"and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands" Comments go to your representatives. They then make the decisions. Given the amount of nuts on the internet and those without substance who love to be heard, it may be best to just comment and vote, limitedly, akin to the limited votes here on UserVoice.

This would be the digital equivilent of free Athenian citizens gathering at the AREIOS PAGOS to to listen and comment on the leaders discussions. Truely democratic!

I'd like to comment on commenting; I think it's a great idea. Any comments about me commenting on commenting?

moreso than actually allowing the public to comment on bills, i feel like all bills up for vote needs to be open to the public. Allowing people to directly comment and have power over whether the legislation passes would only result in pointless flame wars and trolling

The flame wars would be epic.

I think this needs to go further though, I don't think allowing comments would really get anything done in the long run. Maybe a digg like voting site (like this one) for every bill would be proper.

I'd rather see the results in numbers rather than a long string of dumbass comments.

Have you heard about the National Initiative for Democracy proposal? http://ni4d.us

This proposal would permit citizen initiative at the federal level.

Hey guys, he already promised something like this, so don't waste your votes. It's called "sunlight before signing" and it's on his web site.

What would happen to law with so many "first" and "lol" posts.

j/k good idea really, idk

What is the law regarding legislation now? As I understand it, some requires comment, but most does not. Anyone have a good source for these rules in both House and Senate? I'd extract and paste here.

For comments to be useful, people need to be able to comment long before a bill is ready to be signed, which means that we need to lobby the legislature for this. This is beyond the authority of the President.

It would also allow those that understand the implications to comment and hopefully prevent some of the crap going on.

I really like this recommendation. I can imagine there are challenges to implement this in a manner for the comments to be considered valuable, and not a lot of 'noise', but nothing insurmountable. I would love to have, and this is key, a popular central resource, that gave me the ability to understand what my elected officials are preparing to vote on, and provide feedback.

I would put 2000 votes on this If i could, this is really really REALLY important, people should have a right to comment and know what bills are being passed so that the legislators will a better idea of what they are doing to the American public