The founders were pretty darn clear that the *purpose* of the first admendment was to protect *political* speech. When you say who can spend what to advertise their views, you curb political speech. So we come this silly stage where the popular view is that the first admendment protects “art”, but not campaign contributions. Exactly backwards. Last I checked, the first admendment was a rather bedrock piece of our Constitution–and the founders were clear on why it was there.

P.S. Madison assumed that people would be small and petty. It’s central to his famous dicussion of factions. His cure, well explained to his fellow founders, and presumably supported since they signed on, was *more* speech, not curbed speech.

I feel the same way about poli sci majors that I do lawyers. I take that back, at least lawyers have to pass the bar.

And the Constitution is strangely silent on the subject of campaign finance.

However, the founding fathers did not spend a lot of time talking about elections would be carried out or even exactly who would and would not vote.

Hence the debate over the years. For instance, in the early days of the Republic only property owning white men could vote. The Indians and the slaves did not have a vote. It was thought that an indentured servant or a woman would be too dependent on the dominant male in their lives to render an independent vote.

Obviously in regards to our constitution not everything is written in stone.

Term limits help. Unfortunately, they help something like a bandaid on a gunshot wound. Experienced legislators are only slightly more likely to form cozy relations with a self interested bureaucracy. The new people are better only if they are willing to confront established interests. Few are.

Lovely Freudian slip– points up the lock-step mentality of the dimwits admirably (and I think any milbloggers reading the post will laugh too).

They can work out of each state’s capitol building.

Cuts down on the supposed global warming they’re so concerned about, keeps them closer to their constituents which they don’t want.

We have the tech and movie theaters for mass meetings.

Cuts their travel budget, cuts their housing/expense budget, keeps them out of trouble, they’re like kids in a candy store.

As for what people won’t tolerate, what they didn’t like was the “decisions made in smoke-filled rooms” by people that didn’t know about. It was never the money, but knowing the guys behind the money that was the problem.

Free air time will do the opposite. It will *give* power to the people who control the TV. And nothing is really “free”. If you are going to do that, might as well go back to “Fairness Doctrine” and pretend that the people who run the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have no agenda.

And I have to admit. I can not stand George Will. The whole thing that got the whole campaign finance reform thing going in the first place was people giving huge sums of money to politicians. Now I admit that it did not work, but that does not change the fact that people will not feel a lot better about millionaires giving tons of money to candidates just because they tell us they are giving tons of money to politicians.

Free air time for candidates would have a greater impact, but that will never happen.

As for the Democrats not caring, I have to say that I am an Independent. I have seen politicians of both parties I could support and politicians of both parties I would not support. But I think it is unfair to make any such large brush statements about an entire political party not caring about America, especially one that most Americans identify with. At least right now.

“I never thought I’d say this, but the US Congress led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid makes me yearn for the days of Dennis Hastert”

And I’d like to say, “I hate to say I told you so,” except that I don’t really mind at all.

Seriously, it can always get worse. As some of you may recall, I have been saying for some time that the biggest problem with an awful opposition (aka the Dems) is that it drags the GOP down towards their level. Pols that fight the spiral, like Leiberman, are doing the country a great service, because they help resist this trend in both parties.

Term limits would help a lot, but it isn’t primarily the amount of money, but what gets done with that money. That money buys campaign ads on television, and the high price makes the politicians want to keep the press at least semi-reserved.

Don’t get me wrong. “The gift that keeps on giving,” Pelosi, would have an awful approval rating in 1975, too. She is too awful for the press to salvage. However, congress wouldn’t have as low an approval as it has now, if it weren’t for new media getting the message out to more people.

Fred Thompson’s recent conversion on effective campaign finance reform are the way to go. George Will has been saying it forever: Let anyone spend whatever they want on behalf of whom they want–as long as they file somewhere completely open to the public before the donation is made.

Term limits, that kind of real, constitutional campaign finance reform, and more open media would pretty much solve the problem–as much as it can be solved, given human nature. It’s not just the established pols that resist this. The MSM doesn’t want it, the Washington bureaucrats don’t want it. No one in the current system–too attached to their power–wants it.

Restrict the national government to its enumerated powers, and the problem cures itself. If one state messes up, you can always vote with your feet (hear me Gov Spitzer?)

It won’t happen. I’m old enough to remember living in a fairly free country. Pretty much the only compulsory government programs were Social Security and the draft. My kids never lived in such freedom, and never will.