Tri-Partisan Ignorance

A handful of politicians write in the Macaca Post, insisting that the police power of Congress over the District gives it the power to unilaterally amend the Constitution:

We do not believe that the nation's Founders, fresh from fighting a war for representation, would have denied representation to the residents of the new capital they established.

Unfortunately, the actual Constitution (written by those pesky Founders) disagrees with them. Which is more credible?

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

Senator Hatch Sells Out for a Short-Lived Seat

The Macaca Post reports on the unconstitutional effort to legislate a seat for DC in the House of Representatives:

A prominent Republican senator, Orrin G. Hatch, threw his weight behind the D.C. voting-rights bill yesterday in what supporters called a possible breakthrough in getting the legislation approved by that chamber.

...

The legislation is a political compromise that would pair a new House seat for the heavily Democratic District with another seat for Republican-leaning Utah. Hatch's state just missed getting a fourth representative after the last census.

The next census is a mere 3 years away, which will cause any new Utah seat to be moot by 2012 - after a mere two terms. The unconstitutional DC seat, however, would continue to exist.

Even if the legislation passes the Senate, the White House has threatened a veto.

Rightly so.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reiterated his opposition to the measure, however. Asked whether Hatch's move would change Republican minds, McConnell said: "Well, it doesn't change the Constitution. And the Constitution's really quite clear on it."

Critics of the D.C. vote legislation say it violates the constitutional requirement that House members come from states. The bill's supporters argue that the Constitution gives Congress sweeping powers over the District, which would allow for giving it full representation in the House.

By the supporters' logic, Congress can unilaterally amend the Constitution in any situation. After all, it is in the District.

Background: Congressional Research Service: DC Vote Plan Unconstitutional

DC Gun Ban Struck Down

The Macaca Post reports:

A federal appellate panel [Friday] struck down parts of the District's gun law as unconstitutional, ruling that the city cannot bar people from keeping firearms in their homes.

The decision was a victory for six D.C. residents who said they wanted to keep firearms for self-defense. But it could have much broader implications: The case eventually could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court as a test of the thorny issues surrounding the Second Amendment and the public's right to keep weapons.

The District has one of the strictest gun laws in the nation -- barring all handguns unless they were registered prior to 1976 -- and that law has come under attack over the past three decades in Congress as well as the courts. [The] ruling guts key parts of the law, but does not address provisions that prohibit people from carrying unregistered guns outside the home.

...

The ruling came on a 2-to-1 vote by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit...

"We conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms," [Senior Judge Laurence H. Silberman] declared in the 58-page majority ruling.

...

The Supreme Court addressed the Second Amendment in 1939, but it did not hold that the right to bear arms meant specifically that an individual could do so.

[The] majority opinion said that the District has a right to regulate and require registration of firearms but not to ban them outright in homes. The ruling also struck down a section of the D.C. law that required owners of registered guns to disassemble them, saying that would render the weapons useless.

Congressional Research Service: DC Vote Plan Unconstitutional

The Macaca Post reports:

The research arm of Congress says that legislation to give the District a vote in the House of Representatives is probably unconstitutional, a finding that could jeopardize its chances of passage, officials and analysts said yesterday.

The report by the Congressional Research Service is not binding, and its conclusions reflect what some prominent legal scholars have been warning for years. But it could carry extra weight because the service generally gets high marks for its nonpartisan advice to the House and Senate.

...

The D.C. vote bill seeks to gain bipartisan support by increasing the size of the House from 435 to 437 seats. One new seat would go to the District, which is overwhelmingly Democratic; the other would go to Utah, the state next in line to increase its delegation according to Census returns and a Republican stronghold.

...

The latest report focuses on the two parts of the Constitution that are at the center of the D.C. vote debate. One is a clause that limits House membership to individuals chosen "by the People of the several States." Courts have determined that the phrase excludes the District, the report says.

The second relevant part of the Constitution, the "District Clause," grants Congress broad authority over the city. The bill's proponents note that the Supreme Court ruled in 1949 that Congress could use its powers to give D.C. residents the same rights as other citizens.

That case, National Mutual Insurance Co. v. Tidewater, concerned the right to have a federal court hear lawsuits involving people of two states.

But the research service says that ruling was narrow. Six justices wrote that the congressional powers over the District weren't big enough to justify making "structural changes to the federal government," the report says. Giving a vote to the District would be such a change, it says.

The use of the so-called "District Clause" not only doesn't pass the laugh test, it doesn't have any effect on the constitutional structure of Congress. It merely gives Congress state-like authority over the district.

AEI's John Fortier adds:

There are only three constitutional ways for D.C. to gain representation in Congress. First, D.C. could be admitted as a state. Second, the Constitution could be amended to give House and/or Senate representation to the District. Third, D.C. could be ceded back to Maryland, just as Arlington and Alexandria were ceded back to Virginia in the 19th century.

All legitimate constitutional options, all difficult to accomplish, but the only possibilities for District citizens to have representation in Congress.

The third option is clearly the most appropriate. D.C. as a state would be worse than a bad idea.

Can I Vote in the House of Representatives Too?

George Will has a good article on the Democrat scheme to let non-Representatives vote in the House of Representatives:

What part of the words "several states" do House Democrats not understand? Their cynical assumption is that "the people of the several states" will not notice this dilution of their representation in the House.

Members of Congress today represent, on average, 687,000 people. The population of Guam is 171,000; of American Samoa, 58,000; and of the Virgin Islands, 109,000. The 3.9 million Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and have the right to vote for statehood, which they have rejected in three plebiscites (1967, 1993, 1998).

...

January 1993 was the last time Democrats engaged in this cynical political alchemy, transmuting delegates from four island jurisdictions, and one from the seat of the federal government, into the functional equivalents of representatives selected by people of "the several states." In January 1993, two months after they lost 10 House seats, they counterfeited half that many votes -- even though they had an 82-seat majority. One year later, such arrogance contributed to the Democrats' loss of their House majority.

...

For Speaker Pelosi, two questions about the possible scope of your majoritarian abuse: Given your disregard of the unambiguous language and clear intent of Article I, Section 2 -- which uses the word "state" eight times to designate the only entity from which a member of the House may be chosen -- do you acknowledge any impediment to using your majority to give "Committee of the Whole" voting power to a delegate from, say, the AFL-CIO?

Or, for that matter: Do you think that Article I, Section 5 ("Each house shall be the judge of the ... qualifications of its own members") allows your majority to give such voting powers to your hairdresser? If not, why not?

The full article has more details and history.