After surviving the last 8 years, I'm less sanguine about moving everything through the Senate more easily.

That said, Senate Democrats were not active enough in blocking dangerous and bad legislation during this period and the fictitious "unitary executive" went around what blocks there were.

Last night on CSpan Brian Lamb interviewed Sharyl Attkisson & it was great. Here's the transcript: http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/qa_sattkissontranscript.htm

Scroll down to the very end and read the last 3 exchanges.

Our congressmen in Washington don't give one shit about us. It's all about them.

Case closed.

Does anyone here ever seriously question why the senators are agitating for change? They are either a bunch of morons, or we are.

The only way to conclude that the senators are morons is to only consider one feature of the senate at a time. What is it today? Filibuster, equal state representation, six year term, VP voting to resolve a tie, advise and consent?

our Constitution simply has a lot of very dumb provisions. The Senate is one of them.

Well, most of the provisions are not in the Constitution but are instead the Senate's own invention. The filibuster? A Senate rules artifact. The secret hold? Ditto. Blue slip rules? More of the same.

And the committee system -- another Senate rules creation -- allows a senior Senator to gum up the works indefinitely on a given topic, as Lieberman has done with Homeland Security.

What the Constitution adds to this are undemocratic rules like 2-senators-per-state and the (now amended) provision making senators appointed, not elected. Also the staggered six year terms were intended to defuse popular "passions", but that's probably not a bad thing.

So, the solution is first to clean up the Senate rules. That can be done at any time, but neither party is quite ready to make that leap for fear that it will hurt them when they are in the minority. For sure, Senators see how much power minority House members have -- NONE -- and don't want that to happen to them.

Then you have to get rid of, or at least minimize, that stupid 2-senators-per-state rule. There is simply no chance of amending the Constitution on this. All you need to block it is for the 13 smallest states to fail to ratify the amendment, even if you could somehow get it through the Senate.

One creative solution would be for some of the large blue states to MIRV into multiple states. California is the obvious first candidate (and such a split would also give California a chance to cut down on their unwieldy state government AND get rid of the baggage of prop 13, the other stupid propositions, term limits, and the crazy budget system all at one swoop). Slice the state into say 5 smaller pieces and you'll see 6 or 8 more Democratic Senators, and a good shot at an extra Representative or two due to census rounding.

Getting California to agree may not be so difficult, but it probably starts with a Democratic Governor.

The next obvious step is redefining the Constitutional District to be just the unpopulated area around the White House, Congress, and the national Mall, and make the rest of D.C. its own state. Whammo -- a new Democratic Representative and TWO Democratic Senators. Such an act could be passed by simple majorities, although the Democrats would have to have the guts to face down the filibuster.

Senate reform should be added to the longer-term progressive agenda. Indeed, the other big-ticket items on that agenda -- things like health care reform and cap-and-trade -- might not be possible without it.

I've been saying for a while that no meaningful health, energy or regulatory reform is going to happen until we have public financing of elections.

Money talk louder than voters.

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with the Senate. True reform cannot occur until we have genuine political opposition in this country, which means getting rid of the ballot access and campaign finance requirements that nurture the symbiotic relationship between the Democrats and the Republicans, and have rendered third parties de facto illegal.

They asked Jim Hightower once if America needed third parties, and he replied, "Hell, America needs a second party!"

Yes, I agree the some of the Capitol Hill
crowd can appear a bit slow to catch on.
They are truly a lagging indicator

A good indication of congressional math skills
is covered in Banana News ( www.bananaws.com)
in a story about Republicans charging democrats with having poor math skills.

But they both come out looking bad. Good they
are on Capitol Hill and not running out computer systems.

Reprinted from the earlier thread on the Senate.

As I state every time there is discussion about the Senate, any problems with it can be traced to the 17th Amendment. As everyone knows, the 17th Amendment made the Senate more "democratic" by having the people elect, instead of the state legislatures choose Senators. This fundamentally changed the nature of the Senate from the Founders' vision of being the states' check on the federal government into just being another form of the House, which was already elected by the people.

Senators were supposed to be "Statesmen" precisely because they were not beholden to the people for their positions. Thus, they would be immune from the momentary political passions of the people. Instead, they were suppose to look out for the national interest and to keep the federal government from usurping power and authority from the states.

As I tell people who want to get rid of the influence of "big money" from politics simply repeal the 17th Amendment. Without having to raise money for their re-elections, Senators would haven't to raise any money from anyone. Then they would be able to do things in the national interest all the time regardless of whose political cows get slaughtered. The ability to "buy up" political support in the House would also be limited since the other half of the legislative branch of the government would be beyond any form of direct public pressure.

