Isn’t the web wonderful?
[Update a couple minutes later]
“He’s done everything wrong.”
I’m not surprised.
[Another update]
Did the recession end last night? I know that I’m a lot more upbeat about the future, now that the wreckers’ power has been dramatically reduced.
[Another update]
Did Barney Frank kill ObamaCare? I don’t think so. The Tea Partiers did that. He just closed the lid on the coffin. And I have to say that I’m glad to see that he (finally?) respects the democratic process.
“He’s done everything wrong.”
Losing Mort Zuckerman? I suspect he won’t be the last. The collapse of the MSM with regards to Obama has begun.
Reading that article it is apparent that Mort was a true believer. Why and how such “intelligent” people were sucked in by Obama I’ll never understand.
There’s a great scene in the WWII movie EDGE OF DARKNESS, after some Norwegian resistance fighters led by Errol Flynn wipe out all the Nazis who have been occupying their little town. The resistance fighters in the general region are marshalling their forces at the local captured Nazi HQ, when the Nazi regional commander, at his regional HQ, calls the local office to find out what the heck’s going on. He knows something is up but doesn’t know what and is frantically trying to find out what. You see the phone ringing in the local HQ, and there’s a dead Nazi slumped over the phone. One of the resistance fighters picks the phone from the dead Nazi’s hand and answers the call. “What’s going on? Who is this?” the regional commander shouts. The resistance fighter says, “It’s the resistance. We’ve taken over, and now we’re coming to get you.”
Kerry next; then Obama. Revenge will be sweet.
This quote is somewhat telling and frightening at the same time:
I can see this happening the following way:
1. Change legislation to lower the supermajority rule to 55 votes.
2. Democrats lose supermajority to Republicans, who end up with 55 Senate seats.
3. Republicans use new rule to pass legislation.
4. Democrats cry “foul!”
Just like the rule change in Massachusetts that was intended to avoid a Republican getting seated in the Senate by gubernatorial appointment, that ended with a Republican getting elected to a vacated Senate seat.
That said, I think it’s a less than stellar idea to try to change the rule, not necessarily because of the law of unintended consequences, but because a “55 out of 100” rule is a patently BAD idea.
Reading that article it is apparent that Mort was a true believer. Why and how such “intelligent” people were sucked in by Obama I’ll never understand.
Mort Zuckerman intelligent? LOL. Maybe for the Sunday morning chat show circuit.
That being said, yeah, losing Mort, a longtime shameless Dem cheerleader is very telling. Maybe he and David Brooks can have lunch and commiserate over how the Neanderthals are ruining American politics.
Mort Zuckerman intelligent? LOL.
Thus my use of quotes around the word intelligent. Unfortunately, there isn’t yet a set of sarcasm HTML tags. 🙂
Um Kerry is not next he up in 2014, Scott Brown up in 2012. Not really surprised by Barney. (unintentional pun warning) Barney Frank is sadly probably one of the smartest and “straight shooting” politicians in Massachusetts
Now Barney clearly didn’t wrap himself in glory with the financial melt down and the last year with some denials. But during the Bush years he said some sensible things and didn’t fall lock step with the must stop Bush and Bush is evil
Don’t worry, the Republicans will frack up this opportunity too.
Did Barney Frank kill ObamaCare? I don’t think so. The Tea Partiers did that.
I don’t think so, period. I just don’t buy the notion it is dead. We heard the alternatives prior to the election, and those alternative opportunities are still there. And the 2 losses last November didn’t scare the Democrats. This 1 loss is closer to home for them. Still, the Socialists among the Democrats will realize this may be the closest they’ll come to enacting their agenda for some time. They still have the majority.
Of course, as the Democrats continue down this unpopular course, their chickens will come home to roost.
Leland, I agree. Now is not the time for complacency, but this shot was close to home. The wild card will be how many soiled adult diapers there are in both chambers.
Thus my use of quotes around the word intelligent. Unfortunately, there isn’t yet a set of sarcasm HTML tags.
The disconnect between the political class and pundits and basically everyone else in the US is pretty amazing. I just wonder how long we’re going to have to watch people like Zuckerman and Brooks cry into their glasses of pinot noir as they bemoan the coarsening of discourse and thought.
