As long as Congress can be bought and paid for by corporate interests, working people are screwed. They don't listen to us because money talks and working people don't have enough resources to compete with the sugar daddies in the insurance, oil, pharmaceutical, financial, weapons, etc. lobbies. There are no renegade Republicans because they are comfortable with being corporate whores and have a base that will always vote for them as long as they wave the guns, babies and marriage flag. But why were there always enough Democrats to vote for Bush's corporate agenda to get things passed? Because they distance themselves from their base. Now the Republicans stand as a bloc and they have enough Democrats to join them in their obstruction. It's time to make the filibuster a thing of the past. Now it is never used by the "little guy" a la Mr. Smith, if it ever was. We need to get back to requiring 51 votes to pass bills in the Senate. The small population states are already over represented by having the same no. of senators as the larger states. (This makes them a very cheap buy for the lobbyists, eh, Baucus, Lincoln?) The passage of laws that are not corporate-approved should not be further hampered by requiring 60 votes.