Wake me up when 3rd parties aren't run by crazy people more concerned with ideology than governing. The wonderful thing about our plurality based system is that it pretty much guarantees there will be two parties that have to spend most of their efforts appealing to moderate voters while radicals are shut out. The electoral college reinforces this since the most moderate voters in the most moderate states can make or break an election. I'd much rather have two centrist parties fight for a majority than see a moderate party end up with a plurality and having to enter into a coalition government with a communist or neofascist party. Multiparty systems can leave radical parties that have relatively few seats with far more power than is healthy simply because they have enough to sway the balance of power.

America's governing system was established with a bias towards moderation and divided in a way that promotes gridlock. A party that has the House may not have the Senate or Presidency. A party that has all three might be obstructed if they don't have 60/100 votes in the Senate by a minority party's filibuster. The Supreme Court can reign in Congressional overstep and is largely immune to sudden shifts in public opinion. Even if a party has all of the federal government under its thumb it still is limited by Constitutional protections and in addition to the horizontal division of power our government has vertical divisions of power (that is the 10th Amendment and other provisions divide power between the federal and state governments). Most states have similar checks and balances and have to have cooperation with local and regional governments on some matters.

This gridlock gets criticized because it makes it hard to get something done by the mere whims of a majority but that is why America has done so well. Radical changes are impossible and our government is more evolutionary than revolutionary. In parliamentary systems a Prime Minister will seldom have any trouble getting whatever he wants through parliament since he has a majority or at least a majority coalition and party discipline is strict because breaking with your party can lead to a disillusion of parliament. In America, members of congress will periodically break with their party and having a majority may procedurally ensure a party can block whatever it doesn't want (for example, the House Rules Committee is always dominated by the majority and can put procedural limits on an unwanted bill to make it impossible to pass), but a majority cannot always get everything it wants.

In my view the lack of 3rd parties is probably a plus since it promotes stability. If we could fix anything about our electoral system, I'd want US House and State Legislative seats to be drawn by independent bodies with strict rules and for term limits to be applied to members of Congress. Gerrymandering means most members of congress are in seats virtually guaranteed to be "safe" and can only be defeated by being primaried by a member of their own party who claims they aren't representing the party accurately enough. It also makes many members of Congress and state legislatures virtually immune to public scrutiny since most of them simply cannot be defeated and it can leave elected officials without clear communities of interest to represent. Term limits would guarantee someone won't be endlessly re-elected simply by virtue of name recognition and will ensure seniority doesn't grant uncompetitive parts of the country such ridiculous amounts of power. We are one of the few countries in the world that uses a winner take all system and still allows for politicians to pick their own voters. Reform is slowly emerging though. Arizona, Iowa, New Jersey and a few other states put independent commissions in charge though many are still prone to partisan agendas. In 2008 California, a state that is perhaps one of the least competitive in the nation due to gerrymandering, saw reform as voters passed an initiative to draw legislative seats with a bi-partisan panel and in 2010 voters expanded that panel's power to drawing US House seats. In Florida in 2010 voters passed initiatives to put strict rules on the way their legislature redraws state legislative and US House seats. While the shape of US House and State Legislative seats may not seem important it is and since this is a year ending in a 1 the states are currently fighting over how to reshape their seats. About the only states that have much hope of reform are states where voters can amend their state constitutions by initiative since legislatures will never accept such a curtailment of their own power but I think things will go better this year than in previous decades since Florida and California, both high population states, will finally draw somewhat fair maps.

Somehow I doubt a differing view held by some on the theory of evolution has all that much economic impact.

Yes, and nobody is suggesting everybody drop out, just those who already have ideas and are participating in this experiment.

I would say quite the opposite. I think colleges these days still focus on electives and simply being present there for 4 years. I would much rather do something productive then sit around gazing at my navel in some stupid philosophy class.

Many of our states have a mix of the two. It has been a disaster for California but here in Colorado it hasn't been all that bad. In about half the states voters can directly enact legislation by initiative and even more local governments have such processes in place.

