Try living in DC.
It's a special kind of hell to live in the city where all this is taking place - where the local news IS what is going on in Congress (good and bad) - and not even be able to write to a voting representative in either house.
It's a special kind of hell to live in the city where all this is taking place - where the local news IS what is going on in Congress (good and bad) - and not even be able to write to a voting representative in either house.
I'd be the last to defend corruption, but it's important to point out that these things are relative. A republic can tolerate a little graft and profiteering. It cannot tolerate torture.
She's a lying sack of garbage. Maybe, just maybe she had an attack of conscience about the CIA thing -- my guess is that she realized it would make it out anyway, and decided it would be better to look good on that account than defend something obviously illegal.
Just watch. Nothing will happen.
I wonder who the next intelligence committee lapdog is going to be?
And she's great at doing just that: throwing the liberals a bone once in a rare while, which keeps them happy (no offense meant). She had no choice about releasing the report: she was going to get booted out of the SIC at the end of the year. If she didn't release the report (as was demanded by lots and lots of people), it would have been impossible to do so after January 1.
In any case: if she hadn't released it, Mark Udall would have, since he has nothing to lose.
This and the CIA never crucified, amputated, or executed men on film for progoganda...which is what we look at now on the news every other week.
Not to mention CIA's lethal drone program (incl. under Obama) has killed, maimed, and injured more innocent men/women/children than the EIA stuff.
Of course I have to add, that first it would make much more sense to try to change the local sentiment first - usually done by enganging in your locale community.
In the USCIA, it's no longer possible to engage with your local community without being cognizant of government spies. After all that happened with the Occupy movement, if the criminals who oversaw these sadistic acts of torture aren't brought to justice, and it instead comes down to grassroots activism, I for one wouldn't count on justice.
And here's to hoping that I can at least continue to speak frankly on the internet. I certainly foresee my use of Tor creating problems for me down the road. It's why I'm such a big fan of Bitcoin, because that's the only viable way I'm aware of to defund these psychopaths.
This includes other countries.
Then there can be the constitutionally mandated federal district, that consists simply of the federal buildings, and everywhere that people live (outside of the White House, Number One Observatory Circle, and maybe a few other formal federal residences) would actually be within state jurisdiction.
This already happened to the bulk of the Virginia side of DC in 1847 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocess...). I don't see why they don't just do that again with the rest.
If that doesn't work, it doesn't really matter that much if you sweep up a few commercial buildings into DC. Most of those federal buildings are mixed in with retail, hotels, convention centers, offices, and the like, which doesn't cause disenfranchisement if you include them within DC. The big problem is residential areas.
If you declared all federal buildings to be part of the district (and everything else Maryland) it would get messy fast:
+ What about commercial buildings that the feds lease? (There are many of these.)
+ What about federal buildings which are leased to commercial organizations? (Not sure if there are any, but it wouldn't surprise me.)
+ Would federal DC have its own first responders specifically to service federal buildings?
+ Would DC pay Maryland taxes for road maintenance between its "islands" of office space?
Etc.
Once you walked off the sidewalk, or off the third floor elevators, or through that door, etc, you would be on "federal turf" so to speak. It's not about a geographical circle.
The core national mall area is already protected by US Park Police, it would be possible to create a core DC area as a national park and return the rest of all land to the states. Federal buildings on land returned to the states would be treated like any other federal building in a state. There are plenty of federal buildings in NoVa and Maryland already.
The apathy about this issue is what confuses me - what harm would it do to allow DC residents to vote? What reason could you have to oppose DC citizens gaining the right to vote? The argument that federal government workers should be forbidden from voting is incredibly hollow - the vast majority of them reside outside the city. Also, this is tantamount to saying "Park Rangers in Idaho shouldn't be allowed to vote," a position I have never heard put forward.
I'm not against letting DC vote to fix the problem at this point. But this situation is ridiculous. There was no reason to start a major city in the no-voting zone.
Personally, I have no problem with adding DC as another state.
Politically, it'll never happen (imho). why would any senator give up 2% of their power to add 2 more senators? There are probably many issues blocking, but on that one at least is a monster to overcome.
No new senators would be created, so no yielding 2% power, and Maryland and Virginia might get 1-2 more electoral votes and/or congressional representatives.
I would imagine that the main issue that would need to be resolved is jurisdictional...would laws passed in Maryland and Virginia apply to residents of DC? If so, it's conceivable that those states could influence Federal policy. What would happen if one of those states made it illegal to order a drone strike without the approval from one of their courts...could the President be arrested and charged in that state for violating that law?
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocessi...
Probably not, because Supremacy Clause. Federal officers operate in the states fairly regularly, and this general issue (not the specific issue involving the President and drone strikes in particular) has been litigated extensively.
See Coleman v. Maryland, holding that since the medical leave act provisions under the Family and Medical Leave Act were passed under the commerce clause, not the EPC, then state governments were not bound to it.
Presumably for reasons similar to ones that lead previous Congresses to add the previous 37 states to the Union, despite even higher dilution of power.
That sounds like a decent reason. Not compelling, but decent. It only needs to be enough to counter the anti-dilution argument, after all.
Puerto Rico's statehood is more likely though. In the 2012 election both Obama and Romney indicated support for statehood should that be what the people of PR decide. That's complicated because apparently the Republican Party of PR is the statehood party, even though PR is likely to vote for the Democratic Party. (See http://www.caribbeanbusinesspr.com/news/dc-lobbyist-warning-... )
So, D's control the House and Senate, DC and PR become states, and the D's pick up about 10 seats and hold power even longer. That's more compelling than DC alone.
I think the issue is more why would any republican senator vote for it, since DC is extremely liberal and would be confirmed Democratic bastions
Aren't rising house prices also a problem?
By contrast, people who don't live in DC didn't have their pay cut 10% by mandatory furloughs demanded by a governing body they have no vote in. People who don't live in DC get to pass laws determining how they want to live, without those laws being vetoed by representatives from Oklahoma who find them politically inconvenient in their home state.
I haven't even touched on the fact that DC's population is over 50% black, and has been for decades. It may not be the case now, but in the past the arguments for refusing DC residents the right to vote were very explicitly racial.
(Please tell me it wasn't because someone thought I was including dangerlibrary in those hundreds of thousands. That's a distinction that really doesn't matter, and I didn't want to double the size of the post with a disclaimer.)