Carper Leads Senate Democrats in Reintroducing Statehood Bill to Ensure Equal Representation for Over 700,000 D.C. Residents [More]
That sounds a lot better than "We want two more Democrat senators so our hold on power will be complete and irreversible," doesn't it?
And forget that it would put all the other states in thrall to one.
Then on to Puerto Rico!
[Via Mack H]
5 comments:
There was a reason, now lost to history, why this bit of land is the 'District' of Columbia, not a state, territory, or commonwealth.
It would be simpler to return the District to Maryland than confer distinct statehood. Let the gerrymandering of the Congressional districts begin.
If done legally and constitutionally, and nowadays that's a very big "if", making the district into a state would require going through the amendment process, something the Democratic proponents of statehood will try to avoid at all costs.
A much more feasible solution, and one that the Democrats will also avoid like the plague for obvious reasons, would be for Congress to cede the residential portions of the district back to Maryland.
Of course, one must keep in mind that the primary actors in this farce, the Republican and Democratic parties, are in essence political animals: i.e. regardless of their claims, what motivates them in all things is the struggle for political power. Their claims about concerns for the voting rights of the districts residents must be taken with a grain, or perhaps an entire truck load, of salt.
So the end result may be no action at all. But whatever happens, it will be to the advantage one party or the other, perhaps both, but only accidentally to that of the residents.
Where do you find an amendment requirement in the admissions clause?
I am not an expert a constitutional law, nor do I play one on television. However, the whole rational for a "federal enclave" was for Congress and the Federal Government to have a place, solely under their control, that was outside of the jurisdiction of any state government. This was prompted, in part, by a near mutiny of Pennsylvania Revolutionary War veterans who surrounded the building in Philadelphia where Congress was attempting to meet. Congress felt that the Pennsylvania government was of little or no help as they were forced in some haste to leave town and reconvene in New Jersey in order to form a quorum and conduct business.
Those needs for a place where Congress could work without being subject to undue influence of or be beholden to any particular State still exist.
The current status of the enclave, as specified in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, must be in some way modified before the land currently in the district could be made a State via the Admissions Clause.
Some kind of precedent was set when the part of the enclave south of the Potomac river was ceded back to Virginia. The residential parts of the enclave north of the Potomac could be ceded back to Maryland leaving a Federal enclave where Congress exercised control without state interference.
Simply making DC a State goes against the reasons for having a separate political entity in the first place, and probably violates the spirit if not the letter of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17.
OTOH, FedGov has ignored so many parts of the Constitution that adding one more really won't amount to much. Until it does. The political powers that be have declared that the rules of the game have been rendered "more of a set of guidelines" as one famous movie pirate said. There is no reason to believe they will stop of their own volition.
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