Comment by curun1r | Hacker News Reader

Comment by curun1r | Hacker News Reader

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There's no need to add it as a separate state, just give back the land that Virginia and Maryland originally donated to create DC in the first place. Then when the next census rolls around, residents would be considered during redistricting.

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?

The jurisdictional problem isn't as big as it seems, because not 100% of the land will be returning to Maryland, only 99.99% of it. To wit, the White House, the Capitol, and the Supreme Court building will still retain their status quo[0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocessi...

Not to mention that neither the Pentagon nor the CIA are in DC.

> 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?

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.

it's not even just the Supremacy clause. Generally speaking, the state governments cannot regulate federal agents, nor can the federal government regulate state agents except for things like the equal protection clause.

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.

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