Tom:

At first, I was confused by your statement that private campaign contributions are protected by the First Amendment, but I just read up on it, and sure enough, there is a campaign finance subsection that explains it. And all this time I thought the Bill of Rights was all good stuff....

I would paint a silver lining in that the Constitution can always be amended, but then I realized that the would-be amenders are the very people whose campaigns profit from private contributions.

Assuming politicians don't want to cut their own throats, it appears that public funding for campaigns is a pipe dream. Ugh.

Well, term limits might still be possible, right?