The Civil Rights Acts prohibited multi-member districts for Congress. It seems to me that it would be easier to avoid gerrymander -- and the Courts could reasonably impose much stricter standards -- if states were given the flexibility to include, say, 3-member districts.

It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.

the filibuster, electoral college, + 11 weeks of lame duck.

As I read about our attack into Syria, it would also be nice to live in a country where the pres. doesn't have more or less unconstrained powers to wage war.

I realize you can argue that the AUMF gave Bush a blank check. But even if Bush hadn't received the AUMF, he is essentially free to invade countries with which we are officially at peace.

and something the Bush Administration worked assiduously to limit in a thousand ways, from sitting on EPA studies to Cheney's "Energy Group" to Guantanamo to the Justice Department.

The principle should be mandatory public disclosure of any and all acts of government, rule changes, decisions, etc., save certain espionage or national security matters.

Same goes for Congress: the legislative process should be clarified (like one provision, one bill) so that the media can report and the public can see exactly what Congressfolk are voting on. No more earmarks, no more tucking partial birth abortion language into Medicare laws, etc. etc.

Basically apply the "simplified tax code" principle to everything the government does.

It should be a built-in principle of the Constitution that citizens can quickly and easily figure out what their government is up to without requiring expert training and/or hours of research time.

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH

I have this pet theory. Lead was added to gasoline in the 1920's, thanks mostly to GM and a chemist who then went on to invent CFCs (I'm not kidding). Lead was known then to be toxic and bad for the nervous system. Early manufacturing processes were so bad that the workers involved were basically toast in just a few months. But they decided to put this stuff into the air anyway; it saved money.

Although there were many cars in the 1920's, truly massive numbers of vehicles were not on the road till the late 1940's and then through the following decades people started driving more, abandoning the train, as the national highway system was built.

Lead began to be phased out in the 1970's, to considerable conservative protest, I might add. It was gone by the mid 80's, except in aviation fuel for small planes, where it is still used today. The amount of lead in the bloodstream of an average American dropped something like 50 times.

We've all seen the studies that relate criminality to lead exposure in inner cities. It takes about 20 years to see the effect. Politicians now in their 40's, 50's, and 60's had significant airborne lead exposure as children if they were from urban, suburban, or industrial areas.

So we very possibly have the dumbest, most irresponsible generation of men in over two centuries running the country. Note that the Chinese don't have this problem. At least not now.

If there is any truth to this, within ten to twenty years we might see a new generation of more lucid leaders. Of course we might be irreversibly broke by then. It is also harder to right a sinking, rotting ship than to launch a new one, but better days for Congress may yet arrive.

Of course not!

Set up our Republic with three branches of government, to harness the adversarial nature of power-hungry politicians.

What they could never have foreseen was the abject capitulation of all three branches.

Want social reforms? Don't ask the House of Representatives for that, the body intended to bring such interests to the fore, farm it out to the Supreme Court, then blame them for Legislating from the Bench.

Country needs to go to war? Don't ask the Senate to assume that awesome responsibility. Give the Executive a good running start so the war becomes a self-perpetuating thing.

Don't demand accountability from the Executive. Oh no. Blame him for all the failures, yes, but don't constrain him against any arrogation of power.

Got a problem with elections? Send it to the Supreme Court.

Yes, whenever a Large Problem emerges which might require leadership, keep tossing the grenade back and forth down Pennsylvania Avenue, and when all else fails, some completely irrelevant branch of government will step in to give us some goofy-ass solution nobody will like and nobody wanted.