I think it has good elements, but I certainly am still not convinced that the benefits outweigh the loss of the stability and reliability that the law you are currently living under won't come under review and change in 5 or less years. A review process is not a bad idea, but forcing a sunset adds too much incertainty in what the laws are and having to keep up with the changes. I think it would be a far better move to have a review process set up to identify problem areas, simplify laws where possable, and create simplified and organized resources for people to use to review and study the law.

If your intent is to limit the scope and power of the federal government over the states with a constitutional ammendment, I think there are better ways to do it than by forcing a sunset on laws. Why not change their constitutional powers directly if you're going to change the constitution.

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True knowledge exists in knowing what you don't know.

It’s an interesting idea; that would never pass but none the less a good Idea! The problem would be the overlapping review that would come about during the regular routine of passing laws. The amount never gets smaller and the re-introduction of reviews of past laws would be too much of a burden on the Legislature. The one thing in my opinion that would remove the most underhanded and wasteful procedures is to make it illegal to place items in Bills in the middle of the night and signing statements.
If the current status quo for Presidential powers were in existence for a long time, we wouldn’t recognize our country right now and Nixon would have never resigned; he would have simply made the story go away and kept going business as usual

So you're saying that it's a bad idea over all, and that the devolution of power can be done in other ways - or that it shouldn't even happen at all?

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So your logic is that if we are not there, the number will go down... That makes perfect sense... not.

So it's a worth while idea, but it's going to put a burden on congress (which I think is funny since they only work like 50 days a year). What if there were some entirely different group of people reviewing it? Sort of like a filtering process. They look into things that need to be solved, and if they find a problem, then they send it to congress. That way the burden is much lower.

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So your logic is that if we are not there, the number will go down... That makes perfect sense... not.

I'm saying that I gave no opinion on the goods of the idea, though I did not argue that there were not any, and I pointed out what I thought to be the failures and possable better alternatives at achieving the same goal.

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True knowledge exists in knowing what you don't know.

I get the feeling that this would only lead to a more clustered government that wastes more of our time and money being less efficient.
Instead of going on to anything new, the government will just revisit the same crap over and over again. They'll most likely pass the lousy laws over and over again (see the Patriot Act) and there's a chance they might forget one that actually makes sense (I bet any anti-corruption laws that ever managed to pass would meet this fate).
And what this will culminate in (for those who think the "no new laws" aspect is cool) is the congress appending any new business to the old laws up to renewal, making the whole process even messier and less transparent.

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

I think it's a good idea in theory but then human politicians would just muck it up for the sake of their power games. Impose strict term limits for all representatives in Congress and perhaps politicians will use their time in Washington more valuably instead of amassing the political clout to become more corrupt.

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Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.

Yes. The conservatives tried to "conserve" the traditional limited government by opposing the welfare state, high taxes, etc. (I mean the conservative base, not the politicians who only paid lip service to the popular notion). But note that I don't consider Neo-cons like the Bush Admin. to be conservatives. They are the other kind of liberal, the kind that wants a corporate welfare state. The only real conservative I can think of right now of that is currently in office is Ron Paul.

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War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.

It's a post 9/11 world.

I think the states would step up and take their rightful place (see 10th Amendment) if the Federal government were not always in their business, micro-managing public schools and whatnot. Decentralization is as much the goal as smaller government. I think there would be less confusion and waste if state and local government weren't always trying to comply with the new federal guidelines for this or that. The states would provide all the stability needed. Murder and the like would still always be illegal.

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War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.

It's a post 9/11 world.

That is the traditional understanding. However, ever since the nineties, the conservatives have taken less and less care about restricting the government and have become increasingly indistinguishable from the liberals.

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I think America is finally ready for another president with polio.