Yes and no, Leland. On the one hand, I agree one lost race does not a minority party make. Democrats know full well elections are full of weird happenstance. Were it not for the tendency of Mass voters to elect tall thin handsome young men — believe it or not, this is why it’s Senator Kerry, known to be an empty head even back in the day, instead of Senator Tsongas, a far more wonky by unsalvageably homely man — and were it not for his damned charm and triple damned GM truck with 200,000 miles on it, we’d all be sitting around glumly, cynical Marxists all, believing (pace Mark Steyn) that red/blue demographics is destiny. It was Ted Kennedy’s seat after all we’d be intoning, God damned Massachusettois, they’d vote for the Prince of Darkness if he only had a D next to his name (and he probably does).
As it is, we’re celebrating individual achievement once again. Morning in America! But it could quite easily have Red Dawn instead, and they know it. So, that part yes.
But on the other hand, what has been pretty convincingly proven here is that Obama is no Glinda the Good, able to swoop in with the ruby TelePrompTer and whisk you back to the Emerald City when the winged teabaggers come screeching out of the sky to get you and your little dog. His presence is worth exactly squat to your poll numbers. You might as well hire a clown and pass out free beer. The man is a political eunuch — looks great, sings great, on national TV, but just no good at all, found hiding behind the bar, during a fight over who gets to take that fetching but fickle barmaid Miss Electorate home on any given frosty night in November.
That matters, too. Democrats know they’re on their own, here. Their electoral destiny this fall is pretty much totally between each man or woman and his constituents. There won’t be any razzle dazzle from the articulate, light-skinned C in C to coax local voters into forgiving a vote they locally hate — because it advances the Big Plan cherished by the Dear Leader. Nor will Obama be able to shake any local money trees, not with his 0 for 3 record.
What’s left? Why take a moments consideration for what the God President or Subcommander Pelosi wants? Who cares? The big cheese can’t promise any rewards, and the threats of Nancy P are less and less likely to materialize, the more likely it is that a 40+ seat loss in November means she hands over the Speaker’s gavel to a Republican or a moderate Democrat.
From here on out, Democratic politiics will be increasingly local. Senators and Congressmen are going to be voting the way their constituencies want, and not the way this schlock Titanic crew wants. We shall see what that implies. I can hear the rustle of a hundred checkbooks being opened by a hundred Democratic incumbents to pay for solid internal poll numbers. Go to a town hall. They’ll be listening now.
This election should sent a message to Democrats that no seat can be assumed safe. If I were a Democrat member of Congress, I’d consider replacing Pelosi and Reid instead of letting them flush the whole party down the drain. Happily, they probably won’t do it.
Crazy ‘double-down’ plan #47: Make Haiti a state. Opposition is obviously racist, etc.
^^ aka “Pack the Senate”
a “55 out of 100″ rule is a patently BAD idea.
It should be 50 (with the VP to break ties). Supermajority requirements are a bad idea, as Hamilton explained in the Federalist Paper 75:
The history of every political establishment in which this principle has prevailed is a history of impotence, perplexity and disorder.
The supermajority requirement in the US Senate is new; it needs to go away.
The supermajority requirement in the US Senate is new; it needs to go away.
Which supermajority requirement? Because, well, the supermajority requirements for voting on Constitutional Amendments is right in Article V of the Constitution. That needs to go, right away? Does the 75% supermajority of state votes get to stay, since it’s not Senate-related?
I suppose that, instead of arguing strawmen, I could address what your claim seems to imply, and that is the 60-member cloture vote to stop a filibuster. You’re right, the 60-member cloture vote IS new. It used to be 2/3 of all present members. The Democrats changed the rule in 1975 to be 3/5 of ALL Senators.
Or perhaps, since the 2/3 of present member rule for cloture was created in 1917, maybe you mean that rule needs to go? Because, before that, there was NO cloture rule.
The cloture rule for ending a filibuster on Senate Rule changes remains at 2/3 of present members, though.
So, we should get rid of all cloture rules, and go back to exhaustive and unbreakable filibusters? Or change it to a simple majority rule for cloture vote? That rule change has NEVER passed any time it was attempted.
If not, then what?
I should add, though, “Thank you, Jim.”
If not for you, I would likely never have taken the time to learn as much about filibustering and cloture as I just did today.
If not, then what?
It doesn’t matter — just keep chaning the law until Jim Democrat gets his way!
