December 27, 2020

Rewriting the Constitution

December 27, 2020/ Andy Zehner

Any change to our governmental processes should retain as much of the good stuff as possible. It should be based on as much wisdom as possible, including “James Madison’s genius.” But it should also include innovations since James Madison, from other American scholars and from other nations’ experiences in government and civil society. It is good to admire the American founders. But it is foolish to think that nothing new has been learned since their day or that nothing better is possible today.

October 07, 2020

435 is Not Enough

October 07, 2020/ Andy Zehner

The founders’ ideal of 30,000-to-one has faded in the rear-view mirror. The number of constituents each member of the House represents now varies from a little over 500,000 in Rhode Island to more than a million in Montana. Montanans have half the representation that Rhode Islanders have, and that’s not fair. But nobody anywhere in America gets the level of representation the founding fathers intended, and that is not fair, either.