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- Bruce Bartlett has a couple of ideas for congressional reform, including increasing the size of the House of Representatives, but I'm more interested in the other idea, repealing the 17th Amendment. The idea of making senators once again the product of state legislatures rather than popular vote has been tossed around a few times over the last year, and the problem with it is still the same: The Senate is just a poor institution, no matter how you choose its personnel. Particularly as a means of combating corruption, I find the repeal argument lacking. Are we really supposed to believe that because senators are chosen by state legislatures that federal lobbyists won't try to curry influence with them and bargain for sweetheart deals that benefit the state they represent?
- Speaking of reforming the Senate, Jim DeMint provides us with yet another example that the Senate's own rules are far more potent at corrupting the ability of the body to get anything done. As you might know, Sens. Ron Wyden and Charles Grassley introduced a rule change that would end the cowardly and obnoxious provision whereby any single Senator can bring the Senate's business to a halt via an anonymous hold on legislation or nominees being considered. The vote was scheduled for today but the courageous Mr. DeMint rose to attach an amendment to the rule change that would approve construction of a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. How about we compromise: I'll endorse the 17th Amendment repeal if we can abolish the ridiculous rules the World's Greatest Deliberative body has to follow, m'kay?
- Is Rand Paul poised to bridge the gap between the "libertarian purists" and the "Limbaugh Dittoheads?" Well, maybe in Kentucky where I'm fairly certain he will win the Republican primary and the general election to succeed Jim Bunning. But it's also clear that Paul is promising an unrealistic agenda should he win office, one I am confident in predicting will not come to pass. What then does this mean for the Tea Partiers once one of their own has failed to abolish the Fed and the Department of Education?
- Remainders: It's unlikely we'll be leaving Iraq on schedule; shockingly, Megan McArdle still doesn't understand the details of public policy, writes for The Atlantic; and if you don't learn any lessons from the BP
oil spillcatastrophe, then you're probably uninterested in the severity of environmental devastation in the first place.
--Mori Dinauer