Funny, I didn’t hear too many Democrats calling for the end of the filibuster or changes to the cloiture rules when Republicans ran the Senate. If Democrats showed a shred of intellectual honesty or consistency, then perhaps I could have some respect for them. They don’t, so I don’t.
Seriously Jim, did you read the paper you quoted? Hamilton was not arguing against supermajorities. He was clearly saying that votes should be a supermajority of those present instead of the 2/3 of the total body, because it would otherwise be more difficult to accomplish something.
It seems to me the current situation is a good argument for supermajorities. We have one political faction that has temporarily gained a significant share of power and is trying to use that to run roughshod over the rest. Maybe if the supermajority requirement was back at 67 the Left might have approached the issues more intelligently and enjoyed greater success.
It should be 50 (with the VP to break ties). Supermajority requirements are a bad idea, as Hamilton explained in the Federalist Paper 75:
The thing that is forgotten here is that the Senate is supposed to be a deliberative body, not swayed so much by public opinion and the fads of the moment. Supermajorities as we’ve seen over the past year help make the Senate what it has always been, a brake on the primitive, ephemeral passions of the House.
I dare say that Hamilton might have been talking out his ass concerning this statement. He cites three examples, two which had absolute veto power (Roman tribunal and Polish Diet). You effectively needed unanimous consent among the groups in question which is more than just a mere supermajority.
That leaves one example, the States-General of the Netherlands (which had an unimpressive history in the Americas due to the old loss of New Amsterdam to the British (which then became New York). That’s not a large body of evidence with which to forbid supermajorities.
Given that the US has successfully operated for centuries with supermajorities required for various sorts of operations (like breaking a filibuster, passing an amendment, or overturning a presidential veto), I think we need more than that to justify overturning one of the oldest traditions of the US Senate.
Go ahead and do it Jim. Just don’t fucking whine when we undoo everything in three years and you get hoisted on your own pitard.
This oh so clever rules gamemanship with the sucession law in Mass is what got you Senator Brown.
I’m kind of missing the bright moral distinction between Rule by 50% + 1 vote versus Rule by 60%, Jim. What I’m especially missing is how the rule by which the smaller majority should get its way more often is more democratic, moral, good and wise. Did you feel this way when Bush pulled out his squeaker in 2000? No frothing about his lack of a “mandate” suggesting he moderate his insistence on getting his way?
As I see it, the larger majority has two purposes:
(1) It takes into account margins of error in the degree to which the Senate actually represents the will o’ the states, or the people, let us optimistically say. It’s like asking for a few votes extra and not just a hurried Supreme Court vote before you rely on hanging chads to confer the laurel crown of legitimacy on your victor. By asking for votes on subjects about which people feel strongly to be 60 votes instead of merely 51, you ensure that minor electoral screw-ups like one or two Senators who bought (Burris, D-IL) or stole (Franken, D-MN) their seats from mattering so much.
(2) It fosters greater shelf-life of the legislative sausage. Call it BHT or sodium benzoate for the Senate. If it takes 60 votes to pass something, then it takes 60 votes to undo something, too. Which means if you want to undo something that just passed, you’ve got to reverse the votes of ten Senators, not just the one you need to jump ship to reverse simple majority legislation.
Now don’t tell me you’re not counting on (2) to save your ass on health care reform.
Indeed, along the lines of selling you the rope by which you hang yourself, which has been our secret electoral strategy so far — and boy is it working! — we should encourage the Dems to abandon the 60 votes needed to pass legislation in the Senate.
That way the Republicans need to knock off only 9 more Democratic Senators — maybe 7 or 8 if Joe Liebermann and Jim Webb can be talked around — to summarily undo in November whatever Godforsaken Frankenlaw the Democrats pass right now.
Go on, Jim. Feel the rope. Nice, silky, smooth, isn’t it? Try making a loop!
That way the Republicans need to knock off only 9 more Democratic Senators — maybe 7 or 8 if Joe Liebermann and Jim Webb can be talked around — to summarily undo in November whatever Godforsaken Frankenlaw the Democrats pass right now.
That wouldn’t be sufficient. They’d still need two thirds to overcome the expected Obama veto. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with him for three more years, barring his death, resignation or removal.
Is it a known fact that supermajorities always decrease the influence of special interests? It looks as if it could work both ways.
Ooops, too true.
