Vox Pop, described as "a coffee-house, a bookstore and a publishing company" on its website, is a popular hangout for Brooklyn lefties who love free wi-fi, poetry readings and open-mic nights (and what Brooklyn lefty doesn't?) whose financial troubles were detailed in the New York Times back in March. Vox Pop's owner, Debi Ryan, said that the statue was stolen on June 21 and that she, like a typical pansy-ass liberal, is "scared" after seeing the hilariously amateurish video showing the blindfolded statue receiving a beheading as "We Don't Want Your Freedom" and "Death to America" flash across the screen repeatedly in Atari-esque font.

We didn't want to believe it could happen, but it was only a matter of time before the terrorists struck a coffee shop in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. Gorilla Coffee in Park Slope has to be next, because there are few things that terrorists hate more than lesbians and strollers. Bet on it.

via Animal NY

What Kit tells us:

The building's transparent exterior is meant to convey the idea of a free press and an open society. A mammoth rectangle frames the facade, suggesting a television or computer screen that provides what the museum calls a "window on the world." Visitors enter through a Great Hall of News, where they can see breaking stories on a giant digital "zipper" before setting out on a 1.5-mile path of displays and interactive kiosks. The building, which has seven floors, also contains 135 upscale apartments, Newseum shops and Wolfgang Puck's three-story restaurant, the Source.

• Time magazine's armored truck from the Balkans
  
• The laptop used by Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered in Pakistan in 2002
  
• The vest that Bob Woodruff of ABC was wearing last year when he was wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq
  
• The cellphone that a Virginia Tech student used last month to capture a video of the campus massacre
  
• A pencil used by Mark H. Kellogg, a reporter killed at Little Bighorn with Custer in 1876
  
• The turquoise slippers worn by Ana Marie Cox when she wrote as Wonkette, the sassy Washington blogger

  There's also a display containing disgraced former Times reporter Jayson Blair's articles and a gallery:

  [D]evoted to journalistic ethics. It allows visitors to race one another to answer some basic yes-or-no questions on deadline. You are reporting on shoplifting and learn that your neighbor has been arrested, a potential conflict; should you tell your editor? (Yes, according to a Newseum panel of journalism experts.)

  We can hardly contain ourselves. You know, we don't get enough of the press celebrating itself with Pulitzers and ASMEs and other fake awards. We need the grandeur of a seven-story complex that lauds the dedication of our ink-stained (or pajama-bottomed) information gatherers. When this sucker opens, we're going to be first in line to see the exhibition containing R.W. Apple Jr.'s legendary expense reports. —balk

  A Museum for Artifacts of the News Media's Hunters and Gatherers [NYT]

Angelina Jolie Gets on Full Mumbai Train [AP]
[Photo: Getty]

Earlier: The Academy Shall Not Overlook the Caucasian Sacrifice

Jolie and Pitt, With 'Heart' [USA Today]