What nobody seems to be saying - not Mr. Howard, not Mr. Goldsmith, not Ms. Lithwick, in fact no major figures in media or law, is why all of this law is generated.

Let's face it, there's a lot of it. Americans are constrained at every turn by local, state and federal laws far too numerous for any one person to grasp, let alone obey.

In just one narrow area, Federal procurement, the laws are so complex and voluminous that it takes a team of legal experts to shepherd each major procurement through - and even then, the odds are good that some part of it will violate some obscure clause somewhere, giving legal fodder to those who didn't get the award. Laws are the primary reason that it takes so long - sometimes years - to make a major award. Some procurements take longer to award than it took the US to enter and win World War II, from start to finish. We sure didn't have this problem back then. Why do we have it now?

The simple answer is that we are now wholly governed by special interests. Laws are complex, contradictory, and vast because special interests lobby for statues and clauses which benefit them. They are successful because local, state and federal politicians take money from those special interests and are responsive to them. The result is a patchwork quilt of laws intended to advantage those who funnel money into politician's campaign chests.

At some point, the sheer weight of law becomes unmanageable: too many lawsuits, too many prisons, too many lost dollars, litigation too expensive for most citizens to afford (which tilts justice into the hands of the wealthy). It's a drag on risk-taking, a drag on initiative, a drag on investment, a drag on the economy. Try to start up a new business and discover just how difficult and expensive it is, legally (and how much you'll have to pay for insurance against lawsuits). It's extremely disheartening.

Bush and his cronies had no problem with laws that constrained his political enemies or ordinary Americans; he just wanted to bypass laws that constrained him. Down that road lies autocracy, and he as much as admitted it with his theory of the unitary executive. That's a fancy-pants term for dictator. He couldn't quite pull it off; Americans are not ready to give up on the rule of law. But they're getting close.

That's a clear and present danger - that if we do not find a way to reign in the access of special interests and simplify our legal code, our frustration will lead us down the road that Italy traveled in the 1920s, and Germany in the 1930s, and Russia is traveling again after its brief flirtation with democracy.

What can we do? Here's what I think:

- End criminalization of drug use; America's second experiment with prohibition worked no better than its first. Addiction is a health problem. Let doctors handle it.

- Set an expiration date for all laws - say, no more than 5 years. Pass a law which forces an expiration date for already on the books. This will keep the legislature focused on debating and renewing the fundamental legal structure rather than endlessly embellishing it with minutia.

- No harm, no foul. End criminalization of behaviors which affect only the self or which occur between consenting adults without harming anyone else (and no, moral outrage is not harm).

- Set a length limit for all legislation. If a law is longer than, say, 80 typed pages, it's too complex to be administered. Enforce brevity. Perhaps that won't ensure clarity, but it would be a step in the right direction.

- Get rid of the lobbyists. Seriously. Lobbyists do more damage to the nation in a single day than all the terrorists in our history have done put together.

- Simplify the tax code. No, I'm not advocating a flat tax, though I don't rule it out as a possibility (I'd want to see how it was done, and what the alternatives are). I honestly don't see why the entire US tax code could not be written in 80 pages. There'd be little room for breaks for special interests, and that suits me just fine.

- Budgets should be budgets. There's no reason to use them sneakily as vehicles for still more legislation. Separate funding laws from all the rest and keep them separate.

- End earmarks.

- Root out corruption. And yes, if you take money from XYZ corporation and then push legislation to benefit them, that's corruption. It isn't complicated.

That would be a start. I admit, I'm no legal scholar. The list could probably be improved by experts. But that's the tack I think we need to take, and I am worried that if we don't take it, a would-be autocrat will convince enough citizens to let him steal the democracy ball and run away with it.