On the other hand…I like the idea of passing something they were directly elected to pass, like Scott Brown, and then daring His Perfectly Clearness to veto it. Gosh it would be exquisite to watch him writhe under the torture…veto and send the voters a fresh reason to elect still more Republicans, enough to override a veto? Or bend over and allow this indignity?
Much better than having something quietly die of lack of cloture. Far more public a humiliation.
Carl-
Your previous comment seems to read as if it takes 60 votes to actually pass a piece of legislation through the Senate. As a point of clarification, it still only takes 50+1 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. It’s just that it takes 60 people to stand up and request cloture to break a filibuster and force a vote on an issue. So, really, only 60 people need to agree that a bill is worth voting on. Generally speaking, though, if there are people who are in the minority opinion on a bill, they would rather be in the filibuster than in the cloture.
The practical upshot is that it usually requires the support of 60 senators to pass a bill, but 9 of those 60 can still vote “present” or “nay” and have a bill pass. Or, for that matter, 10 or 11 of them can vote “present” if they can convince someone in the filibuster to vote with their side when it comes to a vote.
As you began to get at, this is really only of concern on contentious bills and issues, but you’re right that a well-organized group of 41 Senators could, effectively, block 100% of legislation in the Senate until someone brought a rules change vote to the floor to change the filibuster/cloture rules.
Which, honestly, would get a lot of people rubbernecking on C-SPAN. Because, you know, people don’t watch NASCAR for the racing, they watch it for the crashing. 🙂
So, we should get rid of all cloture rules, and go back to exhaustive and unbreakable filibusters?
Sure, if the person doing the filibustering has to keep speaking (ala “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”).
Or change it to a simple majority rule for cloture vote?
That’d be fine as well.
Passing a law should not require 60 votes.
Funny, I didn’t hear too many Democrats calling for the end of the filibuster or changes to the cloiture rules when Republicans ran the Senate.
Here’s one, and there are others. I’d be happy if the Senate agreed to abolish the filibuster as of, say, 2015 — far enough into the future that we don’t know who the President or majority party will be.
If Democrats showed a shred of intellectual honesty or consistency, then perhaps I could have some respect for them. They don’t, so I don’t.
There’s your shred. Can you now?
He was clearly saying that votes should be a supermajority of those present instead of the 2/3 of the total body, because it would otherwise be more difficult to accomplish something.
My mistake. I should note, however, the current cloture rule requires 60 votes, no matter how many Senators are present — the very thing Hamilton was writing about. Only requiring 3/5 of those present would be a small step forward.
I’m kind of missing the bright moral distinction between Rule by 50% + 1 vote versus Rule by 60%, Jim.
With majority rule power can more easily pass between parties. The way things are now there’s a gaping no-mans-land between a 60 vote Democratic majority and a 60 vote Republican majority. At least twenty seats have to switch sides — nearly two-thirds of those being contested — for effective control to switch from one side to the other in a single election. Since that is extremely uncommon, the country spends most of the time with no party able to pass its program. The minority party has a strong incentive to block the majority party’s initiatives, and then increase its numbers in the next election by pointing to the majority’s ineffectiveness.
If the Senate ran by majority vote the majority party would be able to pass its laws, and if the voters were unhappy with the laws they passed it would only take a small shift in numbers to give the other party a shot.
By asking for votes on subjects about which people feel strongly to be 60 votes instead of merely 51, you ensure that minor electoral screw-ups like one or two Senators who bought (Burris, D-IL) or stole (Franken, D-MN) their seats from mattering so much.
No, it just changes which screw-ups you end up depending on. The 60th Senator is no less likely to be a screw-up than the 50th.
You could take your reasoning further and insist on 70 or 80 votes, just to be safe. It should be obvious that this would be a very, very bad idea.
Now don’t tell me you’re not counting on (2) to save your ass on health care reform.
I’m not — I’m expecting that health care reform, once passed, will be politically safe. Look at Scott Brown — he’s trying to kill the not-passed ObamaCare, but favors the virtually-identical-but-already-passed RomneyCare.
Go ahead and do it Jim. Just don’t fucking whine when we undoo everything in three years and you get hoisted on your own pitard.
I promise.
Since that is extremely uncommon, the country spends most of the time with no party able to pass its program.
Fair enough. But you must realize to we small-government lovers of liberty, this is a feature, not a bug.
