>Are you referring to the judicial branch? Isn't that the system laid out in the founding docs No, I'm talking about the executive branch agencies. An example

>Are you referring to the judicial branch? Isn't that the system laid out in the founding docs No, I'm talking about the executive branch agencies. An example would be, Congress passes a protected species act; they empower the EPA to regulate how this protected species act is enforced; the EPA makes policy of how the protected species act is enforced. This isn't completely insane, as it's a complicated process. But in actuality, what happens is the EPA becomes a revolving door for special interests ("I worked at the EPA for 5 years, and now I'm head of Environmental Quality at BP!"), corporations "encourage" lawmakers to carve out exceptions in the law that help or protect the corporations, and the agency in general can be used as a weapon to selectively reward or punish people or companies while the ones who could be held accountable--the Congressional lawmakers--can wash their hands of all responsibility. ("It's the EPA, I didn't take away your farm because they found a mushroom species that's protected.") You're right that edge cases are hard. But the current paradigm of "enact sweeping reforms through vague legislation, and leave the details up to underpaid, overworked, and possibly ideological civil servants who can never be fired in any practical way" isn't sustainable. We know what happens, because it has happened. Legislators participate in the revolving door policy, too. They do favors for corporate sponsors, and later they get a job there, or with a lobbying group that is funded by corporate sponsors, or with some other back-scratching deal. While doing something about insider trading is a good thing, that's not the real problem, and it feels to me that something like this is more like a bone thrown to keep the yapping dog quiet.