Who would've guessed the guy who wrote the lyrics to "FIGHT THE POWER" and the guy who starred in "FLAVOR OF LOVE" don't see to eye on everything? Politics, for example. But the former's apparent firing of the latter on Sunday had little to do, at the end of the day, with BERNIE SANDERS, for whom the former played a rally with a group you'd never heard of called PUBLIC ENEMY RADIO after tweeting the least persuasive political endorsement ever ("I dig aspects of Bern... can relate to half the issues"). Rather, the former's apparent firing of the latter, whose lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter the day before about that endorsement (and weirdly addressed it to Sanders instead of to the bandmate whose power his client was fighting), was the culmination of years of issues having to do with money, power dynamics, civic engagement, all the usual band stuff. But once upon a time, their yin/yang, protester/jester dynamic made for one of the all-time great hip-hop teams, and if you don't understand how important the court jester hypeman was in driving home the revolutionary frontman's message, or how much musicality he brought to the PUBLIC ENEMY table, go back and listen to IT TAKES A NATION OF MILLIONS... or FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET again and ask yourself if you'd ever have believed the hype without the man who told you not to. The former dude tweeted some mildly mean stuff about the latter dude Sunday, but he also wrote, "Obviously I understand his craziness after all this damn time. Duh you don’t know him from a box of cigars or me either," and, "I would not have a PublicEnemy without a Flavor Odette." The headlines say he also fired him but I don't believe that hype either, not forever... (Oh also: FLAVOR FLAV's awesome handwritten sig on the bottom of his lawyer's letter. Does it say "Public Enemy #1" or, with a self-aware wink, "Public Enemy 2"? It kinda looks like both, doesn't it?)... You're supposed to sing "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" twice while washing your hands these days (anytime actually, but especially these days). Today, March 2, feel free to soap up and sing for LOU REED, JON BON JOVI, METHOD MAN, KAREN CARPENTER or newly minted 30-year-old LUKE COMBS, with an extra shoutout, if you'd like, to the federal judge who put "Happy Birthday to You" into the public domain five years ago, sparing you from having to wonder whether you're required to pay a public performance fee for songs sung to yourself in the bathroom. The legal team that won the case against "Happy Birthday" also freed "WE SHALL OVERCOME" from private ownership, but its winning streak came to an ironic end Friday when a federal judge in New York refused to let "THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND," of all songs, slip into the public domain. A sign painted on WOODY GUTHRIE's classic protest song will continue to say "Private Property." I'm sympathetic to Guthrie's publishing estate, run by his daughter NORA, who says she wants to protect her dad's song and its message from "DONALD TRUMP... the KU KLUX KLAN... all the evil forces out there" who'd be free to co-opt it if it entered the public domain. I'm not so sympathetic to the plaintiffs in this particular case, who asked for permission to record the song with an alternate melody, got that permission for a grand total of 45 dollars and 50 cents, and sued anyway. But do you get to have a forever copyright just because your song has a political message and would sound weird in an NRA commercial, and just because the wrong plaintiffs sued you? Where's the line between my political sympathies and my conflicted copyright sympathies (songwriters deserve protection; other songwriters deserve the right to beg, borrow and transform)? What happens when a worse plaintiff with a better legal argument comes calling?... RIP LYNN EVANS MAND, MICHAEL THEANNE and TRUDY MELVIN.