Happy Birthday America #229 By Hank Silverberg The United States turned 246 years old this week. In the history of time that ranks the U.S. as a juvenile. Rome, for example, in its various forms as a republic and then empire, lasted a thousand years. So,though we boast of old traditions and founding principals, our country is still relatively young and still has growing pains. We are far from the "more perfect union" envisioned by the so-called "Founding Fathers" in 1776, or more accurately in 1787, when the second generation of Founding Fathers (James Madison, George Mason, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay) drafted the U.S. Constitution. These past two weeks we learned the hard way that the balanced system of government the Constitution was supposed to create, does not always work and sometimes goes against the "will of the people." When the Constitution was drafted it was envisioned that the U.S. Supreme Court would be the last bastion