So do the country a favor and support the returning of the Senate to the distinguished role the Founders intended for it by repealing the 17th Amendment.

There's a reasonable chance that the catalyst for change of the Senate rules will not come from the Democrats but from the Republicans. Seating Franken seems to be a line they won't cross and they may be willing to hijack the Senate to prevent it. Eventually the majority will have to end the impass and it seems the only way to do so would be to modify the rules, even temporarily. Humiliated, the Republicans will try again on some other issue. And again until you no longer have a filibuster. The bottom line is that it will be the Republicans who will force this issue because if there is one thing we know about moderate Democrats it's that their patience is infinite.

Hell, African-Americans in the South couldn't vote 100 years after the Civil War -- or even publicly eat with whites -- largely because of the Senate.

A Supreme Court which found that public eating was not a civil right, and therefore subject to the whims of state and local lawmakers, also had a lot to do with it.

There are a couple of other useful purposes of the senate that need to be taken into account, both of which became more important in the age of television.

The senate provides the nation with visible political leaders socially equal to the president. The national media likes to treat politics as a melodrama with a leading man (the prez) various villains, and bit players (cabinet members, congressmen) orbiting around the star. The senate provides a national platform for other politicians and gives them enough power that they cannot all be ignored or trivialized by the press.

The senate cannot be gerrymandered. As has been amply demonstrated over the last twenty years, a well-run political machine that dominates the Beltway community can also dominate presidential politics, making any opposition a long shot to win the presidency. Gerrymandering congressional districts could lock up a congressional majority for the dominant party for decades. However, no matter how feeble the Democrats have been in action over the last eight years, the fact that most states are politically heterogenous has kept them in contention for control of the government. The Republicans cannot control the media in every state, and they cannot separate moderate/liberal Chicago from conservative rural Illinois. During the worst of the last decade of conservative rule, liberal and moderate senators still existed, and there was nothing Rove and Delay and the rest of the thugocracy could do to make them disappear.

Whatever its other failings, the senate provides quite real, quite relevant benefits to the principle of separation of powers. One could argue that the "permanent Republican majority" that was to have been created by propaganda, media control, and dirty political machinations was defeated by three things: conservative incompetence and corruption, alternative media to spread truth and opposing opinion, and that small cadre of senators whose media access kept political opposition from being swept off the national TV screen.

Sorry, but the Founding Fathers were a lot smarter than Loony-Tunes Obama and his ambitious "reforms."

One good place to start with Senate reform would be to limit the term a Senator could serve on the Appropriations Committee to six years. This would eliminate the likelihood that Sen. Byrd will succeed in funding and moving all governmental functions to West Virginia. One would think that the non-Appropriations Senators would have the votes to force this reform

On the one hand, I like the idea of a Senate that is a check on "populism", and slows things down so that some thought is possible, sort of like the Canadian Senate.

On the other hand, what we have now are senators bought and paid for by special interests.

Is there a way to save the first function and get rid of the second problem?

I don't know, but I wonder about term limits, perhaps two. The lobbyists would then at least have to work to corrupt the new guys.

The dumbest part of the Senate, IMHO, is the idea that California has about as many people as every other state northwest of Texas but only gets two senators while the other western states get 32.

Fewer people live in ND, SD, MT, and WY than live in Chicago. Maybe not, but it is probably pretty close.

Sorry to repeat myself, but the lack of "democratic" representation in the Senate is a feature, not a bug, really, it is.

Midland makes a very good point, so I won't repeat it, but please read it.

I will add, though, that I do agree that the filibuster, "holds", and committee chairship all need to be reformed (note: reformed, not eliminated).

And I would add one other thing for all Congressional positions, term limits.

No individual should serve more than 12 years as either a Senator or a Representative. And I'd amend the term limit of the Presidency to a single eight year term.

A lack of term limits breeds oligarchy and corruption as politicians focus on re-election machinations as opposed to good governance.

I'm not arguing that this is some silver bullet for either condition. But it goes a long way toward reducing the prevalence of either.

Arguing that term limits prevent capable individuals from serving implies that there is only one capable individual for a given office at a time. This is an inane assertion and it's always raised without any proof beyond the simple assertion that it's true.

There are certainly tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, or even millions of Americans who can perform as well, if not better than the current cavalcade of clowns serving in Congress.

Furthermore, the argument that term limits prevent office holders from "learning the office" is stupid beyond belief. There is no other job on this planet where the person who holds it is expected to take years or even decades to 'learn the ropes'. People who need that amount of time shouldn't be holding office anyway.