Enjoy your Federally funded park system hypocrites.

When DC takes over Rock Creek Park, then you can make some sort of claim to be an independent city/state. Until then...

As a reminder:

Central Park-New York City owned
Grant Park-Chicago owned
Fairmount Park-Philadelphia owned
Griffith Park-LA owned

Rock Creek Park-owned by the taxpayers of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, LA, and yes, the 3rd District of Indiana.

Ianto94,

I do not believe that in any case Congress should act as a substitute for the decisions of local legislatures. That's how this entire country's system has been set up. Congress can act to punish states that do some of the awful things that you cite in your comment, and in many other cases the courts have already ruled that states cannot do those things (like have mandated segregation or censorship of the media, etc.) The real check on local legislatures is their constituents, the judiciary and the constitution. At the end of the day, it is the courts that decide on constitutionality, not Congress.

I agree that the D.C. Council is approaching the gun laws in a resistant way. But given what the Supreme Court decision says on regulations, council members can argue that they are within their rights. Only the courts or the voters should be able to tell them otherwise.

Fortunately, there isn't much time left for Congress to do much of anything this year, so this likely won't go anywhere.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Hot dog, we have a wiener! If there's anything Congress excels at, it's pushing pointless, unpassable, score-some-brownie-points-with-constituents legislation at the end of their term. Usually, it's for impeachment, but you gotta take what you can get.

If curbing violent crime is the point of this legislation, they're going about it all wrong. Most of DC's crime problems would be solved by simply turning the Washington Monument into a giant bong, and forming an infinite loop daisy chain while singing "It's a Small World After All." This is completely in line with the original intent of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independece. I'm sure Scalia would support this wholeheartedly if Smith & Wesson issued a commemorative revolver. I mean, what part of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" do you not understand? It's all clearly spelled out on the back of the dollar bill, man. There's some spooky s**t goin' on there. And it's green too. And behind every good man there is a woman, and that woman was Martha Washington, man. And everyday George would come home, she would have a big fat bowl waiting for him, man, when he come in the door, man. She was a hip, hip, hip lady, man.

While we're at it, have Pasta Plus fill the Reflecting Pool with cacciatore, scallopini, and carbonara, and give Marion Barry a lifetime supply of mouthwatering babies and sweet, delicious crack if he agrees to resign.

Vote Monkeyrotica. Now is you is or is you ain't mah constitients?

The DC Council is taking a narrow view of its responsibilities because Heller was a narrow ruling. The Heller decision made no mention of the ban on semi-automatic weapons. The decision said that you can't ban handgun ownership and you have to have legal provisions for home defense. That's the guidance the Council is following because the vast majority of DC residents were supportive of the ban and remain supportive of strict controls.

Ianto94... do you think that there hasn't been years of litigation that define our freedoms with regard to speech, equality, and other rights? You think that people just glanced down at the constitution and figured out what 'free speech' means in the information age? Of course not... the Supreme Court's cowardice in avoiding the 2nd amendment for a century is a big part of why we're just now dissecting this right in a modern context.

At issue here is whether or not people from other jurisdictions have the right to weigh in on this issue for DC residents. You think we're the only place that gets federal funding? You think we're the only jurisdiction in this country with a national park? Please... federal funding doesn't give some random Representative the right to legislate local issues on your behalf. Let our elected officials make laws, and let the constitutionally designated processes for vetting their constitutionality work it out. It's worked for every other place in this country for 200 years. Why shouldn't it be our turn?

So is "crime ridden third world sh!t hole" the new "worse than Hitler?" Because for me, "DC" and "crime ridden third world sh!t hole" are inextricably linked, even more than "third rate wannabe capital like Zagreb or Eisengard."

hillvada,

Just because a city has something that is federally funded does not mean that it should not have home rule. For example all large public transportation systems receive federal funds, with the exception of the DC area metro system.

Does that that I should have say in what other cities do as they are using my tax dollars to maintain their systems, but I am not using their tax dollars to maintain the one I use?

