I watched a presentation by Lawrence Lessig today about why we need campaign finance reform now, and it got me thinking — the ideal of democracy is 1 person, 1 vote. But how much of a vote does each of us have?
First, here’s the presentation:

Each citizen starts off with one vote. But those with the [...]

Back in March, the Washington Post referred to Rush Limbaugh as the new Minority Leader. After Limbaugh repeatedly expressed the hope that Obama would fail and Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele criticized him for it, Steele had to apologize to Limbaugh.
Are you kidding me?
Let me see if I’ve got this right. We’re supposed to try [...]

The first time I saw Sarah Palin, she struck me as an intelligent, well-spoken person who had her head on straight. I’m not saying that I was ready to call myself a Republican again, but I was impressed. (BTW, I’m not calling myself a Democrat either, just so that you know).
So why on earth is [...]

A few days ago, John Reese posted the following on Twitter:
“i used to think libertarians were a bit wacky but now I’m really starting to see that a lot of what they believe makes sense / ‘grant me the freedom to do whatever I want unless it infringes on the freedom of others.’ it’s essentially [...]

While I was at my father’s house during the Christmas holiday, we had an interesting discussion of the problems in Iraq and throughout the middle east. The three main sources of information were my brother-in law (an air force intelligence officer who has spent time with military personnel from a variety of middle eastern countries), [...]

As I prognosticated back in March (along with a million other precient bloggers, I’m sure), the republican party suffered a severe drubbing in the midterm elections. It looks like the candidates didn’t distance themselves enough from Bush, and although I’m a lot closer to being a republican than a democrat, I think they got what [...]

A few weeks ago, I read about some Stanford professor’s idea for how to ensure that the winner of the popular vote gets elected president. If a few states (only 11 would be needed if the big states signed on) agreed to give their electoral votes to the national winner of the popular vote, they [...]

I remember in an economics class once hearing that everyone is better off if every place (country, state, town, region, whatever) produces and exports whatever they produce best and imports whatever somebody else can produce cheaper, and nobody puts up trade barriers. The idea seems great on it’s face–everyone is creating as much value as [...]

Wired News is reporting that the DOJ has dropped its investigation of the NSA’s warrantless wiretaps of US citizens because the NSA won’t give the DOJ lawyers security clearance. If somebody (ie. congress) doesn’t step in and protect the American people, this is extremely disturbing–the Bush administration violates any law they want (including the Constitution), [...]

The Bush administration, claiming national security concerns, plans to scuttle the suit alleging that AT&T illegally collaborated with the NSA to spy on US citizens. I’m becoming more and more convinced that, in the interest of the security of the citizens of the US, it’s time for members of the republican party to collaborate with [...]