We've documented how, as part of its war on the Twentieth Century, Fox News has attacked the 17th Amendment to the Constitution -- which provides for the direct election of U.S. Senators, rather than their selection by state legislators.

Beck for one, has argued that the Seventeenth Amendment is the reason for the expansion of federal power in the Twentieth Century. Beck said that that absent the 17th Amendment, “Obama's health care bill would have never seen the light of day. A lot of things that they do in Washington would never have seen the light of day. Why? Because it wouldn't in the interest of your state.” Beck later added that “it's taken them over 200 years to remove all those roadblocks, but they're almost done. Maybe it's time to put a few of them back.”

However, libertarian law professor Ilya Somin has debunked the argument that passage of the Seventeenth Amendment led to an increase in the scope of federal power. Somin wrote in a Volokh Conspiracy blog post:

Many conservatives and libertarians believe that the 1913 adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment... was a great mistake that led to a vast expansion of federal power.... The assumption underlying this claim is that senators elected by state legislatures would be more interested in protecting state autonomy than senators elected by voters, and therefore more committed to limiting federal power.

Unfortunately, these Seventeenth Amendment critics are wrong. The Seventeenth Amendment actually had little if any effect on the scope of federal power because most senators would have been popularly elected even without it. Moreover, there is no reason to expect senators elected by state legislatures to be more opposed to federal power than popularly elected senators are.

[...]

Finally, I am skeptical of claims that state legislative selection of senators was the main force constraining federal power before the Seventeenth Amendment was enacted in 1913. Limits on federal power were underpinned by a much broader political consensus that often included the House of Representatives, and such presidents as Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Grover Cleveland. In fact, it is far from clear that the 19th century Senate was on average more supportive of limits on federal power than the House of Representatives, the White House, and the Supreme Court. To the extent that it was, the cause might well have been the overrepresentation of the South rather than the lack of direct popular election.

And Somin is no liberal. He has criticized Sonia Sotomayor's property rights record during Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation hearing and expressed serious doubts about the constitutionality of the health care reform law.