The Unconstitutional Quest for Washington, D.C. Voting Rights

This incessant push to grant Washington, D.C. voting rights in the
House of Representatives, sans a microcosm of a parliamentary order, is
one more blow to the ever increasing raping of our Constitution.

This past week the Senate voted, by a margin of 63-37, to expand the
seats in the House of Representatives by two seats. One seat for
Washington, D.C., and an additional seat for Utah.

These senators, these upholders of this country’s constitution, have
demonstrated time and time again they are a combination of untethered
corruption, constitutional illiteracy, interminated immorality, and
lack the common sense to have ever invented the wheel. They believe
they can, with just a simple majority vote, rewrite the Constitution.
When pressed about the measure being unconstitutional and probably
challenged in the courts, Orrin Hatch’s judicial advice on how to
handle the vote was, "let’s just throw it against the wall and see what happens".
Of course Hatch, being a Republican senator from Utah, traded his vote
for the bill as his state stands to pick up an additional House seat if
the measure passes as written.

How is it unconstitutional, you ask? Well, read the only section in
the Constitution that addresses mandating the dispensation of House
seats:

Article I Section 2
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. No person shall be a
Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five
years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who
shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he
shall be chosen.

For those of impotent minds, an avant-garde political
mindset, and the minds of politicians, the following questions might be
firing and snapping within your cerebral workshop, "But what does it really mean? What did they really mean at that time? What if I choose to interpret it differently?"
Well, fortunately it has already been interpreted for you by a one,
James Madison. You know, James Madison, the "father of the
Constitution". Considering that Washington, D.C. is a federal district,
and was never intended to be a state, James Madison explained in the
Federalist No. 43 why there is a need for a federal district that is
only subject to the jurisdiction of Congress, and must not be subjected
to the authority of any one state; thus making the district a state
would be, well, just plain idiotic.

The Federalist No. 43: The indispensable
necessity of compleat authority at the seat of Government car­ries its
own evidence with it. It is a power exercised by every Legislature of
the Union, I might say of thXe world, by virtue of its general
supremacy. Without it, not only the public authority might be insult­ed
and its proceedings be interrupted, with impunity; but a dependence of
the members of the general Government, on the State comprehending the
seat of the Government for protection in the exercise of their duty,
might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence,
equally dishonorable to the Government, and dissatisfactory to the
other members of the confederacy.

Next up, was the House of Representatives turn to vote on the D.C.
voting rights. It was shelved before the vote because it would have
suffered an undignified defeat in the eyes of the obtuse. The bill
would not fail because of its unconstitutional anima, but because of an
amendment attached to it in the Senate by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. In a
classic quid pro quo maneuver–that would make Machiavelli
smile–Ensign voted for the unconstitutional bill, but traded the
voting rights breach of the Constitution for his amendment to
strengthen the enforcement of the Second Amendment by giving the D.C.
residents easier access to guns. The bill is languishing somewhere
between nowhere and somewhere, as Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer have
tabled the bill. As the anti-gun leftists in the House are gnashing
their teeth and wringing their hands over the thought of a pro-gun
attachment to a bill, their anguish is compounded by the fact that the
bill, in its current form, was supported by moderate and conservative
House Democrats. The very Blue Dog Democrats that Pelosi welcomed with
open arms in 2006, have turned out, to her mortification, to possess a
set of values that are foreign to her, and she was not prepared to have
to negotiate with since there was a D preceding their names.

Along comes Eleanor Holmes-Norton, the D.C. representative who does
not have a vote, and she is livid that the bill has stalled in the
House. She went on a verbal rampage that could be rivaled only by
Lennie from Of Mice and Men, against the pro-gun Democrats. She
unleashed her very best Yale educated double negative English against
the wayward Democrats who actually support the Constitution, "There can’t be no turning back now." And demonstrating, very publicly, that she has never read a single bill that came out of Congress, she stated, "There
is no choice between a vote for American citizens and a completely
unrelated and reckless gun bill. That is a non-choice. That’s not a
fair exchange. That’s not even an unfair exchange. That is an absurd
exchange that no one would accept." Norton obviously shares
Obama’s contemn for reading the contents of congressional bills, other
than the one that would allow her a vote in the House, since Obama has
signed over 10,000 completely unrelated and reckless
ear-marks/pork/waste/etcetera in his first 50 days.

