Will writes in his WaPo column:
Steve Chapman puts an interesting twist on the subject in his Reason Magazine article:The D.C. House Voting Rights Act will give the District a full voting member in the House of Representatives. The problem is, or should be, that although the Constitution has provisions that allow various interpretations, the following is not one of those provisions:
The House shall be composed of members chosen "by the people of the several states."But the District is not a state. It is (as the Constitution says in Article I, Section 8) "the seat of the government of the United States." That is why, in 1978, the District's advocates sent to the states a constitutional amendment requiring that "for purposes of representation" the district would be "treated as though it were a state." Only 16 states ratified it, 22 short of the required number.
So the District's advocates decided that an amendment is unnecessary -- a statute will suffice because the Constitution empowers Congress "to exercise exclusive legislation" over the District. They argue that this power can be used to, in effect, amend the Constitution by nullifying Article I, Section 2's requirement that House members come from "the several states."
This argument, that Congress's legislative power trumps the Constitution, means that Congress could establish religion, abridge freedom of speech and of the press, and abolish the right of peaceful assembly in the District.
And, of course, Congress next could give the District two senators. Which probably is the main objective of the Democrats who are most of the supporters of this end run around the Constitution.
The rationale is that the Constitution, which provides for the capital, gives Congress the power "to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District." Therefore, it may do just about anything it pleases, including give the District a vote in the House.Both Will and Chapman further explain that DC's predicament was not an oversight: The founders meant to leave the district with no senators or congressmen. If someone doesn't like that, then they need to pass a constitutional amendment.
But the argument proves too much. The same provision gives the national legislature "like authority over all places purchased ... for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards and other needful buildings."
If Congress can give the District a voting representative, it may give voting representatives to Fort Hood, the White Sands Missile Range and the Rock Island Arsenal. Which, obviously, it may not.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
http://www.reason.com/news/show/131884.html
1 comments:
While I do believe that residents of the District of Columbia should not be disenfranchised vis-a-vis, voting and elected representation. I think my, DC residents, and our esteemed representatives feelings are irrelvant in the face of specific restriction in the constitution and a specific process to ammend it.
It is a dangerous road we venture, perhaps more so than the controversial Bush wiretapping, where our constitution, elected representatives and the system of checks and balances are compromised by partisan politics, gerrymandering, and vote mongering.
Any effort to usurp power outside of its constitutionally imposed limitations must be opposed most vehemently and with full expenditure of effort.
The danger lies not in something so innocuous as the granting of an elected representative to the residents of the District of Columbia, but in the precedent that it sets for congressional action outside the boundries of the constitution.
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
-John Philpot Curran
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