Saturday, February 12, 2011

Voting Rights for DC! (Through Retrocession)

The New York Times is upset that the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives wants to inflict the worst sort of conservative social experimentation on the residents of DC.

This can only happen, of course, because of the "Enclave Clause" of the U.S. Constitution, which allows the federal government to govern DC directly.  For the left, the solution to giving voting rights to DC residents is to make it a state.

Conservatives should embrace the goal, with a different solution: Retrocession to Maryland.  This happened to the part of DC that used to be on the other side of the Potomac, which was "retroceded" to Virginia in the early 19th century (for pretty unpalatable reasons, to be sure).  There's no reason to have hundreds of thousands of people living in the federal enclave of DC.

Congress should give the residential parts of DC back to Maryland and shrink DC to its "monumental" parts.  Nobody should live in DC except the President, VP, and their staffs, who should be considered residents of whichever state they're from.

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