Senate Votes to Usurp Constitution - House and Obama to Follow
The District of Columbia moved a step closer Thursday to gaining full membership in the House of Representatives, as the Senate voted 61-37 to give the nation’s capital and Utah each a House seat.
Thursday’s historic vote will be followed by a vote next week in the House, where a similar bill is expected to pass easily. President Barack Obama has expressed support for Washington voting rights and is expected to sign the bill once it reaches his desk.
Article II of the Constitution begins:
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.
The District of Columbia is a federal district. It is not a state. Period. They may not have a voting member in the House of Representatives.
That is not to opine one way or the other about the appropriateness of them having a representative. Frankly, I’m on the fence on that one. But they certainly can’t gain a voting member of the House without amending the Constitution first.
Every member of the Senate who voted for this broke their oath of office. So will the members of the House and Obama if they follow through with it. It’s a clear violation of the Constitution.
We’ve got problems. I’m not sure many middle of the road Obama supporters signed up for the program he’s delivering.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 26, 2009 at 1932 hrs
That the morons in Washington would ignore the Connstitution is surprising, why, exactly?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 26, 2009 at 2009 hrs
And CJ Roberts is just itching to deliver the smackdown. While nothing is certain, I don’t think that Justice Kennedy will go walkabout on this one.
Besides, the unratified 1978 Amendment to grant DC representation in the House and Senate makes it quite clear that this bill will be quickly overturned.
As for the long-term issue, simply redefine DC as those bits of today’s DC owned by the Federal government (The Mall, White House, and Federal buildings). The remaining parts of DC, all those with actual inhabitants, would revert to Maryland. End of problem, because DC would then have no inhabitants.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 26, 2009 at 2037 hrs
I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any supporter of this bill who doesn’t believe that the courts will ultimately decide its fate. So let them. That’s what the courts are there to do. And certainly we’ve seen enough other legislative bodies, controlled by Republicans and Democrats alike, put forward legislation that they knew would be challenged in court the moment it was signed into law. Congress is hardly breaking new ground.
Posted by Recess Supervisor on February 26, 2009 at 2112 hrs
I agree that it has been done in the past and I continue to vehemently oppose it. They all took an oath to uphold the Constitution. They are breaking that oath if they punt it to another branch of government to deal with it when it is clearly unconstitutional. Heck, even Sen. Byrd agrees with me and he was there when the Constitution was ratified.
Posted by Owen on February 26, 2009 at 2115 hrs
Owen, Oaths are for honerable people. People like this hope some day they can slip one under the radar.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 26, 2009 at 2300 hrs
In response to Captain Ned’s suggestion that Congress redefine the District of Columbia to be just the portions of downtown D.C. that the federal government owns: The Mall, the Capitol, Foggy Bottom, the White House, etc. The rest would revert to the State of Maryland and compose a new city and new Congressional district of Maryland.
I have long thought that would be a good idea.
That is what happened in the early 180’s. The original federal District of Columbia was ten miles square, with about 60% taken from Maryland and 40% from Virginia. Since the buildings were going up on the Maryland side of the Potomac, the good folks in Alexandria wanted to get back to being voting residents of Virginia. Congress granted their wish.
The problem is in the Amendment to the Constitution that gives the District of Columbia three electors in each Presidential Election. Those three electoral votes are reliably Democrat. If the vast majority of the District’s population and territory go back to Maryland, the handful of people who live within the remaining territory will have the most disproportionately powerful voice in presidential elections than anyone in the country. I suppose there could be some creative solutions here: like defining all U.S. citizens who really don’t have a State of Residence to be residents of the abbreviated District of Columbia.
I haven’t read the D.C. Congressional representation bill, but perhaps it avoids Constitutional questions with creative solutions like: defining the voters of the District of Columbia as being voters of Maryland, and awarding these “Maryland” residents an additional seat in Congress. I don’t know.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 27, 2009 at 0520 hrs
Didn’t the Congress amend the Constitution one time, a long, long time ago, to no longer count black people as 3/5 of a person?
Man, those law “breakers” were violating their oath when they did that!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 27, 2009 at 1235 hrs
What??? Are you dense? That is EXACTLY what I am advocating here. If they want D.C. to have a vote, they should amend the Constitution. We have a process for that. What I am decrying is passing a statute that usurps the constitution.
Sheesh…
Posted by Owen on February 27, 2009 at 1238 hrs
Yeah, this is a poor way to go about remedying this problem, but the problem does need to get remedied. Basically as I see it, the founding fathers never envisioned DC as being anything but a government city. And the people that lived there would only be temporary residents, thus maintaining their residency and voting rights in the states from which they came. But that really isn’t the case. There’s lots of people born in DC, and they aren’t given the right to vote in any state. And people that move there don’t get to keep their voting rights at their former address either. This doesn’t necessarily need a constitutional amendment. I could see the supreme court OKing this bill. The again I hope they don’t because though it gives DC a vote in the house, it still maintains their second class status by not giving them a vote in the senate. What they could do to get DC full representation is redefine the borders of the District of Columbia to be basically the Whitehouse and Capitol and then admit the remainder of Washington as the 51st state. That would only require a simple majority vote out of congress. They’ll never put DC back in with Maryland though because unlike Alexandria and Arlington in the early 1800’s, DC residents don’t want to be part of Maryland. And who could blame them.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 27, 2009 at 2322 hrs
Sorry, I guess I’m dense.
I forgot to mention the efforts of the evil Thaddeus Stevens from Pennsylvania to bypass the Constitution and pass laws to make the negro a full citizen.
Or the evil Abraham Lincoln, who conveniently ignored the Constitution and instead (are your ready for this?...)
...issued an executive order allowing negroes to be considered free with no reimbursing the owners of these negroes. Where’s the outrage? The government took away property without the necessary compensation.
Think about all the inheritance that was lost to these negroes!
Dubya would have never done something like this.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 28, 2009 at 1011 hrs
You could have stopped after your first sentence. The rest of your comment just underlined it.
Posted by Owen on February 28, 2009 at 1024 hrs
Spoken like a true every life is precious pro lifer!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 28, 2009 at 1217 hrs
Lincoln’s executive order didn’t free the slaves, the 13th Amendment did—an amendment that was passed through the proper constitutional process. Kind of like what needs to happen here…
Posted by Jed on February 28, 2009 at 1254 hrs
Senator Thaddeus Stevens is the kind of Republican that I respect and admire.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 28, 2009 at 1457 hrs
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