Here in Colorado about 5% of voters can sign a petition to initiate a law or amend the state constitution. Voters have enacted a balanced budget amendment, a law requiring voter approval for all tax hikes (known as the Taxpayer Bill of Rights or TABOR), term limits, and a whole host of other legislation. Our state legislature is extremely weak but we still have a functional system of government. I would never want initiatives at the national level, but keeping the common man involved in some way or another is a good idea.

The reason businesses both big and small are ever increasingly intertwined with politics is because government is getting ever increasingly bigger. Remarkably little was spent on lobbying when the federal government spent a tiny fraction of the GDP since it was largely irrelevant. Businesses don't have any agenda beyond remaining profitable. There is nothing wrong with the desire for profits, but if we task the federal government with such vast regulatory power don't be surprised when businesses lobby.

The first amendment covers the right to protest and express ideas, not the right to steal classified documents. The Supreme Court has never declared the constitution to be a suicide pact.

There is nothing stopping this right now besides antitrust, but I still don't see it happening.

To a limited extent some of that exist or has.Some web providers used to offer discounted e-mail and browsing only packages (often they had time limits as well). Many ISPs also block ports when a really bad worm or exploit relies on them and few others are using them. Most ISPs will also start blocking certain protocols if they suspect a PC is spreading an infection or spam. Some also allow for "network wide" parental controls for customers that want them. Basically DNS listings are redirected on these to block sites similar to how the host file or a filter can do it locally. Some throttle bittorrent during periods of high demand. I favor this since the alternative is paying more for access so that better connection speeds can be reached or enduring a far slower connection when gaming. I see absolutely nothing wrong with any of these "non-neutral" actions so long as I, the customer, can be made aware of them. I am far more concerned about the prospect of regulation of the internet. The cure seems likely to be far worse than the disease. Anti-trust laws are sufficient to stop anti-competitive practices.

Ritalin is widely available as a generic medication.

Failing that, I want an article saying Roswell aliens killed JFK and caused 9/11.

You do realize that the the labor theory of value is very widely discredited. Investing is not some giant conspiracy against workers. Investment enables the economy to allocate resources in ways that allow for workers to ... well work. A farmer does much better if a speculator can buy their crops at a fixed rate than selling them on the open market. He no longer must bare the entire risk of markets when he farms. Onions cannot be speculated on, and as a result onion farmers are frequently put out of business by wild fluxuations in the market. A person who wants to expand their business may sell bonds or issue stock. These sources of money may not have actual work behind them, but they let the business expand so that actual work can be done.

By law nobody is ever turned down for healthcare in any sort of emergency. 85% of Americans have health insurance but all have access to health care. The fact that the overwhelming majority have insurance shows clearly that it is not exclusive to the rich. A large majority of Americans say they are happy with the quality of care they receive. Of the 15% who are uninsured, about half could afford it but choose to risk it (which is what all forms of insurance are, paying to control a financial risk), and of the remaining uninsured, most are already eligible for programs such as Medicaid and cannot be turned down by hospitals even if they don't pay. America's healthcare system also hardly demonstrates the evils of capitalism, as it isn't a market based system at all. It is the single most regulated industry in the country and the law structures it so that most people are covered through third parties (namely their employer) and are basically required to receive coverage for things they don't need (regulations vary wildly from state to state with no shopping across state lines), and there is the constant overhead created by paperwork and litigation.

America is still the largest economy of any country in the world and we are astoundingly successful. For most of human history, the norm has been tyranny, war, brutality, disease, and poverty, but America has been a pleasant exception. It is largely because we were founded on the idea that individuals should be allowed the freedom to pursue their own interest that we have seen such prosperity.

The courts did absolutely nothing to legalize bribery. Quid pro quo exchanges of money for votes are still very much illegal, and unless you have been huffing paint thinner, you'd have no way of interpreting what SCOTUS said this way.

