It has been two weeks since the voters in Colorado and Washington State chose to legalize marijuana, yet there still hasn’t been any solid response from the Obama administration. How the federal government will deal with the conflict between state and federal laws on marijuana remains the big unanswered question.

In Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance, the constitutional scholar, political theorist, and prolific public intellectual Sanford Levinson makes the case that this is no passing squall caused by momentary economic dislocations, but evidence of deeper flaws in how basic governance institutions are designed. Diverging from those who call for new leadership in the White House, a new political party, or even new policies, Levinson calls for reflection about some basic choices embedded in constitutions that most commentators take for granted.

While the favorability rating of local and state governments has only declined slightly in the past decade, Americans’ rating of the federal government has collapsed.

Obama’s 2008 campaign was about changing the way Washington worked, people either don’t think he has changed it or don’t think his changes have been for the better.