CTRL+ALT+DEL: Democracy Podcast

Episodes

1. 8

   No Separation of Duties

   Commit History: 125 Years of Patches to American Democracy, Part 7 Bug Report Last time we found a rate limiter with nothing behind it: a cap on one pipe while the pressure found another. This time the bug is simpler to state, and worse. In most states, the people who get elected also write the…

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   Oct 22, 2026

   17m
2. 7

   Commit History: 125 Years of Patches to American Democracy

   Watergate, Buckley v. Valeo, and the Day the Court Capped the Input but Left the Output Open Bug Report At the end of Part 5, I left you with a loose thread: if insiders picking the nominee was a problem, who has been picking the insiders? This episode is that thread. Start with the version of…

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   Oct 12, 2026

   12m
3. 6

   Commit History: 125 Years of Patches to American Democracy

   McGovern-Fraser, 1972, and the Vulnerability Part One Warned You About Bug Report Go back to Part 1 for a second, because this episode is the other shoe dropping. In 1913, the 17th Amendment took Senate elections away from state legislatures and gave them to voters. Around the same time, direct...

   Oct 3, 2026

   12m
4. 5

   Commit History: 125 Years of Patches to American Democracy Part 4: The Patch That Actually Shipped

   Bug Report Every part of this series so far has been a bug report. This one starts differently, because the actual bug here is older than anything covered yet, and by 1954 it had already been sitting in production, unpatched, for sixty years. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) had blessed “separate but...

   Sep 27, 2026

   16m
5. 4

   Commit History: 125 Years of Patches to American Democracy Part 4: The Patch That Actually Shipped

   Bug Report Every part of this series so far has been a bug report. This one starts differently, because the actual bug here is older than anything covered yet, and by 1954 it had already been sitting in production, unpatched, for sixty years. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) had blessed “separate but...

   Sep 27, 2026

   17m
6. 3

   Commit History: 125 Years of Patches to American Democracy - Part 3: War Without a Vote

   Bug Report The Constitution is not ambiguous about this one. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11: Congress — not the president — holds the power “To declare War.” The framers put it there on purpose, after arguing about it directly. The whole design assumes the decision to send the country to war is...

   Sep 24, 2026

   14m
7. 2

   Commit History: 125 Years of Patches to American Democracy: Part 2

   How a Temporary Fix Became Permanent Infrastructure Bug Report By 1933, the federal government had a problem the Progressive Era patches from Part 1 were never built to solve: the executive branch itself couldn’t move fast enough. The Depression had collapsed the banking system. Roosevelt took...

   Sep 19, 2026

   12m
8. 1

   Commit History: 125 Years of Patches to American Democracy: Part 1

   References * 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Direct Election of U.S. Senators — Milestone Documents (National Archives) — Overview of the amendment’s passage, the “millionaires’ club” framing, and the Lorimer investigation as the precipitating scandal. * House Joint Resolution 39, May 1,...

   Sep 14, 2026

   10m