[inquest]

As much as I like James Madison and love to read his highly insightful writings, this is just one area where I disagree with him. He talks a good talk here, but can't really back up his contention. But even all that aside, his principal comment is not about the size of the house of representatives, but about the size of the district which is to elect each representative. His argument is that larger districts stand a better chance of finding someone among them who's well qualified for the job. But let's keep things in perspective: He was writing to defend districts of 30,000, which many people at the time thought was already too large. But today's districts are 20 times that size, so I'm pretty sure that such concerns as he expressed would be quite unfounded under even the most extreme proposals for congressional expansion.

[wildandcrazyrussian]

AS I have mentioned on previous occasions, I live one block from the officlal "residence" of our US Congressman, and I have not seen him in person for about 10 years now. He will however get re-elected to Congress until the end of his life (as was his father before him) because he is a) of the majority Democratic party and b) he "brings money" in from the federal appropriations process (ie our own personal tax money being blessed by the feds and returned to our "community"). Nobody seems to mind having their political voice bought out.

The basic problem of course is that any subtitute proposals will never make it through Congress to be sent to the states.