Jim:

Why would any politician, Democrat or Republican, want to dilute his/her power by adding more potential voters to the voter pool? This would be particularly true for Republicans when voting on the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009. The voters of D.C. are assumed to be overwhelmingly Democrat. Both senators Chambliss and Isackson voted in exactly the correct way for members of the Republican party.

The problem with the American Republican political system is the parties involved in the political system. George Washington, in his farewell address, advised against joining "liasons." Yes, the U.S. has a long history of two-party "representation." However, my response is: Congratulations, you have one more party than the former Soviet Union.

The policy of both major parties is to stay in power. I truly believe that the Republican and Democrat parties would swap their respective political platforms if it meant that they could stay in power, or come to power. And I believe that many voters, not all, would continue to vote along party lines.

This is not to say that the voters are stupid. Far from it. Not voting is counter-productive. So we end up voting for the lesser of two evils. I know that President Obama really believes in bringing "change" and "hope" to the political machinations in Washington, but at CPAC we heard that Republicans should hope that the President's stimulus package would fail. Or that Jesus Christ probably had more "executive experience" than Barack Obama. Ann Coulter is funny, Rush Limbaugh is just a "Big Fat Liar." What kind of party policy is it that hopes the President's economic policies fail?

And before we become too self-righteous: How many of us wanted former-President Bush's war policy in Iraq to fail? I did and as they say: "Be careful what you wish for." It did fail, it continues to fail, and we will be paying the price of that failure for decades to come. Failure is not the problem. We all fail. But what do we learn from our failure? For our two-party system the answer is to hope that your opponent's policies fail in a more spectacular manner than our policies failed. Therein lies the whole root of the problem. We hope for failure, as long as it's the other party.

How do we change this? Well, first get more involved in your community. After all it is "we the people." No people - no community. Push hard for independent candidates. Take a leaf from the

. . . I was going to say, take a leaf from the Brits and form an Official Monster Raving Loony Party (OMRLP),  but I forgot what my point was. Oh well, back to the sheep.