I think you’ve gotten to the nub of the matter.
We don’t need new laws. We need institutions with the political will to oppose abuses of power through the means already available.
In the case of the Bush Administration, the two natural checks on a President’s abuses of power - the opposition party and the media - have both proved almost completely toothless. The closest thing to an organized pushback has come from the left blogosphere.
Hold on now, where’s Mr. Strawman at?
Rush and Jon can say whatever they want, I’m talking about ad space. I’m talking about the millions needed by candidates and given by special interest groups that do not even closely resemble the wishes of the majority of citizens yet have an incredible influence on what should be a pure process.
So editorial content is fine, but paid ads are morally suspect?
Seems a pretty silly distinction. Rush Limbaugh’s program is 4 hours a day 5 days a week shilling for the Republicans. You know it, I know it, the American people know it. So Rush stumping for the Republicans is fine, but the Republicans buying an advertising spot on Rush’s show urging people to vote Republican is wrong? Huh?
Think of all the political magazines. The Nation, The New Republic, Mother Jones, National Review, Reason, and on and on. These magazines typically lose money every month, but they are funded by angels who keep them afloat because the angels think the magazines’ messages are important. And these angels have their own reasons to support these magazines, typically because the magazines advance a political philosophy that the angels also support. Are these magazines going to be banned? If not, why not? Isn’t the New Republic practically a house organ of the Republican party? Sure, they aren’t funded with money from the Republicans, rather both the National Review and the Republican party are funded by the same sorts of people.
How about Fox News? Isn’t Fox News notoriously biased in a particular way? Does it matter whether Fox News makes money, or wether Fox News loses money but special interest extraordinaire Rupert Murdoch keeps it on the air because he wants a particular political point of view on the air? What’s the difference between buying an ad on CBS advancing a particular political point of view, and buying a whole fucking network to advance a particular political point of view?
Explain to me how you could ban buying media time by “special interests” and not also advocate banning Fox News and Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh and Air America. It can’t be done.
How about a “One President To A Family” Amendment? Something along the lines of once someone is elected President, everybody within 3 degrees of them, by blood or marriage, is immediately and forever barred from holding the office. No siblings, children, grand-children, husbands, wives, ex-spouses, all the way out to second-cousins once removed. Something like that would prevent any family from holding onto Executive power in this country, no matter how well they buffaloed the populace. Sure, such an amendment would have cost us John Quincy Adams, but it still would have allowed FDR.
Too many posts to read, but I have a few suggestions.
Unlike many, I DO think the electoral college makes sense. Otherwise the coasts and Texas would dominate politics and some areas wouldn’t get the same degree of influence.
On the other hand the primary system gives me fits. I’d like to see it codified to be a more accurate representation of the population and to work in a rotation so that over a NUMBER of elections all areas of the US would have had an early primary. There HAS to be some way to make that happen.
I want an amendment that SHOULD BE unnecessary. The Unitary Executive is just… a silly, stupid interpretation made plausible by too many TV shows depicting the END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!! (Thank Og we had a President who could make ALL the decisions!)
The Constitution needs to be further clarified so that the President’s role is carefully defined. Additionally, I’d like it to proscribe certain actions in the event certain things are done.
I understand amendments are to be sacred, carefully thought, hard to pass, and just general enough to not require future amendments. Even so… Again, there must be a way to proscribe the role of the President as ONLY those roles already defined explicitly in the Constitution - and cannot grow to encompass other roles not laid out.
In this amendment we COULD and likely SHOULD expand some of the President’s role to include certain tasks that were unforeseen by the founders. So I’m not trying to completely bump the role back to 1800… but I do want it to be part of the checks and balances.
This same amendment would make clear the role of the Vice President and which part of the government he/she is accountable to.
Them’s my 2 cents. 
The electoral college gives a higher degree of influence to swing states, where the population is evenly divided.
Abolishing it would give a higher degree of influence to densely populated states, where candidates’ marketing dollars go further.
I can’t see how the latter is any worse than the former, especially when so many issues have a higher degree of impact on densely populated areas (crime, terrorism, poverty, pollution, infrastructure).
The solution, imo, is that everyone feels approximately as able to influence policy and everyone feels just as disenfranchised.
I should point out that on some levels, ours is a tyrany of the minority. Making some changes harder to implement. Much as I like and would like some changes, I think there’s some wisdom in that.
#1: We need a clear responsibility for environmental defense outlined in the Constitution, so “strict construction” no longer provides conceptual cover for irresponsible attitudes toward environmental law.
#2: Section 2 of Amendment XXV has got to go. It’s a stupid law which discourages impeachment even when necessary.
By adding more layers of regulation and ceding more power to Washington, campaign finance laws perversely make the problem worse. Because the root problem is that Washington has a lot of power and control, and therefore will always be a magnet for bribery, corruption, featherbedding, sweetheart deals, and gerrymandering.
The real answer is to reduce the power of the government. Take away the power, and the corruption goes away. The big money goes away, making the system more democratic. It always amazes me that so many people are willing to give government that kind of power over their lives to ‘protect’ them from the rapacious capitalists. Government is far more inefficient, corrupt, and dangerous.
You can’t tinker with election laws and make the problem go away. It’s the nature of the beast.
Not everyone takes that a given. Some of us see government as just another means for getting things done: private enterprise does what’s profitable (e.g. providing power and phone service in urban areas), government does what’s popular (e.g. mandating that service also be provided in rural areas). Therefore, limiting the power of government means reducing the number of popular things that get done, in favor of more profitable things, which is only an easy decision if you’re a robot or an economist.