It used to be that the people got to choose their representatives. Now the representatives get to choose their people. Over at RealClearPolitics.Com Jeremy mulls the dilemma of congressional redistricting:

America was founded on the bedrock notion of the consent of the governed. In the past, that consent was often and easily withdrawn by the governed. Pollster Scott Rasmussen points out in his new book, In Search of Self-Governance, that high incumbency reelection rates are a recent and troubling change in our politics. The House of Representatives used to enjoy frequent and massive turnovers. In the election of 1948, that body saw a 75-seat swing in favor of the Democrats, ushering out the so-called “do nothing” Republican Congress.

What has changed since then? Gerrymandering, on a massive and, some say, troublesome scale. Though it’s not a new phenomenon, the attempts at gerrymandering - drawing up districts with the clear intention of creating “safe” seats for certain select candidates to win - have become more effective and much more common, thanks to more accurate survey techniques and perhaps also to a general decline of shame. In many states, it’s simply the normal way of doing business.

D.C. Teens Want Bigger Condoms: Say Gov’t Handouts Small, Poor Quality.

– The frontpage of today’s newstand edition of the Washington Examiner. The online version is “D.C. teens want bigger, better condoms.”

Following up on Sir Mick Jagger’s musings below, here’s a point -counterpoint on the digital piracy issue.

Representing the Internet-is-destroying-music argument, we have Megan McCardle. She’s free market gal, but in her current Atlantic Monthly piece “The Freeloaders” she wonders if this current industry crisis is a real turning point. Here’s the intro, click the link above to get the rest (For free! Awesome!):

It’s official: 2009 was the worst year for the record labels in a decade. So was 2008, and before that 2007 and 2006. In fact, industry revenues have been declining for the past 10 years. Digital sales are growing, but not as fast as traditional sales are falling.

Maybe that’s because illegal downloads are so easy. People have been pirating intellectual property for centuries, but it used to be a time-consuming way to generate markedly inferior copies. These days, high-quality copies are effortless. According to the Pew Internet project, people use file-sharing software more often than they do iTunes and other legal shops.

I’d like to believe, as many of my friends seem to, that this practice won’t do much harm. But even as I’ve heard over the past decade that things weren’t that bad, that the music industry was moving to a new, better business model, each year’s numbers have been worse. Maybe it’s time to admit that we may never find a way to reconcile consumers who want free entertainment with creators who want to get paid.

(more…)

Sir Mick Jagger opined on the state of the music industry and dowloading in a recent BBC interview. He was quite relaxed about it actually because he is able to take the long view:

Well, it’s all changed in the last couple of years. We’ve gone through a period where everyone downloaded everything for nothing and we’ve gone into a grey period it’s much easier to pay for things - assuming you’ve got any money.

BBC: Are you quite relaxed about it?

I am quite relaxed about it. But, you know, it is a massive change and it does alter the fact that people don’t make as much money out of records.

But I have a take on that - people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.

So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.

Of course that is easy to say when you are 66 years old and worth an estimated $333 million.

The fact is that regardless of whether a war was moral, justified, won or meaningful, having served in one — particularly in combat — confers prestige. Harvard and Yale and social connections are nice, but at 3 o’clock in the morning you find yourself outranked by high school dropouts whose names are on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial. Not in the eyes of the world, but in your own eyes.

What a withering stare it must be for some men, that they’ll shame themselves far worse than they were shamed before, by telling a lie.

– Henry Allen, writing in the Washington Post about Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who was recently exposed as having lied about having served in Vietnam.

In RealClear Politics today, Jeremy assesses the future of the “Ron Paul Brand” now that his son Rand Paul has won the Kentucky GOP Senate primary:

Rand Paul will now have now have to appeal to a broader swath of voters than those who vote in Republican primaries. He’ll have a real fight ahead of him but he has a good shot of winning his Kentucky Senate seat in November. If he wins in November, will he follow in his father’s footsteps and run for president? For that matter, how will this affect Ron Paul’s decision about whether or not to run for president in 2012? I put those question to a source close to the both the Rand Paul campaign and Ron Paul. The source said this likely means Ron Paul won’t run in 2012 and Rand Paul will run in 2016. The prediction makes sense, with the huge caveat that we’re dealing with the ever sifting sands of politics.

John Murtha was my friend. He always supported me, except when we played golf.

– Bill Clinton, campaigning for Democrat Mark Critz, who is running to replace the late congressman. The race is close. Dave Holman gives some backstory on Murtha here.