| THE EXAMINED LIFE The new pop iCon By Joshua Glenn, Globe Staff, 6/13/2004 FRUSTRATED BY THE consumerist overkill of that iPod ad in the summer fiction issue of The New Yorker, with its array of detachable, multicolored, two-dimensional gizmos? Here's a consolation prize: Thanks to the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, a progressive legal organization whose board of advisers includes Mario Cuomo, Janet Reno, and Harvard Law School's Laurence Tribe, you can now spend your summer perusing the nation's founding document on your iPod's tiny screen while listening to Avril Lavigne and Method Man. Last Monday, the Washington-based ACS made the text of the Constitution available for downloading to iPods; according to David Lyle, the group's deputy director, there have been 1,000 downloads per day since then. Why iPods? Lyle credits Tom Moore, a Georgetown law student and ACS member, with the idea. "I've always been charmed by folks on Capitol Hill . . . who carry a small bound copy of the Constitution wherever they go for instant reference," explains Moore in an e-mail. "[I wanted] a sleek new way to carry the Constitution around in my pocket." Asked why the ACS acted on Moore's suggestion, Lyle said, "It is important that people actually read the Constitution, in whatever format works for them. If they do . . . they will reject the currently dominant, narrow, conservative vision of the law." This story ran on page H2 of the Boston Globe on 6/13/2004. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
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