Regardless of your views on the case, money already was a huge player. It always has been, it will continue to grow, the McCain-Feingold "Campaign Finance Reform Act" did absolutely nothing to reduce the influence of money in politics, as is clearly evident in the fact that we saw some of the most expensive elections in history in the campaigns since it passed. The only thing it really has done is made candidates put those awkward "approve this message" lines in their commercials (which is still in place),encouraged increased use of 3-rd party campaigns (still in place but less relevent), and reduced the competativeness of most elections since it is much more of a pain to criticize opponents (hence its critics have dubbed it the "Incumbency Protection Act"). A politician still must earn your vote and the extreme majority of campaign contributions tend to go to candidates that already favored a viewpoint. Suppose you are a gun company. It is a lot easier to promote a candidate who is already pro-gun than to persuade an anti-gun candidate to join you. All the recent court ruling did was make it so companies can more directly contribute to political speech, rather than indirectly contribute via third parties.

Actually, the rate of illegal immigration appears to be declining due to the poor economy. I also would doubt legal H1-Bs hold too negative an impact on the US economy. What do you assume those workers do with the money they've earned? Do you think they eat it? They turn around and re-spend it here, creating jobs or they ship it overseas which removes currency from the US, thus reducing inflation. (It isn't the presence of dollar bills in the economy that make it worth money, it is the asset value the economy has, money is just a token to represent that value.) Illegal immigrants cause problems largely because of the high crime rates associated with illegal human trafficking not the taking of jobs. Also, the US unemployment rate as calculated by the department of Labor (not the Fed, they are a semi-independant central bank) is based on a survey of about 60,000 households to estimate a national average. It is currently about 10%. Your claim of it being underrepresented is a myth that derives from the fact that a few state and local governments compile their stats that way.

Have you ever read history books? Have you ever heard of the Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall, the leader of the 19th century Democrat political machine of New York City? Have you ever read about the Teapot Dome scandal? The current levels of corruption pale in comparison to these.

Social Security might be something of a Ponzi scheme, but the rest of the federal government really doesn't come close to the defenition of a ponzi scheme. Taxes are a real source of revenue for the government and while the debt is liable to be a very serious problem, it is more likely the US will just see its credit score weaken (causing significant economic problems, but not destroying life as we know it) and bad inflation.

Well, you could just transition from collecting taxes on income and corporate income to collecting taxes on sales. The most co-sponsored piece of broad tax reform legislation is H.R. 25, the FairTax Act, a revenue neutral overhaul of the US tax code. It would repeal the entire income tax , corporate income tax, payroll tax, capital gains tax, death tax, and alternative minimum tax and replace all of these with a progressive national sales tax (offset payments tethered to the poverty rate are used to make it progressive). This would essentially turn America into a gargantuan tax haven, enabling global businesses to relocate here since taxes would be collected on sales rather than income. You could build stuff here, invest here, or move management here and operate tax free on everything except what you sold here, and a tax on the first retail sale of goods or services is much harder to evade than a tax on everybody and every companies income and there is far less overhead.

Ending gerrymandering and seniority would also be a good start. Gerrymandering is the process of drawing up electoral districts in a way that produces uncompetitive elections. It is why 90% of all US House Seats aren't competitive and remain easily won by one party for decades. California is the worst example. They have 53 US House Seats, and their state house has 80 seats and 40 seats are in their state senate. With exception to an upset in one House district, none of these seats generally have competitive elections since both parties agreed to redistrict in such a gerrymandered way that nobody could ever lose re-election. State's with Initiatives could put ballot initiatives in place to eliminate gerrymandering, and some have. Term limits can eliminate seniority issues. Many states have term limits, but members of the US congress do not. An amendment to the US constitution would be required to enact one. It is likely congress would never propose such a measure, but if 2/3 of all states pass resolutions calling for a convention to propose amendments, then a constitutional convention could draft such amendments instead. A balanced budget amendment, something many of our states have adopted would be a nice touch. 45 of our states allow for a line-item veto, which grants their governor the power to veto or reduce parts of appropriations bills such as pork project (usually subject to some form of override such as the ability for a simple majority in both houses to re-attach it to the bill.

Umm, is wasn't a copyright treaty that made McVeigh mass murder people.