My appreciation for the second amendment just went up another notch. Opponents of gun ownership rights like to argue that guns kill people (for that matter so do hands, cars, T-bone steaks, and many other things) but they never mentioned that gun rights could also kill an illegal house seat for D.C.:
Fights over gun control in Washington, D.C., may have killed for the year a bill that would give Utah a fourth U.S. House seat and give D.C. a House seat with full voting rights.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., delivered that message in his weekly briefing for reporters on Tuesday
Apparently leaders in D.C. would rather keep very strict gun control laws than gain an unconstitutional voting seat in the House. If they want to now pursue a path to full House representation that does not sidestep the Constitution I’ll sign the petition at the first opportunity. Residents of D.C. deserve voting congressional representation as much as anyone else, but that does not justify ignoring the fundamental law of the land.
I still can’t believe that 80% of Utah’s congressional delegation fell for this Washington parlor trick. If the bill comes up again in 2010 I hope they will be smart enough to reject it since Utah would only have 1 possible year of representation before we would get another seat anyway (regardless of what Orrin Hatch would tell you about possibly missing it again).
Not the first reason I would have thought of to kill a stupid idea, but I guess it will work.
😉
I would not have thought of that either, but I like the results.
It seems that Pork-barreling has its place. If they hadn’t have linked the two issues in one bill, perhaps we could have our unconstitutional extra seat. (Even if the seat is unconstitutional for a year).
I don’t think that qualifies as pork-barreling, and our seat would not be nearly as unconstitutional as the D.C. seat, but if they had not bundled that unrelated provision this would not have stopped.