On the local level, thousands of cities have enacted term-limits laws, which have proven to be popular with voters and unpopular with elected officials.
In his '94 Congressional campaign in South Carolina, Graham made a big deal of promising to enact term limits.
That the populist, and hugely popular, campaign to enact term limits, in 1993, had been bankrolled by the billionaire cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder only made things easier for Bloomberg.
This includes bills intended to identify sex offenders and enact term limits for various boards and commissions.
The Conservatives had a go at reforming the Senate, in an effort to fulfill a longstanding promise made by the Reform Party to hold Senate elections and enact term limits for the members of the upper chamber.
Proponents of reform all too often throw up their hands at the seeming near-impossibility of enacting a Constitutional amendment, whether to reform the electoral college, guarantee women's equality, balance the budget, allow naturalized citizens to become president, enact term limits, or provide voting rights for Washington, D.C. -- all of which have been the topics of thwarted amendments.
But the Supreme Court dealt a severe blow to term limits in 1995, ruling that states could not limit the amount of time federal lawmakers spent in office and that the only way for Congress to enact term limits legislation was through a constitutional amendment -- a steep hill to climb.
If Brown's plan is enacted, shorter term inmates will leave prison before the Supreme Court's deadline expires, and newly sentenced lower-level offenders would go to local jails.
A medieval yet timeless mood prevails; the fragile predicament of Israel is enacted in terms that Bosch or Bruegel would recognize.
"Whatever gets enacted in terms of immigration," Hira says, "is going to affect the careers of current scientists and postdocs, as well as future ones".
