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.

I was with you all the way until you got to this "The list could probably be improved by experts." and that is what opened my Pandora's Box. You do realize just what the 'experts' are?

"It's 99% of the Lawyers that give the rest a bad name." Larry the Cable Guy

Sorry that's a silly list for the most part. Its not like corruption is something that is advocated by any particular party. Or that special interest groups are inherently bad. In fact a group advocating your ideas would by definition be... a special interest group: one intersted in better goveranance - and competing and cooperating with other special interests involved in governance issues.

As for your ideas:

• 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.
  
  I agree, but politically it is a non-starter and it has limited impact on the complexity of the law
  .
• - 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.
  
  Bad idea. What it means is that there will be no predictability in large segments of the law. That means less business investment and a much much poorer economy. And yet the complexity of the bills will remain. Because in essence the lege will take the easy way out: simply taking the text of the old bill and ladeling on a bunch of new exceptions.
  .
• - 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).
  
  Again, a good idea with no political support and no realy impact on the complexity of legislation.
  .
• - 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.
  
  REALLY bad idea. This leads to overgeneralized laws, which in turn allows more loopholes and requires more time in court to settle the issue
  .
• - 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.
  
  Really? Setting aside that this is unconstitutional (the right to petition the government) The reality is that your own advocacy of this idea makes you a "lobbyist". The problem is not lobbyists per se. Rather it is the revolving door that has become the defacto way of operating in DC. This is a really bad idea
  .
• - 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.
  
  And it would move all manufacturing jobs out of the country. The complexity of the tax code is not particularly much in the area of breaks for special interests. Instead it primarily deals with how you properly calculate the allowable costs basis for what it is that you manufacture. For example, is paying for NexTel cell phones on the factory floor fully or only partially deductible since you use the walkie talkie feature to for operational support, but sometimes workers use them to call out on personal business
  .
• - 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.
  
  Nice words. Completely empty of meaning. Laws are laws. Ones dealing with funding are laws that deal with funding of programs, nothing distinguishing about that.
  .
• - End earmarks.
  
  Meaningless. Earmarks are not necessarily bad. For example, in the bailout bill, specifying that the funds can only be used for bailing out individual homeowners would constitute an "earmark" yet that would be an important aspect of the legislation.
  
  One person's earmark is another person's "fiscal accountability'
  .
• - 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
  
  On this I disagree. We all know how important corruption is and how hard the administrations have fought to increase corruption in the government.....
  
  Seriously, this is just a hollow windmill against which to tilt. Every party fights corruption. Every administration experiences it. So what.

So your list would be an awful start - very harmful to the USA.

Eh, I claim no infallibility for myself. The ideas I floated are scattershot. They might not be the best solutions. But I think we ought to be talking about what's possible, and what the consequences would be of adopting some of the possibilities. I see no reason to constrain the list to the merely politically easy. Following the path of least resistance is what got us to this point. Ending criminalization of behaviors which only affect the self or which occur between consenting adults without harming anyone else *will* reduce congestion in the court system. Congestion is a major problem - it increases the cost burden of the justice system and extends the time it takes to resolve practically everything. "Getting rid of lobbyists" doesn't mean preventing citizens from petitioning their government. It only prevents those petitioning citizens from paying for the privilege. Petition all you want, but if you do, you can't funnel money to the politicians you're petitioning. That would end lobbying as we know it. The tax code already is slanted towards exporting jobs. I doubt simplifying it would make things worse than they are. You're mistaken about the nature of budget legislation, at least at the Federal level (I'm not sure about states). These enormous instruments are often the vehicles of policy, not merely funding decisions. Earmarks are "not necessarily bad." But they are nearly always undebated. They're like barnacles on a ship, often having no relationship to the purpose of legislation to which they are attached. They add to the morass of complexity of the legal code. Most would never pass if they were debated on their own merits - and they should be debated on their own merits. So, Degsme, what are your ideas? It's easy to criticize, a bit harder to come up with solutions.

Decriminalization of drugs would dramatically reduce congestion in criminal courts, no question. Which would move civil litigation from a 3-5 year waiting list down to a 1-2 year wating list.

But that would probably only increase the number of working lawyers since torts would finally have opened up again.

"Getting rid of lobbyists" doesn't mean preventing citizens from petitioning their government.

Uh, yes it does. someone who petitions their government is inherently a lobbyist since they are lobbying for a cause. Nor can you prohibit a citizen from contributing to the election campaign of a politician who's ideas you support because they were demonstrated in action after you petitioned/lobbied/explained your viewpoint.

Sorry you can't accomplish this in anything similar to a Constitutional manner.

And no, the tax code is not slanted towards exporting jobs. If anything the tax code is slanted TOWARDS capital intensive (read manufacturing) jobs. "simplfying it" would destroy that and the exodus of jobs really would create Perot's "giant sucking sound".

As for earmarks, they are invariably debated. But that debate is not necessarily on what YOU might consider as "the merits". That debate may go something like: "I'm passionate about fixing Global Warming - how can I get you to vote with me on the next bill"...to which the answer comes back - "well I've been trying to fund a pilot project in my district to produce diesel from soya plants. Since Soya-Diesel is a net carbon sequestration, I take it I can count on your vote for the pilot project"..

Its horsetrading, its ugly but it is how the system is SUPPOSED to work.

Note that simply because a clause isn't related to the primary premise of the law does not mean that it is a drag on the passage of that bill. It may very well be what makes it slip through the water like a sinuous sea snae.

Personally I don't see the problem that you see. I see a complicated society being regulated in a nuanced and complex way. Could it be imroved? sure. Is the improvmnt necessarily worth the cost - much much less clear.