If the Senate ran by majority vote the majority party would be able to pass its laws,
God forbid. I shudder in horror to think of a bulletproof Republican and Democratic steamroller taking turns gang –ing the taxpayer. Blech. Sounds like the worst aspects of US winner-take-all elections and European parliamentary osciallations combined.
and if the voters were unhappy with the laws they passed it would only take a small shift in numbers to give the other party a shot.
Ooo, yeah, now there’s a recipe for political stability, cordiality in the public debate, and a decreased reliance on nasty vote-stealing: massive shifts in power awaiting tiny shifts in vote totals.
Geez, Jim, I thought you folks were all in favor of stuff like assault-gun control and nuclear nonproliferation because keeping heavy-calibre weaponry on a hair-trigger out of the hands of combatants reduces the chance of unfortunate accidents. Do you not understand the obvious parallel to heavy-caliber political weaponry on a hair-trigger?
You want to risk having Joe McCarthy more easily send you to the gulag for re-education so that, when your turn comes, you can return the favor with interest? Are you sure you like the concept of a republic? Why not a nice streamlined dictatorship? Just think of all the stuff that could get efficiently done! And then, every two or three decades, when the dictator dies, you have all the fun of the high-stakes all-out political scramble for power. Or if that isn’t frequently enough for you, there’s always the probability of Praetorian Guards being paid off to assassinate Caesar and precipitate a new election.
“…the not-passed ObamaCare, but favors the virtually-identical-but-already-passed RomneyCare.”
To which ObamaCare is it virtually identical? The 2,700 page Senate version, whose contents are unknown even to some members of the Senate — or the 1,000 page House version, which, according to some members of the Democrat Party in the House, is entirely different from the Senate version.
Nightmare scenario: Congress puts health care “reform” on hold for now, goes on to other things. In the November 2010 elections, Democrats lose control of the House or the Senate, making it clear that the next Congress won’t give Obama what he wants. Congress convenes after the election, and lame-duck Representatives pass the Senate bill in the House with no changes whatsoever — it’s better (in their eyes) than nothing, this is their last chance to ram something through, and there’s nothing the peasants can do about it. Obama signs Senate version of health care bill, congratulates Congresscritters on their “bravery,” “bipartisanship,” and “patriotism.” Obamacare becomes immortal and unkillable. Blech.
Mike,
Unless you presume that virtually 100% of the Democratic CongressThings(tm) are thrown out in the 2010 election, it is almost impossible to see how they would have enough votes for a valedictory passage of ObamaCare (Senate version). If the Dems lose control of the House (the Senate looks safe beyond any possible set of circumstances, though I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong), just where would the votes come from? Nobody likes this bill in the first place, and unless you presume that the outgoing politicians really don’t care what happens next (some won’t, but some will have ambitions for the future), just what do they get from a ‘death ride’ for The One?
Jim,
I find it rare to say this, but bravo to you! I disagree with most of what you say (like Carl, I am a small government conservative, and believe that the filibuster and restrictive cloture are features, not bugs), but you make a reasoned case for your position, and it is an almost flawless example of ‘reasonable people can disagree’. A small point…Hamilton makes his case in Fed.75 based almost entirely on historical precedent when comparatively few republics existed. Given the expanded amount of data (i.e. more examples) available today, Hamilton’s case looks much, much weaker. Perhaps this isn’t a fatal flaw, but I am not entirely sure that Hamilton would make the same arguments today.
This is the 111th Congress. The elections in November 2010 will pick the members of the 112th Congress, who will take office in January 2011. But members of the 111th Congress have a couple of months in which they can enact legislation, after the November elections and before they leave office.
The Democrats who are voted out in November will have nothing more to lose — do you really think they’ll be nominated again by their party in 2012? So why not give a big “F– You!” to the people who voted them out? And the ones who are re-elected can’t be turned out of office for another two years. They might very well decide that the electorate has a short-enough attention span that what they do in late November 2010 won’t matter in early November 2012. A lot can happen in two years; maybe the horse will learn to sing!
In fact, some Democrat activists have been urging the House to pass the unmodified Senate bill now in order to get something through. I think that’s unlikely because the Congresscritters know they’ll face the voters in November. But after the election, what would deter them?
I will admit that — fortunately! — the scenario is improbable, because Pelosi could only muster up 220 votes for the House bill the first time around, and fewer Democrats would be inclined to vote for the Senate version. But if they lose big in 2010, this scenario could offer the Democrats their last chance for a generation to grab one-sixth of the U.S. economy.
