America will never solve its gun problem until it gets over its fetish for the Founding Fathers.

[DanTex]

252. I'm not sure.

I'm not opposed to having two chambers, but I also wouldn't be opposed to having just one, provided that it were fairly and proportionally represented. And BTW, the house has a lot of problems of it's own -- for example gerrymandering. If I were redesigning the whole thing from scratch, I would go for some kind of proportional allocation system, something like this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3701797

As to your second question, you have to remember that 200+ years ago the US was more like the EU than to the nation it is today. It really was more of a union of sovereign states, each of which took care of their own affairs, and so at that time it might have made sense. But now, although the states might technically be "sovereign" in some historical sense, the reality is that they function more like provinces, and the real sovereign authority is the federal government.

Since it's come up in our discussion, you should realize that the whole issue of "how to secure federal funds" was moot at the time the nation was founded because there were hardly any federal funds to secure. Even into the early 20th century most government spending was at the local level. Compare that to now, where by far the federal government collects far more taxes and spends more far money than states and municipalities.

The fact that the federal government is much more influential in people's lives than when the country was founded justifies each citizen having an equal say in national policy.