doG

So does every challenge....

It doesn't sound like you've made much effort to understand the EC or the reason it was chosen. The Constitution grants no right to the people to directly choose the President of the union of the sovereign states. It grants the states of that union the rights to use an election system, the Electoral College, that effectively applies a weighted average to their voting power based on the sizes of their populations. It leaves the method of appointing electors up to the state legislatures. It just so happens that the state legislatures have chosen to use suffrage as their method but they could draw straws if they so chose. The reasoning behind the choice of this manner in electing the executive is found in Federalist Paper 68.

So. They each have powers the other does not. That does not make one the upper and the other the lower. In parliamentary systems that do have an upper and lower house only one can initiate legislation, the lower. The upper cannot even block it from passing, it can only slow it down. This is not the case in the U.S. because it IS NOT a parliamentary system. It will actually take a revision of the 5th Amendment to fix it which means updating the Constitution with another amendment

I see the problem as poor legislation. Good legislation says what it means and means what it says. It should not so vague that it leaves the court guessing what the intent was when the law was written. When it can be interpreted in more ways than intended we end up with what looks like judicial activism when the reality is that the court has simply found an interpretation that was not intended when the law was written. That was the case in Kelo vs New London when the court determined that the 5th Amendment could be interpreted to mean that "public use" included increased tax revenues. I doubt the framers intended that a man's private property could be transferred to another private party which could pay higher taxes on it but that is the interpretation we ended up with. Revenue is income, not spending. The budget is about spending money, not raising it. The restraint on bills for raising revenue means that all bills that raise or create taxes shall originate in the House.

Refer to them however you wish. We do not have an equivalent upper and lower house as many parliamentary systems do. Whatever "federal house" you're referring to does not produce the budget either. The U.S. budget process begins with a budget request from the executive branch that is submitted to both houses. The House and Senate budget committees are then each responsible for drafting a budget resolution. Each is argued on its respective floor to reach a concurrent resolution. Once the resolutions are passed a selection of members from both houses prepare a conference report to reconcile the differences. Yes, it's the general intent. Ultimately the power is "of" and "by" the people thus, the legislative branch has the ultimate power over the other two. You are correct. Legislation by judicial fiat is not a power the court is intended to have.

Actually it does have a clear meaning in the British Parliament. If you follow your own link back to wikipedia you will see the upper house has less power than the lower house and that it cannot initiate legislation. The Senate web site you linked to explains the term to describe the fear of tyranny that the framers used as a reason not to have upper and lower houses in the U.S. government. FWIW, this is similar to what I have proposed for two tiers in the people's house except for the reversal of roles with the upper people's house initiating legislation and the lower house voting on it.

Neither house can pass a law without the other side and it takes both houses to override a Presidential veto. Both houses are equal. Both houses introduce legislation and both review and consider legislation introduced by the other house. They are each simply house of representation, one for the people and one for the states. They do have some separate powers like impeachment. The House Of Representatives has the sole power to bring an impeachment against an executive or a judge and the Senate has the sole power to try such impeachments but it takes the two of them together to impeach and convict. That's not representative of the U.S. Legislature. The Constitution which forms the basis for two houses in the U.S. Congress makes no reference to an upper of lower house like those in the British Parliament.

Ummmmm...No. The Senate is not the "upper" house. It has no power over the House Of Represenatives, it is equal. It simply houses the state's representatives while the other houses the people's representatives.

Co-equal with whom? Technically the Legislative branch trumps both the Executive and Judicial branches. The legislature can even pass laws that the Judicial branch has no jurisdiction over. That's why you vest the sole power to pass legislation with the junior reps. Checks and balances is the key.

Jefferson stated this well in the famous "Wall Of Separation" letter in which he wrote, The Executive is only authorized to execute the acts of Congress. His/her power is limited to that granted by the Constitution and Congress has the sole power over the Constitution itself. By Constitutional Amendment the Congress can grant or take away the power of any branch.

Because that's how the states chose to appoint their electors. The states are perfectly free to choose their electors in the manner prescribed by the legislatures thereof. The executive branch is not a branch of representation, it is the branch intended to execute the will of the government as prescribed by Congress. The people and the states have their representatives in their respective house of Congress. Yes, its exactly what I meant to say. I am simply advocating that the states no longer have control over how the people's electors are appointed as they do now. The state legislatures may continue to decide how the two electors the state gets for each Senator get appointed. The electors for the congressional districts should be appointed in a manner prescribed by the people of that district, not the legislatures of the states. This would effectively divide the current Electoral College system into one where the will of the people is separated from the will of the states.

You have a gross misunderstanding of the Electoiral College system and why it was used. There was never any intent or design that the President would be a representative of the people or a President over the people. The President was by design an executor over the union of the states which are themselves separate entities than the people of the states. A system was needed to allow the states to elect the President of their union and the Electoral College was devised. It was left completely up to each state to decide how they would decide whom they would vote for. Each state could use any method they chose, a vote by their people, a poll of their legislature or even a drawing of lots if they so chose. The point is that it was an individual elected by the states and not the people thereof. The system is FAR from obsolete. It does need to be updated to reflect the changes we have endured, particularly the federal citizenship created in the 14th Amendment. A simple fix would be to reallocate the electors so that each district of the people gets one elector and each state still gets one for each of its Senators. This would separate and isolate the will of the people from the will of the states while maintaining the sovereignty of each.

