Ed Whelan has a strong column in yesterday’s Washington Post on the Attorney General’s attempt to suppress an Office of Legal Counsel opinion concluding that the pending D.C. “voting rights” bill is unconstitutional. (We share that view.) This is not, as the Post had put it previously, a case of different parts of DOJ having different opinions, but an end-run around the Department’s usual clearance process: Now, it’s legitimate, if exceedingly rare, for an attorney general to contest OLC’s advice…. But there’s a right way to overrule OLC, and then …
The Constitution of the United States of America Congress Doesn’t Have the Authority: Congress lacks the constitutional authority to simply grant the District a voting representative, as the Constitution explicitly limits such representation to states alone. Members of Congress are bound by their oath to reject proposals that violate the Constitution. Article I, Section 2: “Representatives…shall be apportioned among the several States.” The District, as courts and Congress have long agreed, is not a state. Article I, Section 8: “The Congress shall have power … To exercise exclusive legislation in …
The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee voted yesterday to send to the Senate floor unconstitutional legislation that would give the District of Columbia a full seat in the House of Representatives. Like the nearly identical proposal that died in the Senate two years ago, the District of Columbia Voting Rights Act of 2009 would give a House seat to the District and create another seat that would go to Utah. This seat would belong to Utah only temporarily, however, and would later be awarded to whichever state merits …
