1.  Everyone knows Orwell here, or at least everyone who has any grasp of 20th Century literature or politics.  He is one of the 10 most referenced novelists of the last 100 years.

2.  There is a reason that our Congress is full of stupid people--we are stupid people.  Gullible, swayed by corporations, swayed by peer pressure, lazy, ignorant of much of the world, given to emotion and irrationality rather than clear logic, and often deluded into thinking that our positions cannot possibly be mistaken.  If the public could "vote resolutions into law," essentially, we would be lied to just as much as we are now, and (knowing knowing any better) we would vote for things that sounded good or were most convenient for us (like Congress does now), rather than necessarily voting for what is actually in our best interests.  77% of the public wanted to go into Iraq, at least according to the information we had in October, 2002.  Democracy a a concept might be strengthened, but that doesn't mean we'd get better decisions--just more popular ones (and who knows which difficult choices would be railroaded immediately out of the system via a majority rule vote.)