Repealing the 17th amendment

Interesting op-ed on filling vacant seats, but really about the 17th amendment. (Note that the text I've written here is really similar to Todd Zywicki's blog entry on the Volokh Conspiracy. They're both short texts, and I'm linking to the original, so hopefully nobody's going to accuse me of plagiarism. ;-)

My thoughts on the matter can be summed up by this comment on the thread:

The Constitution established a federal–not a national–government. The states were understood as sovereign entities that had ceded only specific powers to the feds. Having senators chosen by state legislatures was part of the system of checks and balances. Senators would have much more of an interest in defending the powers of their state government from federal encroachment.

There's actually more to that comment that I also agree with, but this is the crux of the argument.