The comments made by congressional members run the gauntlet from
absolute ignorance, to abject disregard for the Constitution. The
following is a sampling of the nincompoopish adduceables from your
elected official:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, "…citizens
who pay taxes, serve on juries and fight in the armed services should
be given a voting member of the House."

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, "The bill is unconstitutional
because the Constitution limits membership in the House to the states
and thus excludes the District. McConnell encouraged citizens to amend
the Constitution in order to gain the seat. If the residents of the
District are to get a member for themselves, there remains a remedy:
Amend the Constitution.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), "Let’s just throw it against the wall and see what happens."

The crown jewel of ignorance came from Republican
turncoat, Sen. Olympia Snowe–when asked whether she supported voting
rights for D.C., she said "yes." And when asked about the Constitution,
which says that members of the House shall be chosen by the people of
the states and that voting rights for D.C. might require a
constitutional amendment, Sen. Snowe said: "Well, I don’t know, I don’t
know what the arguments have been, and I haven’t heard from both sides.
I think this is a fair and equitable resolution." When Article 1,
Section 2 of the Constitution was mentioned concerning whether
providing House representation for D.C. would require a constitutional
amendment, Snowe said, "I don’t believe it does."

Unfortunately, for the constitutional amendment
thinkers like Mitch McConnell, an amendment to allow the district
voting rights in the House is not what the founders envisioned as noted
in their argument against it in the Federalist Papers.

The droning argument of no taxation without representation
is old, tired, and unfair to taxpayers. On June 11, 1800, Washington
D.C. became the seat of the national government. Taxes were being paid,
citizens were serving on juries, and citizens joined the armed services
in a short time after George Washington’s chosen area for the fledgling
nation’s new capital expanded. The idea of granting Washington D.C. a
seat in the House was immaterial, and unfathomable to the founders. To
make this continual bleating of no taxation without representation a fair arrangement, the reverse would have to be implemented: no representation without taxation. This presents another opportunity to implement a quid pro quo move.
If you pay taxes, you vote, if you don’t pay taxes, no vote for you. Of
course the great thing about the implementation of no tax, no vote, is
it would be genocide for the Democrat Party.

Three options exist: Grant voting rights, which
has a better than fair chance of being supressed at the Supreme Court;
let a neighboring state absorb the bulk of D.C. through retrocession;
abolish all federal taxes for residents of D.C.

Abolishing all federal taxes would be easiest,
most productive, and constitutionally acceptable approach to solving
Washington, D.C.’s voting dilemma. If federal taxes were abolished for
the district, then the rapid annihilation of the ignominious core of
the city would swiftly come to pass. The victims of the new no tax
tempest located at Latitude: 38° 53′ 47" N and Longitude: -77° 1′ 34" W
would be: rampant crime, an abominable public school system, a
ridiculously ignorant and non-voting faux-congressindividual,
staggering unemployment, crime-ridden housing projects, an HIV rate
higher than West Africa, and various etceteras. But one blighted area
of turpitude that cannot be solved by D.C. with the abatement of taxes
is the crime-ridden edifices at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and the area of Constitution Ave. and Delaware St., respectively. At
first glance, this stratagem seems as implausible as Obama’s raising of
taxes to increase tax revenue; but unlike the stark reality that
revenues always drop with tax increases, this no tax policy would
change the face of the district.

No federal taxes would mean a rapid migration of
the wealthy to Washington, D.C. proper. The property would be grabbed
in a manner not seen since the 19th century land races in Oklahoma.
Then would come the demolition of blight, and the reconstruction of a
self sustaining and productive district. The wealthy will beget
conservatism, and conservatism will beget a rule of law, and rule of
law will beget a cleaner and safer district, and a safe, clean, and
crime free, and self sustaining area will beget Republicans, and
Republican votes will be the reason the Democrats never bring up the
voting issue again. You didn’t think this was about voting rights, did
you? It is about voting rights, alright–as long as they vote Democrat.