Nicole, you are as usual clearly focused on the core of the thing -- and that is the issue indeed. If we do not restore the balances between the center-- the Constitutional umbrella -- and the pathetic legislative and the rogue and somewhat mindless executive --we will be handing on a sorry legacy indeed. You and I will probably move on before it gets as bad as Orwell envisioned, but my daughter will grow up believing that the Bill of Rights, like the ancient bands of Dixieland and knights in armor, were part of an long-gone happier past.

The key to my mind is to understand what happened. The growth of communication and transport power and the gradual creeping of Federalism far beyond its original scope led to a scale of commercial entitiy that Jefferson and Franklin and Huntington never imagined. And that led in turn to the loophole of commercial power over the state. Today it costs a lot to become a senator, and much more to become a president. It seems off that the acceleration of communication has driven the cost of running into the stratosphere, but it has. The centers of mass in corporate America are huge and exert a wrecking influence that far exceeds anything that was in play prior to the Second World War.

If there is a battle that can be fought for the future it would be around that issue, I think. Don't ask me how.

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