Redistricting Likely to Hamper Democratic Efforts in 2014, Study Finds

Thanks largely to the way Congressional districts were drawn in the latest round of redistricting, even a dramatic wave election like the one in 2008 that swept President Obama into power and added to Democratic majorities in Congress would do little to alter the composition of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, a new, nonpartisan study found.

FairVote, an organization that examines voting patterns and laws, predicts that Republicans will maintain control of the House in 2014 unless Democrats meet the unlikely threshold of winning 56 percent of the vote nationwide.

In nonpresidential elections, the president’s party rarely gains seats in Congress.

Few external factors are likely to change what has effectively become a fixed game, FairVote said. Republicans seem likely to hold the House even if Democrats have another banner year like 2008. Even the ever-growing flow of money into politics is unlikely to make a difference in the outcome of races, the study concluded.

The study contained other startling findings. A majority of House members â€" 262 out of 435 â€" are in such safe districts that they are expected to win by at least 16 points. FairVote notes that this is a cushion “far outside what it would take to put them at risk even in a year in which their party does very poorly over all.”

“As a result,” the group said, “most Americans will not have a realistic chance to elect a Congressional representative of a different party.” Only 21 races â€" less than 5 percent â€" are expected to be tossups, defined as races in which the incumbent is expected to receive 47 percent to 53 percent of the vote in a two-party contest.

FairVote acknowledges that its predictions are not based on an ingenious model or on the prowess of its number crunchers. In fact, the group says the system appears to be so rigged that “the outcomes of most Congressional races are effectively predetermined long before the election takes place.”

FairVote based its projections on recent presidential and Congressional election results, not on poll results.

In Speech to Planned Parenthood, Obama Criticizes New Abortion Laws

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times President Obama spoke on Friday at a Planned Parenthood event in Washington where he assailed conservatives who have sought to restrict access to abortion and contraception.

President Obama waded back into the nation’s volatile culture wars on Friday as he assailed conservatives who have sought to restrict access to abortion and contraception, and promised women’s activists he would stand with them “fighting every step of the way.”

Addressing a meeting of Planned Parenthood, Mr. Obama singled out lawmakers in North Dakota, Mississippi and, by implication, the nation’s capital for proposing and in some cases enacting “absurd” laws that he said would return the country to the days before the Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing abortion rights.

“When you read about some of these laws, you want to check the calendar,” Mr. Obama said. “You want to make sure you’re still living in 2013. Forty years after the Supreme Court affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to privacy, including the right to choose, we shouldn’t have to remind people that when it comes to a woman’s health, no politician should get to decide what’s best for you.”

Mr. Obama was originally scheduled to address the group on Thursday but had to postpone his appearance to attend a memorial service in Texas for firefighters killed in a fertilizer plant explosion last week. Rather than pass off the obligation to another member of his administration, Mr. Obama asked the group to let him come a day late so he could speak out on an issue that galvanizes his liberal political base.

The president’s speech came at a time when several states have passed restrictive new abortion laws, and not long after a furor in Congress in which some Republicans objected to administration policies intended to ensure that insurance companies cover contraception.

North Dakota just enacted a law banning abortion when a heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Arkansas this spring similarly banned most abortions at the 12th week of pregnancy. In Mississippi, conservatives tried to ban all abortions, only to have their effort rejected in a referendum in 2011. In Washington, some Republicans have questioned federal financing for Planned Parenthood because it provides abortion services, among other health care services.

Abortion opponents have also drawn attention lately to the trial of a Philadelphia doctor charged with killing viable fetuses during abortions. Three of seven murder charges against the doctor, Kermit Gosnell, were thrown out by a judge this week, but the grisly details of the case have, in the view of abortion opponents, highlighted the moral questions underlying abortion in the United States.

Mr. Obama did not mention the case but condemned lawmakers who have targeted Planned Parenthood. “When politicians try to turn Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they’re not just talking about you, they’re talking about the millions of women who you serve,” he told the group’s gathering, at a Washington hotel. “And when they talk about cutting off your funding, let’s be clear they’re talking about telling many of those women you’re on your own.”

He pledged his loyalty to the group. “You’ve also got a president,” he said, “who’s going to be right here with you fighting every step of the way.”

App Smart Extra: Dictionaries on the Go, Both Fancy and Simple

This week, my App Smart column was all about the delights of using dictionary apps on your smartphone or tablet. These apps can help you quickly look up a word’s meaning and usage or learn new words. Compared with a printed paper edition, dictionary apps on your mobile device can also let you share words you’ve found over social media or even quickly swap between looking up text in a dictionary or a thesaurus.

Many big names in dictionary publishing have released apps, and Oxford is perhaps one of the best known. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary is one of the most powerful apps you can get on iOS, though you have to pay $29.99 to access it. Where some similar apps emphasize quick access to word definitions and other useful information like synonyms, this app instead offers full dictionary entries that include examples and even photos.

The app can also teach you the right pronunciation with real British and American voices instead of computer voices. You can download the audio database for all of the 116,000 example sentences so they can be accessed offline. The app even suggests spelling, so you can find the word you’re looking for even if you don’t exactly know how to spell it. The main drawback is that this app’s screen can seem cluttered on a small iPhone display. If the clutter bothers you, you can choose to tell the app to, for example, turn off photos or example sentences.

An alternative, simpler iOS dictionary app is WordBook English Dictionary and Thesaurus, at $1.99. Its design is plainer than many of its peers. It offers a basic ability to look up a word in its database of some 150,000 entries. Each entry includes a pronunciation guide and spoken audio, although you need an Internet connection to get the audio to work. The app includes both British and American spellings of words, but the entries are written in American English.

