Micah: so many things about the US government that are now treated as Inviolable Precedent are based on things like "this is a number I just pulled out of my ass" and have been modified repeatedly over time until one day people decided changing the number was too hard it doesn't have to stay that way!

so many things about the US government that are now treated as Inviolable Precedent are based on things like "this is a number I just pulled out of my ass" and have been modified repeatedly over time until one day people decided changing the number was too hard it doesn't have to stay that way!

Seven times between 1801 and 1869 Congress changed the size of the court, going from a low of five justices in 1801 to a high of ten in 1863. In most of those cases, as in 1801 and 1863, the size went up and down in order to fix an imbalance or overreach by the Supreme Court. My latest

The Case for Expanding the Supreme Court Has Never Been Strongernewrepublic.com Biden has repeatedly refused to endorse “court-packing.” The right-wing justices’ ruling on presidential immunity ought to change his mind.

"the House is 435 members" is from 1929! this is not The Unchanging Vision of George Washington of whatever if these things aren't working, we can change them, and we should

Apportionment Act of whatever that fixed Congress to the current size 100 odd years ago Because Racism should REALLY be looked at while we are discussing expanding government branches and institutions.

For reference, the UK has a population about 1/5 of the US, and their house of commons has 650 members

That's not to say the US /should/ have 3000+ members, but also, there's a lot of space between 435 and there

The Wyoming Rule would be a decent start en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming...

Wyoming Rule - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

How about 1776? That'd be a nice symbolic number.

3000 seems like a lot. Just doubling the current size of Congress gets you double the # Congressional districts half the current size. Perhaps easier to campaign in. Perhaps harder to gerrymander.

3000 is still too low

I don't think more members really gets you anything of value. The apportionment between states already works out pretty fairly and there's already so many members that individual backbenchers get no scrutiny

Instead of having a thousand members I'd rather see the various caucuses be strengthened such that they're able to push back on leadership

And, as everyone discovered last week, it’s fucking HILARIOUS. What’s not to like?

Magic stick

So, merely for the sake of parity we should clearly have 3250 Representatives

and benches for 427!

i was surprised at this principally because the chamber doesn't look especially big

The big reason for 435 members is the size of the building. Imagine freezing your government based on a building.

I feel like we deserve a little “congressional colosseum” as a treat

Or we could use technology and and have a virtual House that is unconstrained by real estate or architecture.

More plausible, but probably less fun.

or a threat

Oh yeah, we’d definitely have to keep some hungry lions on hand

The Galactic Senate?

youtu.be/2QfPgj3h4DA?...

Mon Mothma Imperial Senate Scenes [4K HDR] - Star Wars: Andoryoutu.be Mon Mothma addresses the Imperial Senate, as seen in these 2 scenes taken from Andor Episodes 6 and 9 respectively. It truly is wonderful to see Genevieve O'...

SCOTUS youtu.be/Bf4YINfjQaQ?...

Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (1/8) Movie CLIP - A Klingon Trial (1991) HDyoutu.be Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country movie clips: http://j.mp/1uyWNKqBUY THE MOVIE: http://amzn.to/vT1H1QDon't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly...

hell, the British House of Commons has 650 members, and bench space for 427.

no, that's just a lie people tell. there's plenty of room to, at the very least, apportion districts in units of Wyoming's population

Congress by Zoom would be unworkable probably, but hilarious for a while

The US has been stuck since WW2 (really since FDR) in a holding pattern of "nothing significant about our institutions should change through political processes (but *can* change if SCOTUS decrees it) because institutional change is very fraught and would generate significant conflict"

Instead of fixing the ways our government was structured by racist priorities, we instead made racism illegal, & all hell broke loose, & continues to break loose.

Stuff like the Judiciary Act of 1891 (modern circuits), Judiciary Act of 1925 (SCOTUS discretion over its own docket & which cases it takes), Apportionment Act of 1929, Administrative Procedure Act of 1946—politicians are afraid of the risks of making change to cornerstone legislation

Doing nothing is a choice too though, and has its own risks & downsides

Not only are they afraid of the risks, there's a rotten minority that's determined not to let it happen, because if it does, there's no going back. As long as they think they can bleed us out, & thereby RETVRN to 1958/1928/1858, they'll keep trying.

Can’t get rid of the 60-vote cloture rule, too risky might result in blowback (Kinda wild when compared to François Hollande’s presidency, which has included “maybe our country has too many provinces”) www.lemonde.fr/politique/ar...

La carte à 13 régions définitivement adoptéewww.lemonde.fr Dans un ultime vote, 95 députés se sont prononcés pour le texte, 56 contre et 11 se sont abstenus. La réforme entrera en vigueur au début de 2016.

Let's be blunt: The United States is perpetually stuck because we give conservatives (and, lately, reactionaries) veto power over basically everything. We could have been on the metric system for 45 years by now if not for them. We could have Medicare for all. We could have gotten rid of pennies.

VRA, but Roberts killed that so...

Previous apportionment bills aimed for 30k-60k residents per Rep, so about 5k-10k House members today. You add them to split overcrowded districts and combine districts when people move out. Nothing new, here. We have remote work tools, caucuses, and subcommittees. We could make this work!

It'd also dilute the unequal impact of the Senate on the Electoral College, since you're talking about those 100 seats being about 20% of the 535 total today vs. 1-2% with 5,000-10,000 Reps. Plus, people in cities in states like Wyoming or Montana suddenly have a chance at electing their own Rep(s).

RFK Stadium has 40,000 seats. Although it would probably need to be domed to be practical.

At least ~80-100 more seats, to bring the composition of the House closer in line with the Wyoming rule. (I also happen to support statehood for Guam and the USVI, but I don't know if I want to reduce the population per seat to ~130,000, so.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming...

Wyoming Rule - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

That's so broken. 435 members for a country that had 1/3 of the population we do today.

And a much different communications infrastructure

When radios were called “the wireless”!

There is a forgotten amendment from the era of the Bill of Rights that would require Congress to grow with US population. Its interpretation is ambiguous, but one plausible reading would force Congress to be around 1700 members. Already ratified by 11 states! genuineideas.com/ArticlesInde...

Madison Apportionment Amendmentgenuineideas.com

This is a trope in US culture more broadly where "our University has always had a bulldog as a mascot" and "this store has always sold its own salt-water taffy" become timeless and sacred truths.

I really like the idea of selling it as “the courts now have to decide on a lot of things that Chevron deference used to leave to executive appointees, so we need more justices, with an extremely broad range of subject matter experts so no one humiliates themselves via abject failures at chem 101.

Uncapping the House would make a dent in the inherent unfairness of the Electoral College college without requiring a constitutional Amendment.

The original first Amendment set up an automatic formula to increase the legislatures size.

The fact that the average house member represents ~550,000 voring eligible people means each person's opinion is worth ~0.000002% of a vote, i.e. worthless. There should be around 2000 House members at least. And don't get me started on the Senate...

Jon Stewart calls the senate “affirmative action for rural whites.”

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