My post last week about the D.C. Vote initiative brought this comment from one blogger:
Below the Beltway exhibits what I?ll call business casual partisanship as opposed to naked partisanship: ?Davis, the Democrats, and the District are all ignoring the Constitution and trying to use this legislation as a means to circumvent the Amendment process, where they know they could not succeed.?
BtB is probably right that an Amendment along the lines of the current bill wouldn?t succeed. Turning DC into a state isn?t going to happen either. Retrocession is unpopular with Maryland, so that?s off the table. In fact, nothing will work. It?s not in the cards. It?s the fait [sic] of the nation?s capital to lack representation in government.
Now, I tend to believe that last thing I said doesn?t make any sense. So I?m going to take a stand that may sound controversial. I really don?t care if the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. It?s probably as reasonable a solution as we can come up with. I?m proposing that we just look the other direction.
A more glaring example of ends justifying the means mentality I don’t think I could find.
Here’s how the author explains it:
Allow me to explain. Ever so often there?s an episode of Law and Order where the Sam Waterston character has the evidence to put somebody away, but there?s some extenuating circumstance, like the guy?s going to die in six months, or he didn?t know the gun was loaded, or the person who was killed was a jerk. So he chooses not to persecute. Nobody, and I even include the NRO hacks when I say this, screams at the tv set: ?But he broke the law. He must be punished.? No. Everyone shrugs their shoulders, and says: ?Whatcha gonna do. Sometimes life is messy.?
Or, to put it slightly differently, I think there are degrees of constitutionality and unconstitutionality
Umm, no I don’t think so. Something is either permitted (or, in the case of the Bill of Rights, denied) under the Constitution or it’s not. Unless you adhere to the absurd idea that the Constitution is a “living document” whose meaning can be interpreted (read: ignored) based on the changing circumstances of history, the idea that there are “degrees” constitutionality” is simply an excuse for substituting political expediency for adherence to the law.
Unfortunately, it seems like that is the philosophy that most of the advocates of voting rights for the District of Columbia have surrendered themselves.
Previous Posts:
A Vote For D.C. That’s Unconstitutional
Congress Examines Legality Of D.C. Vote Bill
White House Opposes D.C. Vote Bill
The D.C. Voting Rights Crybabies
Will Bush Veto The D.C. Vote Bill ?
Memo From The Washington Post: Ignore The Constitution, Just Vote Already
D.C. Vote Bill Stalls In The House
The Washington Post: Ignoring The Constitution Again
The D.C. Vote Bill Is On It’s Way Back
The D.C. Voting Rights Crybabies Are Back
The D.C. Vote Bill: The Battle Begins Anew
The D.C. Vote Bill Is Back
The D.C. Vote Bill: Back In Congress
House Passes D.C. Vote Bill
Americans Support A Vote For D.C., But Not The D.C. Vote Bill
April 25th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Wow, I cannot believe someone actually suggested we “look the other way”. It is one thing to argue whether something is constitutional or not, but the first time we “look the other way”, people will want us to do so in all cases.
April 25th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Al Franken uses the phrase “kidding on the square” to describe saying something in a humorous way, but with a good deal of truth.
Here’s what that means applied to the question of voting in DC. I’m pretty sure that our founding fathers didn’t foresee a large urban population, located in what was then colonial Maryland with no representation in Congress. They took lines like “no taxation without representation” very seriously.
If I explained this to Thomas Jefferson, and told him that the balance of power was such that a Constitutional amendment was unlikely, and that DC residents would probably continue to be denied the vote, I’m pretty sure that he’d encourage some outside-of-the-box ideas.
So, here’s the “kidding on the square” part. What would normally be unthinkable, that is, ignoring the Constitution, is not as bad as all other options. That is, if it’s correct that all these other options are not viable in a practical sense.
April 25th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
I?m pretty sure that our founding fathers didn?t foresee a large urban population, located in what was then colonial Maryland with no representation in Congress. They took lines like ?no taxation without representation? very seriously.
You’re right, they probably didn’t.
But you could also argue that they didn’t forsee the grave threat to American lives posed by terrorists who think nothing of walking into pizza parlors and blowing themselves up. So maybe we need to think about doing an end run around the Bill of Rights to protect ourselves.
For the record, I don’t think that the Bill of Rights is worth sacrificing for safety and I don’t think that any provision of the Constitution is worth sacrificing to achieve a desirable goal.
There is, as I’ve mentioned time and time again, a perfectly Constitutional process that the advocates of voting rights for D.C. can go through to get what they want.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:34 am
I understand what you’re saying. Here’s my question. Do you believe that a Constitutional amendment giving voting rights to the District can be successful, given our current political climate?
I suspect the answer is “no”, though I’d like to be shown something to the contrary.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I understand what you?re saying. Here?s my question. Do you believe that a Constitutional amendment giving voting rights to the District can be successful, given our current political climate?
Quite honestly, it would probably be politically difficult.
But that doesn’t matter.
The danger in your argument, I think, is that you’re basically saying that if there is some politically desirable goal that is going to be difficult, if not impossible to achieve under the Constitution, we should just ignore the Constitution and do it anyway.
If we start thinking like that, then why do we even need a Constitution to begin with ?
May 1st, 2007 at 5:21 pm
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