It also has the ability to search several different online dictionary sources if the word you want can’t be found in its built-in word database. For fun there’s also a “puzzle solver” system that can help you solve anagrams or find words from partly solved crossword clues. It’s not the prettiest app, and you may find yourself yearning for a bit more context or background in each dictionary entry, but at least it’s speedy to use.

On Android there’s also the Dictionary app by Farlex. It’s free in an ad-supported edition, and includes both British and American audio pronunciation guides, and when it returns data on words, it can display some very extensive information. For example, the word “tap” returns some four or five scrollable pages of text, including images and alternative meanings of the word, example uses, history of the word and so on.

But sometimes it can seem like there’s too much data to look through, and it’s all presented in a similar way, which means you have to exercise your own judgment as to which of the results are useful to you. On the other hand, it can work offline, though you have to download data to the app while you have a connection. Plus it has the ability to look up words in several foreign languages, including Spanish and Russian.

Have fun improving your vocabulary!

Quick call: Paper Toss 2.0 is a new edition of the popular casual game, free on Android. The objective is simple: You have to toss scrunched-up paper balls (or bananas and a number of other objects) into a target trash can. The company says it’s like the classic office “time waster” game made digital.

Q&A: Adjusting a Camera’s Image Quality Settings

Q.

The photos from my point-and-shoot digital camera definitely do not look at good as when I first got the camera. I clean the lens regularly, so what might have caused this?

A.

One quick thing to check is the camera settings for file quality. “Quality,” in digital camera-speak, typically refers to the amount of compression the camera uses when saving the photos you shoot in the JPG format. (The photo files are compressed to save storage space on the camera’s memory card and make room for more pictures.)

The higher the compression, the less visual data is saved with the file. This means pictures with a high rate of compression will not generally look as sharp and detailed compared to those that are saved with a low level of compression. Files with higher quality/low compression take up more room on the memory card than images with lower quality/high compression, though.

Most cameras let you choose the level of compression in the Quality settings, although the terminology varies between camera manufacturers. Some use terms like “Normal, Fine and Superfine” or “Good, Better and Best,” but they are all relative to each other â€" the “Best” setting uses less compression and therefore makes for a richer-looking image. (The Image Maven site has examples of different quality settings.)

So it is possible the image-quality setting may have gotten changed inadvertently, which is not all that uncommon on cameras with tiny buttons and multiple menu screens. Changing it back could resolve the issue. Many cameras also include settings for image resolution as well, which affects the look of the pictures when printed. Photos that have too low a resolution for the chosen size of the print will look blurry and jaggy.

If a trip through the camera’s settings doesn’t fix the problem and the lens is clean, there could be a problem with the camera’s image sensor or another hardware issue. Check the support area of your manufacturer’s Web site for troubleshooting and repair information.

The Early Word: Crossing the Line

In Today’s Times:

• The White House said Thursday it believes the Syrian government has used chemical weapons on a small scale in its civil war but added that it needs more evidence before taking action as President Obama warned it would, Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt report. 

• A bipartisan group of senators is quietly working to revive the gun debate, looking for lawmakers willing to change their votes and building a campaign to harness broad public support for a major overhaul, Jeremy W. Peters reports.

• Lawmakers, counterterrorism officials and experts were divided Thursday over whether the nation’s security apparatus had failed to prevent the bombings at the Boston Marathon after Russia warned the United States two years ago that one of the suspects was a radical Islamist, Scott Shane, Michael S. Schmidt and Eric Schmitt report.

• Three former presidents joined the current one in honoring George W. Bush at the dedication of his presidential library in Texas on Thursday, putting aside arguments over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to focus on the positives, Peter Baker reports.

Washington Happenings:

• Mr. Obama will speak at the Planned Parenthood Gala in Washington on Friday before meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan in the afternoon. Later, he is scheduled to talk to business leaders who have significant interests in Mexico and Central America before his trip to Mexico and Costa Rica next week.

• In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee will hold a hearing on Islamist extremism in Chechnya at 10:30 a.m.

• The Commerce Department will announce the first-quarter gross domestic product at 8:30 a.m.

The Early Word: Crossing the Line

In Today’s Times:

• The White House said Thursday it believes the Syrian government has used chemical weapons on a small scale in its civil war but added that it needs more evidence before taking action as President Obama warned it would, Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt report. 

• A bipartisan group of senators is quietly working to revive the gun debate, looking for lawmakers willing to change their votes and building a campaign to harness broad public support for a major overhaul, Jeremy W. Peters reports.

• Lawmakers, counterterrorism officials and experts were divided Thursday over whether the nation’s security apparatus had failed to prevent the bombings at the Boston Marathon after Russia warned the United States two years ago that one of the suspects was a radical Islamist, Scott Shane, Michael S. Schmidt and Eric Schmitt report.

• Three former presidents joined the current one in honoring George W. Bush at the dedication of his presidential library in Texas on Thursday, putting aside arguments over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to focus on the positives, Peter Baker reports.

Washington Happenings:

• Mr. Obama will speak at the Planned Parenthood Gala in Washington on Friday before meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan in the afternoon. Later, he is scheduled to talk to business leaders who have significant interests in Mexico and Central America before his trip to Mexico and Costa Rica next week.

• In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee will hold a hearing on Islamist extremism in Chechnya at 10:30 a.m.

• The Commerce Department will announce the first-quarter gross domestic product at 8:30 a.m.