Access to places

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s security detail barred two journalists from a speech he gave hours after his resignation, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Five years after the Department of Defense broadened its ban on press coverage of flag-draped caskets arriving at Dover Air Force Base, a congressional bill to take down the rule is gaining support.

A Florida newspaper reporter was stopped by security officials at a rally for Sen. John McCain on Friday and, even after showing his credentials, was asked to leave the media pool.  

"I explained that I was with the state press," reporter Stephen Price of the Tallahassee Democrat told his paper. "But the Secret Service man said that didn't matter and that I would have to go."

The First Amendment rights of reporters covering a February 2006 Federal Bureau of Investigation raid at a prominent Puerto Rican activist's home were not violated when agents allegedly pushed, hit and pepper sprayed them, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.