Stop Me Before I Vote Again

You know those Democrats, lying awake nights worrying about endangered species. The latest object of their insomnia is wealthy movie studios and record labels. Eight Congressional Democrats have joined forces with twelve Republicans in another move to promote the "Broadcast Flag," a copy prevention scheme for digital media that would make it against the law -- and seek to make it impossible -- for you to tape a TV show.

Of course you expect this sort of thing from Republicans, but there may be a couple of four-year-olds somewhere in the country who are still surprised when Democrats, representing poor districts in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Chicago, Pittsburgh and San Antonio, go to the mats for the swimmin'-pool-'n'-movie-star crowd in Bel Air.

The bare-faced eight joined their Republican colleagues in signing an "open letter" to the chair of the House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, urging that the "broadcast flag" be written into law.

This is Round Two for the studios and the labels; they got knocked flat in Round One, when the FCC tried to mandate "broadcast flag" observance in cable boxes and TVs. That was back in 2003; two years later, last May to be exact, a Federal court issued the FCC a stinging rebuff, bluntly stating that the agency had exceeded its authority. But the intellectual-property totalitarians don't discourage easily. What an agency can't do, Congress can -- and probably will, since the two parties are both thoroughly convinced of the need to protect wealth and power.

So here are the infamous eight, the outriders of the Intellectual Property Inquisition:

Name	State	District	Median household income, $ thousands
Edolphus Towns	New York	10 (Brooklyn)	30.6
Eliot Engel	New York	17 (Bronx)	32.7
Michael Doyle	Pennsylvania	14 (Pittsburgh)	34.2
Charles Gonzalez	Texas	20 (San Antonio)	32.0
Bart Gordon	Tennessee	6 (Nashville suburbs)	44.5
Bobby Rush	Illinois	1 (Chicago)	34.6
Albert Wynn	Maryland	4 (Washington suburbs)	51.5
Frank Pallone	New Jersey	6 (Shore suburbs)	56.7

Kind of an interesting mix, very characteristic of the contemporary Democratic party. There are old urban soup hounds like Towns, Engel, Rush, Gonzalez and Doyle, representing fairly poor districts, and thus themselves available on the cheap. Then there are glossier, more upscale, more suburban Democrats, presumably in good standing with the soccer moms or whoever the current reference group is. Even among these, though, Gordon of suburban Nashville is the only one who could colorably claim to be representing his constituency; you could probably meet a fair number of record-label executives at his fund-raisers.

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