Take for example in the December 13 HSBC money laundering settlement which slapped them on the wrists with a fine that represents 4 weeks of profits. Prosecutors declined to pursue convictions because as assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer stated, HSBC "would almost certainly have lost its banking licence", and that "the entire banking system would have been destabilized".

That's why I say out of all the second term cabinet departures it's a shame Eric Holder isn't leaving. It's his DOJ that is not on the ball prosecuting these people. He has failed for the last with HSBC as far as I'm concerned. We can't have a law enforcement official who is establishing legal precedent for two sets of rules. The Obama administration has failed to hold the banks accountable. But I suppose we can be thankful it's not a president Romney...god only knows how much thievery they'd get away with under him

Right, and so is Messerly right. But in a way, BHO is most right when he says, "The only way we can [get] change is if the American people demand it". What is that going to take? Is there any hope of that?

Answering my own question, I find that this implies that it's not a vote by the general NRA membership:

... Other officers elected by the NRA Board of Directors include Executive Vice-President Wayne LaPierre; First Vice-President Ronald L. Schmeits and Second Vice-President David Keene. ...

I can't believe we are still fighting the Civil War. "Nullification" — it's like John C Calhoun back from the dead!

What we can do, is support The National Popular Vote bill. It would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.

When the bill is enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.

The presidential election system that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers but, instead, is the product of decades of evolutionary change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in recent closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.

The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states with 243 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions with 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

NationalPopularVote

Follow National Popular Vote on Facebook via NationalPopularVoteInc

Great post, and you are right. Not only that, but the people must rise up and say "No more" to the dictatorship of a small minority of rural states within the Senate. As this webpage details,

"The table shown below illustrates the effect. It shows the states arranged by population, with the smallest first. The most important columns for our purposes are the rightmost two. Notice that when the cumulative senate seats reaches 50 the cumulative population has only reached 16% (Kentucky). Notice this effect continues even further. By the time we have reached 70 seats we are still only at 34% of the population. The converse of this is that the eight or nine largest states contain about 50% of the population. They are mostly heavily industrialized and contain large cities and, in many cases, fairly large minority populations. Their interests are being under represented.

i'm just learning now that the National Popular Vote campaign was one of those whose funds were embezzeled by Kinde Durkee, who just received an 8 year prison sentence "for stealing $7 million from as many as 50 political clients, including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein".

I think you mean Poli(tical) Sci(ence).

BTW — graduate of Wheat Ridge High, 1964

Yep... that is what I meant...Poli Sci 1964 Mmmm...

OMG, you are almost as young as me... : ]

In the early 1970's we attended a church in Wheat Ridge on 44th just west of Kipling. If you haven't been back in a while, it has certainly changed. There are no farms and few homes along 44th, it is mostly commercial.

I second all posts wanting more about the RNC rigging the Presidential election the same as local congressional districts.

Is it at all likely we can change the structure of the electoral system by 2016?

Is there any way to challenge this under election law ?

If not. how about strongly encouraging a Progressivist migration into gerrymandered districts ?

CT

If I might be so bold as to offer my view of this question, I might grab a couple of examples — from Wikipedia (not as being a final authority, but as a first and summary taste of relevant materials, abundances of which are also available through Google):

Aldo Moro, Prime Minister of Italy, assassinated 1978.

"Alternative points of view about Moro's death

Many other points of views have been advanced about Moro's death. The "Gladio network", directed by NATO, has also been accused.

Historian Sergio Flamigni, member of the Communist Refoundation Party, believes Moretti was used by Gladio in Italy to take over the Red Brigades and pursue a strategy of tension.

In BR member Alberto Franceschini's book,[13] Aldo Moro is described as one of Gladio's founders. Evidence has emerged to support this view of American involvement in overarching the strategy of tension and of known strong American foreign policies against the then looming historic (unprecedented in post war times) coalition that would have admitted the eurocommunist PCI into a government of national unity, the fear on the US side being that Italy thereafter might withdraw from NATO and that the US would then lose access to vital Mediterranean ports.[14]"

In addition to this, I would highly recommend your watching these three Google Video hourlong BBC episodes of TIMEWATCH from 1992, ", "Gladio: the Ringmasters", "Gladio: the Puppeteers", and "Gladio: the Footsoldiers". While mostly recorded in French, Italian, Dutch, &c., with English subtitles, there is a passage by the narrator in English at the end of the header:

"For forty years, secret terrorist organizations, many trained by western intelligence agencies, have manipulated the political control of European sovereign states by a campaign of terror and murder. Originally part of a secret network, these groups changed from being defenders of state security into attackers of the established political order. Until two years ago, that network was generally known by the single word, "Gladio".

Another rather famous example of dubious assassination, is that of Olof Palme of Sweden, assassinated 1986. Wikipedia includes this:

"Two years later, Christer Pettersson (d. 2004), a small-time criminal and drug addict, was arrested, tried and convicted for Palme's murder. Pettersson's conviction was later overturned on appeal to the Svea Court of Appeal. As a result the crime remains unsolved and a number of alternative theories as to who carried out the murder have since been proposed.

Palme had strong opinions on both the world powers in the middle of the Cold War. In fact, Swedish–American relations were at a record low due to Palme's rough criticism of the Vietnam War, which had only been over for a decade at the time, and the placement of nuclear weapons in Europe, which he opposed. Therefore there is a popular conspiracy theory [citation needed] that he was assassinated by either the Soviet KGB or the American CIA."

Time and space fail me to list all the victims of the CIA in Argentina, Panama, Ecuador, Indonesia — for these read Killing Hope by William Blum. But let me at least offer you this excellent audio clip from decades ago by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, who first held the office of Liason between the newly created CIA and the newly created Pentagon at the end of WWII. This speech is called:

"Anatomy of Assassination"

From a lecture at Yale 1970's. "By the summer of 1963, there were papers coming across my desk, at that time I was working in the Office of Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Papers with no 'Top Secret' stamps on them, no 'Eyes Only' stamps on them, no register numbers on them. That meant they were really secret. And if they were really secret you don't put anything on them."

The audio is at http://www.prouty.org/anatomy.ram, and there is a transcript at http://www.prouty.org/anatomy.html.

I can't fail to add this other link, on the subject of "militia". Prof. Carl Bogus (yes, his real name — it's Polish, often spelled Boggis. I know a lady named Boggis) of Roger Williams U. in R.I. published this long detailed paper called "The Hidden History of the Second Amendment", accessible for free here, which makes reference to the debates held in Virginia as (Virginian) James Madison attempted to get a 9th state to sign onto the Constitution (9 was the minimum number for ratification), and was moved to change "a free Country" to "a free State", because Virginia, Georgia, and essentially all the slave states were worried about defending themselves, not against the British or Spanish or French or Indians, neither against the North — the "Union", but against their own slaves, who in many cases outnumbered them. That was the "militia", which soon became the KKK. By the way, the source material he references, can be found under Elliot's Debates, at memory.loc.gov, as this page showing the printed text (1891) of the Virginia debates (RE ratification), p. 248. The numbers that Bogus references Elliot's publication are these pages. Rather interesting, I think you'll find!