The power of petitions and Federal legislation

I have a question. Do you think Petitions work?

Something has been bothering me for quite sometime. I find the fact that the President has a two term limit and the House and Senate have no limits to be tilted and open for manipulation. I think the House and Senate should be limited to no more than two terms just like the President. This would stop a lot of the back door deal making, the cronyism and the ability for Lobbyists and special interest groups to get too "comfortable" with any given Representative or Senator. The "Senior" Senators and Representatives have too much sway in the special committees and legislation in general.

This has came up for vote before in both houses of Congress and has always been defeated (do you really expect a person to vote him or herself out of a job?).

I think the only way this can be pushed through is by a sweeping petition by the USA citizens that forces them to Amend the Constitution and limit their terms.

Here is another question. How many signatures would be required to force the hand of the Congress to follow the desire of the USA citizenry?

Thanks for you opinions and input.

two terms for all elected positions no matter what they are would be good, if you fancy a life getting paid by the electorate then you'll need to plan your political career very carefully and implement a section of the IRS that looks at donations etc and if they find anything funny they charge the recipient 1000% of the value of the bung/bribe etc which should certainly make dodgy practices less appealing to the people

and perhaps an ability for people to be able to kick out their elected rep, just turn up with x number of signatures and then there will be a requirement for a electoral vote of confidence and if they get less than 50% they're out

oh and ban political lobbying by any person not living in the state and not on behalf of a business that they themselves are not the owner of and also must be an american citizen of either 20 years or birth to be able to lobby

Thank you for the comments. I don't know if we can remove corruption from the legislative process, but I would like for us to discuss ways and means to do so. Sadly, this thread has gotten zero attention and I think that is a sad thing. I feel like the petition to government is our last vestige of hope before civil uprising. But maybe that is just me.

I know there are a lot of people on these boards that are unhappy with the current state of affairs...but they offer nothing for means of correction...I am simply asking for a thought process surrounding one of the last tools we "might" have available to us outside of open rebellion....