[joe fonebone]

"The way I understood it, is that maybe the 17th amendment needs to be repealed"
I have been saying this for 15 years....the 17th amendment is what has cost the states their rights and has single handedly led to the power grab by the federal government

[Arthur McGowan]

1913—a disastrous year, when the Progressives took the White House, and got the 16th and 17th Amendments and the Federal Reserve.

[Hostage]

Repealing the 17th will do nothing without also repealing the 16th and replacing it with the HR 25 FairTax legislation (http://www.fairtax.org).

Both the 16 and 17th were given to us in 1913.

[JustSurrounded]

Speaking of the 17th amendment, I wonder if there's anything to be made of this (as in, why?). MD Senate Joint Resolution 1 "Maryland Ratification of the 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution" was pre-filed on 6/2/08 and had it's first reading on 1/14/2009. It has been referred to committee. What is THAT all about?

http://mlis.state.md.us/2009rs/billfile/SJ0001.htm

We're a little behind the times, maybe?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

I have been saying this for 15 years....the 17th amendment is what has cost the states their rights and has single handedly led to the power grab by the federal government

You know, don't you, that by the time the 17th was passed, 29 states had already gone to a popular election system for choosing their senators? There were good reasons for going to a popular vote at the time, including a string of scandals in which it was revealed that men had bribed a few key votes in their state houses to win their senate seats--or more correctly, that their wealthy business interest backers had bribed them-- as well as strings of partisan deadlocks that left states without any representation in the senate for years on end.

Maybe it would be better to repeal the 17th, but don't pretend that there weren't genuine problems under that way of doing things.