Fair enough. But you must realize to we small-government lovers of liberty, this is a feature, not a bug.
Only if you think that liberty is so unappealing to voters that it can only be defended with a rearguard action that makes it harder to pass laws.
Nobody likes this bill in the first place
Huh? 60% of the Senate, representing 65% of the U.S. population, voted for it! Few major initiatives in the last 20 years have attracted that level of support.
In fact, some Democrat activists have been urging the House to pass the unmodified Senate bill now in order to get something through. I think that’s unlikely because the Congresscritters know they’ll face the voters in November.
Those Congresscritters have already voted for a health care reform bill, so they already have to defend themselves to the voters in 2010. Do you think they’ll be better off saying “I voted against it after I voted for it”?
their last chance for a generation to grab one-sixth of the U.S. economy.
I’d say it’s the last chance to avoid a government health care system. If ObamaCare (for lack of a better name) does not pass, it will be at least a decade before major reform is attempted again. After another decade or two of health care inflation, the only priority will be cost control, and that will mean single-payer.
This is the last chance for Obama, but it’s also the last chance for private insurance.
[For myself, I’d rather have single-payer, but I’d rather have a reformed private insurance system today than have to wait a decade or two for single-payer.]
Great comment Carl!
But you must realize to we small-government lovers of liberty, this is a feature, not a bug.
It is as if all the previous comments about limiting the government, not to mention Rand’s consistent position on limiting government, went over his head.
Laws are restrictions on liberty. No laws and outright anarchy is not good, but that’s why the Constitution (a law) was written to both enact laws to prevent anarchy and limit government. It worked damn well to turn a new nation into a super power in just over a century.
Unfortunately, technology eventually surpassed the Constitution. Things like the light bulb allowed Congress critters to pass laws in the middle of the night. Then phones and teletype allowed them to take graft from anywhere in the country, while never leaving DC. Cars and planes just made graft worse, and made it easier to work in DC longer, yet still make quick visits home to convince the peasants they were still hometown guys.
We now have a machine in DC that writes bills that have more laws and words than all the previous world’s laws from every country from the Roman Empire to the writing of the Constitution. They have to be written that large, so that the 24 hour news coverage will have no other time beyond covering their work. It doesn’t matter what the laws actually say, they aren’t held by the laws or even worry about following them (see latest example).
Once again your epistemology is flawed (specifically your abuse of the word “representing.”). 60 people in the Senate were “for it”, some of which only after hundreds of millions of dollars of kick-backs. A superior metric, the polling data, shows that most people were not for it. This reveals a disconnect between the wishes of the Senators and those of the population.
…which no one is going to go for, so it won’t happen.
Only if you think that liberty is so unappealing to voters that it can only be defended with a rearguard action that makes it harder to pass laws.
Jim, everyone’s own liberty is appealing to him. I’m sure you prize your own liberty, and I prize mine. The problem is: to what extent do you prize my liberty? Particularly when it gets in the way of something you want? How much are you willing to forgo your dreams of how the world should work because I stupidly refuse to go along?
Not much, is my guess. Very few of us are so altruistic that we prize other people’s liberty when our own values and hopes and comfort are at stake. We can usually talk ourselves into thinking that the hapless fool who opposes us will actually appreciate what we’re doing, even though it infringes on his liberty, once he “gets it.” (Just like the President thinks we’ll all love his Obamacare, once we “understand it.”)
That’s the danger of a democracy. That a majority will have some goal in mind — sometimes a laudable goal, like, say, going to the Moon or educating all kids or building a power plant, but sometimes a nasty goal, like a war of aggression, or preventing people with a different skin color from voting, or immigration — and the majority will easily be able to talk themselves into trimming a bit off the liberty of a minority in order to accomplish those goals.
You’ll note history backs this up plenty. Majorities rarely have any difficulty suppressing the liberty of minorities when it suits their “higher” (ha ha) purposes.
So, yeah, the idea that I would willingly leave my liberty to the tender mercy of the voters is nonsense on stilts. That would be the height of folly. And, therefore, I prize every gadget the Founders threw into the path of a power-mad majority, to prevent it from making the trains run on time, or setting up a nice efficient gulag, or setting up The One True Best Way to get your healthcare.