[ellery]

They cannot take away our rights -- our rights are inalienable and endowed by our Creator. They can, however, infringe on our rights -- and I agree they are doing that at a rapidly increasing pace.

What we can do is organize, run for office ourselves, and encourage other like-minded citizens to do the same.

[NJ_gent]

"What we can do is organize, run for office ourselves, and encourage other like-minded citizens to do the same."

Those in office are well-funded by special interest groups. Do we really have the ability to challenge someone who's getting millions from big companies and whose name is well-known? I think you're assuming we have an informed public. Unfortunately, media-driven name dropping is enough to get a lot of these people into office. To provide meaningful change, we'd need to get decent people elected to at least half of Congress. Considering half the country votes Democrat, that appears increasingly unlikely. Look at it this way: how many candidates could Freepers and DUers agree on?