Free Republic

Reflections on the anniversary of the Seventeenth Amendment “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.” - Constitution of the United States of America, Article 1, Section 3 And so it was, for about 124 years, from the implementation of the Constitution in 1789 through the implementation of Amendment XVII, on April 8, 1913. With the Seventeenth Amendment, the progressive era reached its pinnacle. Direct election of United States Senators forever severed the tethers by which the state...

If you advocate direct elections for the U.S., take a second look at France's Le Pen mess. The results of the first stage of the French presidential election in April have been widely decried. In that election the anti-immigrant demagogue Jean le Pen scored an upset, beating out Socialist leader Lionel Jospin to enter the runoff against Gaullist candidate Jacques Chirac. Given the widespread loathing for Le Pen, he has essentially no chance to defeat Chirac and become France's next president. But the election result does provide an important lesson for would-be reformers of the American electoral system. In the...