Might I suggest The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System as one. The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a Digital Library portal for researchers in Astronomy and Physics, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. The ADS maintains three bibliographic databases containing more than 6.9 million records: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and arXiv e-prints.

But..... Belief is not truth and belief is not knowledge. It is knowledge and truth that science is about. It is the job of science to contradict and challenge that which is proffered from belief alone. It is the job of science to seek trustworthy proof. If you do not want contradictions then proffer your beliefs over in some "faith" forum. If you want to proffer them in a science forum then expect to be challenged.

For me his motivation is just too questionable to give much weight to his allegations. I'm inclined to think it lies somewhere between a total work of fiction and the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth but exactly where it lies is anybody's guess.

I think it would be difficult at best to come up with data on a model that hasn't been tested. For me it does seem obvious that more granular representation than we have now would more closely model the will of the people and the will of the people is what the people's representatives should represent. The big negative is cost but I don't think we need 6,000 or 10,000 professional representatives. I think the 435 we have now is sufficient for writing good legislation if we take away their majority power to pass it and disperse it among a larger population of legislative voters. We can continue to pay the legislative writers comparatively to what we do now and the voters a minimal fee like that given for jury duty.

Pay them some token fee for their voting service since that's basically all they'll be doing. They'll still have their regular jobs. The real work behind legislation would still be carried out in DC but the votes required to pass it would not.

We don't. See my post above.

I don't think we'll ever see 10,000 representatives or that we will see any significant change without the people throwing another Boston Tea Party and telling the government in place now that the "people" are taking it all back. I also don't know that I would want to spend the tax dollars to pay that many of them. Then again, in today's day and age, with the growing technology we have at hand, I don't know that they all need to live and work full time, for the people, in Washington, D.C. I think having 10,000 representatives working full time for the people is an impractical solution in the modern era. We need another approach that gives us the representation we should have without breaking us financially to get it or creating more gridlock in the legislative process. I think I would favor a structure similar to a board of directors and a population of shareholders. In this structure I envision that the people would select 10,000 people amongst themselves as representatives. Most of these people would not go to Washington though, they would keep their regular 8 to 5 jobs in their communities. From among themselves these 10,000 people would choose a council of around 500 members that would go to Washington and write legislation as the House of Representatives does now. These 500 would work full time for the people, as our representatives do now, and basically do the same job our current representatives do. As legislation comes up for a vote though, it would be voted on by the whole 10,000, not just the 500 they have sent to Washington. This would eliminate much of the backroom politics and deal making we have going on now. None of the 500 could negotiate with other council members in a you-vote-for-my-gift-and-I'll-vote-for-yours style of spending that we have now. Lobbyists would have to lobby the entirety of the 10,000 voters for the people because the 500 in D.C. wouldn't have any majority power to make backroom deals. I also think it would be destructive to the current 2 party system that seems to dominate. No longer would it matter as much the percentage of each party made up by the 500 member council writing legislation when the 500 alone have no majority voting power to swing the vote one way or another. There would be nearly zero advantage to having a majority of any party on the council itself. At any rate I'm just thinking out loud here but it's an opinion I think we all could benefit from. I am personally ready for the party to get started and I'd gladly toss the first crate of tea in the bay myself. It's time for the people to act and restore the principle of a government Of, By and For the people...

That's a nice opinion but here's the reality of the situation.... There's a thug in your neighborhood that wants a gun, a gun he claims is for defending his home. He's tried acquiring a gun from other members of the neighborhood but no one will sell one to him. That being the case he's decided that he'll just build his own. You know from past experience that he will resort to violence to get what he wants because he's previously taken you and your family hostage in an effort to get what he wants. Now he's running around the neighborhood proclaiming that the man that lives in the corner house must be exterminated but still, you wish to grant him the benefit of a doubt. Why should any of us believe that he won't use his own gun to do just that once he gets it built? Another way of looking at it is to consider it as a wager. Allowing a known rogue ideologist to acquire a nuclear weapon while taking no action to prevent it is essentially making a bet that he won't actually use it. Ask yourself, what could you gain by winning the bet versus what you risk if you lose the bet. What's at risk is the country of Israel and its people. What you could gain is nothing. With nothing to gain is the bet really worth it?

Some in the heart of the fire would be good and crispy, some would be raw and some would be somewhere in between. I've actually been into an area and helped to relocate animals that survived.

If you walk through an area where there's been a forest fire you will be amazed at how much is just barely burned or not burned at all. You could have completely raw animals that simply died of smoke inhalation and didn't get burned at all.

Roasted peanuts are great, boiled peanuts are not.

Oh I realize that completely. That's why I said they are the type of religious zealots that would do that, not that they are the religious zealots that did that. My only point is that they will coldly and meticulously plan their wrath while smiling and being friendly with you. They are driven to act by their beliefs and those beliefs are full of hatred and intolerance.

Keep one thing in mind about the type of religious zealots in control of Iran. They are the kind that will patiently send their people to pilots schools for years to learn how to fly jumbo jets and then while the west has their guard down use those pilots, who know they are going to die, to fly jumbo jets into skyscrapers for no other reason than to kill infidels. I think Islamic nations are just as entitled as we are to pursue nuclear deterrence but the current leaders of Iran are not trustworthy. For them the threat of their own annihilation is not a deterrent that will keep them from following their extreme beliefs. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated publicly and repeatedly that Israel must be wiped off the map. Do not underestimate his resolve to accomplish this.