Visual source: Newseum
The L.A. Times:
Egged on by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the leaders of the Group of 8 nations announced Friday that the Internet was too important for governments to leave ungoverned. Cyberspace needs a legal framework that promotes human rights, the rule of law, privacy, security and the protection of intellectual property, they declared, and they pledged to work on one.
Good luck with that.
The declaration reflects the wrongheaded wish of many foreign leaders to tame the Net, particularly freewheeling Web-based businesses and online speech. Evolving technologies and online services have disrupted not just established industries but governments' ability to bring transgressors to heel. Rather than letting the public, entrepreneurs and the courts respond to problems as they arise, these officials want to impose their own brand of discipline. As Sarkozy put it, lawmakers and regulators should wield more control over the Internet because "governments are the only legitimate representatives of the will of the people in our democracies."
What that "will" is, however, depends on which people you ask.
David Bornstein:
Is it possible to finance higher education the way we finance start-up companies?
That’s the approach taken by a social enterprise called Lumni that has raised $17 million to finance the education of a wide array of students in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and the United States. Lumni offers “human capital contracts” to people like Jairo Sneider, who grew up in a low-income, single parent family in Colombia.[...]
Here’s the deal that Lumni struck with him: In exchange for $8,530 in financing, Sneider agreed to repay 14 percent of his salary for 118 months after he graduated. At that point, regardless of how much he has paid, his obligation terminates. Although this might sound similar to a loan, an “income contingent” repayment plan like this is far less risky for a low-income student like Sneider. [...]
Economists are skeptical about human capital contracts — which were first proposed by Milton Friedman in the 1950s — because they have many potential problems and little track record. But Lumni seems to be making them work — at least on a small scale. Whether it can succeed at a larger level remains to be seen.
The NY Times:
Verizon Wireless, which provides wireless broadband access across the country, has sued to block a federal rule requiring wireless broadband providers to offer data roaming on commercially reasonable terms. Verizon is entitled to its day in court, but this suit must not prevail.
With text messages, e-mail and other forms of data overtaking voice as the main form of wireless communication, the rule issued in April will preserve competition in a vital communications network. [...]
The wireless market has been growing increasingly concentrated over the last decade. If cleared by antitrust regulators, AT&T plans to buy the No. 4 carrier, T-Mobile. Against this backdrop, data roaming rules are essential.
Eugene Robinson:
My advice to Sarah Palin, not that she would take it, is that she’d better be careful. If she keeps pretending to run for the presidential nomination, people might take her seriously.
The former half-term Alaska governor’s “One Nation” bus tour has made the Republican establishment nervous. If her aim is just to get back in the news, reinflate the Palin brand and boost her speaking fees, then party leaders have every reason to be pleased. In the unlikely event that she’s actually running, they have every reason to order another Scotch.
Albert Hunt:
Godot isn’t likely to show up for the Republicans. Like the characters in Samuel Beckett’s play, the Republican establishment probably will wait in vain for a white knight -- Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Paul Ryan are the most oft-cited -- to rescue the party’s presidential prospects.
The Republican field seems set...On the surface, it isn’t an especially formidable lineup, though circumstances, campaigns and upset victories can change that. [...]
The conventional wisdom of the Washington punditocracy in recent weeks has been that Pawlenty is the one major contender who can straddle both camps, acceptable to the more mainstream economic conservatives and to the movement’s social right, while a favorite of neither. True, though the problem for “tweeners,” as such middle of the road types are sometimes called in politics and sports, is that they don’t arouse much passion, often the essential ingredient for success in primaries.
Tony Leys:
Republican presidential candidates spend their days decrying President Barack Obama’s policies, but party activists say they should consider borrowing some of his campaign methods — and maybe some of his former supporters — as they search for votes in the Iowa caucuses.
The Chicago Sun-Times:
Should you find yourself serving on a jury, we think you should be allowed to ask questions.
We wouldn’t want you to make a spectacle of yourself, jumping up in the jury box and shouting to a witness something along the lines of, “Sir, were you or were you not in that tavern on the night of April 3!”
No, that would be best left to Perry Mason.
But we do think that you, as a juror, should be allowed to submit the occasional question in writing to a bailiff, who would hand it to the judge, who could — after considering any objections from lawyers on both sides — pose the question to a witness.
The purpose of a trial — to get at the truth — would be well served.
