As a man married to a woman from a foreign country, this is exactly why I have come to oppose intergender marriages.

Changing the winner-take-all voting system to a first-past-the-post system would be a huge improvement. But even better would be having the government go back to doing only those things a government should. I wouldn't mind only getting to vote 11 times in 12 years if the government were only making 11 important decisions about my life in 12 years. But when it is running nearly everything it becomes very hard to register my disapproval about anything in particular, and especially about a number of things. So I vote Republican this year - is that because I like their immigration policy, or was it their tax policy, or was it their spending promises, or was it their Supreme Court picks, or was it their freedom of religion stand, or was it in spite of some or many of those? Nobody but me knows, and I get to hear a lot of nonsense from political pundits who want to spin my vote into something I never intended.

Having a lot of political parties so I could vote for one on a particular single issue would help, but there would still be a lot of issues where I don't think my voice can be heard.

Better to leave more issues to the free market and civil society.

I think you misunderstood the 1.1. In America we get to choose 1 president for 4 years, 2 senators for 6 years each, and 1 representative for 2 years. That gives us 11 votes over 12 years. Yikes, my math was wrong and it's worse than I said. We get less than one vote per year.

I care about more than 11 issues, but I don't get to choose 11 different politicians to address them - or even 3 different politicians to address them.

I own more than 11 different electronic devices, and I can choose a different company to provide each device.

You still have the problem of who writes it. Even the judicial branch isn't free from politics. It's only in recent years that the Supreme Court has almost swung back to the center after decades of hanging out on the left. You can imagine the different questions and answers the tests would have if they were written by an precedent-focused judge like Scalia vs an original-meaning focused judge like Thomas or a whatever-I-think-is-good-policy focused judge like Breyer.

Question 1: The ACA (Obamacare) is an exercise of the federal government's constitutional power to
a. regulate interstate commerce
b. tax
c. promote the general welfare
d. none of the above

You can see how a judge could write that question and the answer would depend on which other judge is grading it. (or if House Speaker Pelosi were writing the question the answer would "ha ha ha ha ha".

I've seen a lot of suggestions about how we need quizzes or tests to make sure people are qualified to do some action in politics whether it be voting, running for office, making laws, whatever. I even made some suggestions myself when I was younger. The problem always comes down to reliably finding some neutral disinterested uncorruptible party to write the tests when few such parties exists and you can't trust the people tasked with finding them.

That does sound like something to get upset about.

But if the money is in my possession, doesn't a fair reading of the Constitution mean they have to prove it never belonged to me?

Because too many Americans want their government doing everything for them, and it nearly does. But we only get a few votes each year. This gives the politicians the opportunity to do a lot of things wrong so long as they do more things right than their opposition likely would.

Let me put it this way. I can about the national debt, generally following the Constitution, specifically allowing freedom of religion, illegal immigration, lowering spending, global warming, racism, NASA, good treatment of America's allies, treatment of America's enemies, free trade.

Every year I get just over one chance to choose Democrat or Republican on all these issues. I don't get to say "I'll have a Republican on following the Constitution, a Democrat on global warming, a Republican on illegal immigration, a Democrat on NASA..." Nor can I choose specific models "I'll have a far right republican on freedom of religion and a moderate republican on free trade..." I get to choose 1.1 person a year.


On the other hand in electronics I get to choose an Apple laptop, a Samsung handheld computer, a philips stereo, a Sony TV,... And when I choose that Sony TV I get to choose from so many models. And if I find I don't like one of these items after getting it home I can return it.


We need to have less control by the government and more control by the market because market control generally means freedom and excellent service.

Or a recognition that if the money goes in the bank your spouse will expand your expenses to match the income. The interest on the refund isn't nearly as much as I save by not letting my wife spend it for a year. It gives us a chance to buy something nice once in a while.

This is why the notion that we need more "compromise" in Washington is so overrated. The Democrats say they want higher spending and higher taxes. The Republicans say they want less spending and lower taxes.

The compromise is usually higher spending and lower taxes.

I have long thought that we should amend the Constitution to say that every bill must be read out loud in its entirety before it can be voted on, and that only members who sit quietly with no electronic equipment though the entire reading should be allowed to vote on it.

A bonus would be that every sponsor of a bill would have to approve every amendment to a bill. That way you would always have at least one person who could be held personally accountable fore the whole bill (i.e. they wouldn't be able to claim they had to vote for the bill even though it contained some provisions they didn't like since they would be able to eliminate any provision they didn't like).

Stop exploding liberal fantasies with your ridiculous facts.

Congress is more like .0001%, and yes they are as always. (Perhaps your 0.01% is accurate if you include enough government functionaries.)

I would like to know about the whole "due process of law" thing in the Constitution. I money considered property? If so, don't they have to give you due process before taking it (and generally "due process" is considered to be a trial where the burden of proof is on the government)?

Or is this one of those cases where some judges have already decided that their preferences and policies are more important than what the Constitution says?

If you can stand up, you get "on" the vehicle. Otherwise you get "in" the vehicle.

Have you ever met a doctor with the same opinions as the parent? Have you ever met a lawyer with those opinions? I suspect the reason your comments is that you haven't met many people who don't share your views on this matter, and that even if you have you have n't given them a fair hearing because you were to busy making presumptions about their motivations and background.