why are the Democrats/Congress idiots?

[DanS]

I dont think many members of Congress lived in the District 200 years ago

Where did you come by this thought?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Berzerker
I dont think many members of Congress lived in the District 200 years ago, but yes, the Framers clearly gave Congress jurisdiction over the District. My question is: why did the Framers see fit to deny Washingtonians representation in Congress when one of the reasons they fought a revolution was getting taxed and having no say in gov't.

The answer really is that they saw D.C. as a center of government, but not necessarily a center of population. No one really thought back then that it'd become such a large city.

[DanS]

No, I think they had a pretty good idea. At the beginning, and for an awful long time, Washington was a cow town. But the magnitude of the mall, and the extent of L'Enfant's plan both suggest that the people of the time imagined a city some fraction the size of the European capitals of empire, such as Paris. The mall is about one-third to one-half the size of Versaille, f.e.

[Sava]

Originally posted by DanS

Pretend for a moment that D.C.'s pocket senator became Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Cmte. and what that would mean for federal politics. He probably would be untouchable.

Imagine Senator Ted Stevens from D.C.

/me shivers

[Ramo]

PR doesn't want to be a state. What do you do with a territory that cannot be a state? Do you give them representatives?

As Imran said, I think they should either go independent or become a state. This territorial status is bull****. Anyways, they probably do want to be a state; and we'll see this borne out once we have a binding plebiscite.

It's an end run around the Constitution. IMO it passes muster, but it's silly that they can have a delegate that votes in committee but not in the full House.

It isn't an end run around the Constitution, since the Constitution doesn't deal with the organization of the House. It's at the Speaker's discretion. It's only silly to those who don't really give a **** about disenfranchised people...

They'd have an inconsequential amount of power on real issues. They'd have too much power over pork.

Are mp's from London or Ottawa notorious for pork? Was the DC delegate getting through all sorts of pork in Committee before the Republican takeover? Can you or Dan substantiate this fear?

If DC is part of another state

No, I was only saying that their Congressional representation (all federal representation, for that matter) should be folded into another state. That gets rid of jurisdictional issues.

I refuse to answer an idiotic question like "how small is small enough." That's a subjective judgement based on surrounding circumstances. In DC's case the nearly zero good of giving 500k additional Americans representation has to be balanced against the problem of giving the District representation, the effort of passing a Consitutional amendment (which will result in little good beyond the end of the whining), and the consideration that they are already pretty well represented unofficially.

Seeing as how DC is 80-90% Democratic, while the Congress is 51-53% Democratic that isn't true at all. Pork isn't everything. As I said above, jurisdictional issues aren't a problem if you word the Amendment properly. That only leaves the effort of passing a Constitutional Amendment. But obviously we can't take away any time that Congress would've spent discussing pivotal issues like flag burning...

[Elok]

Even if it were only pork, there's something wrong with excluding D.C. for fear that its representative would abuse the system like everyone else's does. That's not scruples, it's just selfishness. If we're going to allow the individual states to rob the nation's taxpayers as a whole, it's at least marginally more fair to allow everyone an equal chance to designate a representative thief. None of this monkey-in-the-middle BS.