From the
guy who brought you the Whitewater scandal and the
impeachment of President Clinton for lying about oval antics in the Oral Office, a legal push to make the Supreme Court
just say no to "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." Ken Starr's
petition to the Court [PDF] makes clear that Starr believes this is no laughing matter, but a chance for the Court to make a landmark ruling that will give school adminstrators the power to limit student speech: "This case presents the Court with a much-needed opportunity to resolve a sharp conflict among federal courts
(and to eliminate confusion on the part of school boards,
administrators, teachers, and students) over whether the First
Amendment permits regulation of student speech when such
speech is advocating or making light of illegal substances."
posted by digaman
on Aug 28, 2006 -
131 comments
"I know these desires could kill me dead, but how you gonna act instead?" So sings eros-haunted Delta-blues-steeped songwriter
Chris Whitley on his superbly dark new album,
Soft Dangerous Shores, and he's not kidding -- Whitley is currently "
very very ill" and receiving hospice care. After Whitley's 1991 debut,
Living with the Law, the slim (drug-addicted?) songwriter was acclaimed by his peers as "the real deal." When he was dropped by Sony in 1998, he released an album of stark poetic beauty recorded in a barn,
Dirt Floor.
Soft Dangerous Shores updates Whitley's coiled-viper resophonic guitars with dreamlike electronic atmospheres (
one reviewer describes it as "a hypnotic wrestling match between juke joint blues and Kraftwerkian beats"). Instead of posting an elegy for another underappreciated self-destructive genius a la
Nick Drake after his death, check out Whitley's music (via
free downloads) while he's still with us on Earth.
posted by digaman
on Nov 14, 2005 -
46 comments
