s violence also has risen to 3,994. MORE NPR: Every year, the […]
THE EARLY WORD: Hello It’s Me
Upper Darby’s Todd Rundgren plays the Philadelphia Folk Festival on Saturday. RELATED: Nazz was a psychedelic and garage rock band from the 1960s. The band was formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1967 by Todd Rundgren (lead guitar) and Carson Van Osten (bass guitar). Thom Mooney (drums, formerly of the Munchkins), and Robert “Stewkey” Antoni (vocals, keyboards) joined before their first concert, opening for The Doors in 1967. Nazz was marketed by their manager, Michael Freeman, as a teenybopper band along the lines of The Monkees. The group signed with SGC Records, releasing Nazz in October 1968. The album was […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Cyclone Ranger
NEW YORK TIMES: Gary England is the chief meteorologist at Channel 9 in Oklahoma City, a position he has held since 1972. This has made him a living legend in the state: the voice of public safety for roughly the last 2,000 tornadoes. Early in his career, he was notorious for issuing public tornado warnings before the National Weather Service did — a scandalous violation of hierarchy. He persuaded the owner of Channel 9 to invest in Doppler radar, a technology that promised to improve tornado-warning times to more than 20 minutes, from a single minute, before anyone was […]
COLBERT UNMASKED: The Real Stephen
RELATED: In a rare candid interview on “The Paul Mecurio Show,” Stephen Colbert had an extensive discussion about his career and philosophies on comedy. The most notable part about the interview, however, was an lengthy, behind-the-scenes explanation of what happened with the now-infamous Daft Punk cancellation fiasco last week. Colbert has been acquainted with the podcast’s host, comedian Paul Mecurio, for years — the two were on the writing staff of “The Daily Show” together in the dawn of the Jon Stewart era. Currently, Mecurio is the warm-up comedian for the “Colbert Report” studio audience. MORE
Timber Justinlake Bringing Sexy Back To The 215
Justin Timberlake, announced today he will expand The 20/20 Experience World Tour with a new date added in Philadelphia, PA (November 10). Tickets for the Philadelphia show will go on-sale Friday, August 23 at 10AM local time and will be available at ComcastTIX.com, Ticketmaster.com. Wells Fargo Center Box Office, or by-phone at 800-298-4200. RELATED: Jay-Z Dissed Philly Last Night PREVIOUSLY: Jay-Z is the living embodiment of the American Dream, never mind that his ticket out of the projects wasn’t rapping, but the sale and distribution of crack cocaine. At the height of his drug dealing days, when he oversaw […]