As a native of Rep. Souder's Third Indiana district, I must apologize for this Bitter that has been representing people from places like Fort Wayne, Kendallville, and Bippus. When he first ran in 1994, Souder promised that he would serve no more than 3 terms. 14 years later, he is still hard at work.
Don't get me wrong, the Third district has a lot going for it besides people who cling to Jeebus and their guns....Let's see...
Shelly Long (Troop Beverly Hills was her crowning achievement, imo) is from Ft. Wayne
Dave Thomas, (The Wendy's guys, R.I.P.) grew up in Ft. Wayne
Philo T. Farnsworth, from Ft. Wayne
There's also lots of corn and soybeans, of course--and some Amish too. Plz don't hate them for the clown they keep returning to Congress (I don't think the Amish vote, so its definitely not their fault).

Btw, to confirm what you are thinking--yes, I AM drunk before 11 am on a Thursday. Also, Philo T. Farnsworth invented the cathode ray tube, which made television possible. Props to P-Dog.

"Republicans love to point to DC as the ultimate failure of liberalism. Yeah, they like to point to the heathens in SF too, but most Americans still think DC is still crime ridden third world sh!t hole...little do they know that only applies to Metro now."

Actually, DC is still a crime ridden third world shithole. Didn't you see the Post on Monday detailing how many people were shot and killed in the city this weekend?

"The DC Council is taking a narrow view of its responsibilities because Heller was a narrow ruling. The Heller decision made no mention of the ban on semi-automatic weapons. The decision said that you can't ban handgun ownership and you have to have legal provisions for home defense. That's the guidance the Council is following because the vast majority of DC residents were supportive of the ban and remain supportive of strict controls."

Except that the council apparently missed the parts of Heller telling you that weapons that are "in common use at the time" and not military-grade are perfectly legal (See DC's 'Machine gun' ban which covers semi-automatic guns which are in common use). They must have also skimmed the part saying that a ban on operative handguns is also unconstitutional.

And just because DC residents support the ban doesn't mean that they're right. I would be if you polled a majority of the city that they'd immediately re-elect Marion Barry or support dropping a Daisy Cutter on Trinidad.

As much as I would prefer DC to have home rule, the council and mayor are dead wrong on this issue and that the comparatively responsible adults in Congress should set them straight.

dcist20009: would you advocate that congress set up a financial control board for a state, let's say michigan, since its economy is in the tank?

Rock Creek Park-owned by the taxpayers of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, LA, and yes, the 3rd District of Indiana.

Douché!

[...]Justice Scalia, the author of the majority opinion, out right said in his opinion that more litigation is needed to flush out what a person's rights are under the Second Amendment[...] If you don't like that, go "discharge" something on Scalia, he's to blame! You do have to love those activist judges when they don't think things out...

Right, just try to imagine spending 40+ years to build a conservative Supreme Court majority to explicitly do things like strike down 2nd Amendment restrictions, or eliminate the "Right to Privacy" that undergirds reproductive rights...only to have the Supreme Court that represents the high-water mark of conservative jurisprudence turn around and say, "Ah, not so much."

I feel their pain.

@Boomhauer: "As much as I would prefer DC to have home rule, the council and mayor are dead wrong on this issue and that the comparatively responsible adults in Congress should set them straight."

Good idea. Maybe when they're done with that, they can tackle problems in other places. As much as I would prefer Massachusetts to have home rule, their legislature and local school boards are dead wrong on the whole evolution issue. It's time for the comparatively responsible adults in Congress to set them straight and get Intelligent Design into the public school curriculum.

When they're done with that, they can get Illinois to re-institute the death penalty.

And it's definitely time for a Financial Control Board to take over the finances of Orange County, CA.

tmoney and dcist20009: i bring up michigan because i'm from there as well. i assume that you're talking about flint being put into receivership by the state.

i brought up the whole thing because people seem to want to try to call the district a state when things are good, and a city when things are bad, or some combination that suits their purposes. i say you can't have your cake and eat it too. it's either fundamentally one or the other. so which one is it?

The City Council has made it clear that it was going to move as absolutely slowly as possible in implementing the Supreme Court ruling. And, in ignoring the part of the opinion saying mandatory gun locks were unconstitutional, the DC government is willfully ignoring the plain language of the ruling (regardless of the cutesy, but irrelevant, "self defense" exception). The city gov't, as has been made clear by Nickels and Cheh, is basically going to do as little as possible, until ordered to do so by the courts. They are happy to have this drag on for another 30 years.

The kicker is that b/c of DC's unique status as a federal entity, such a strategy of perpetual delay can be overcome by a congressional vote. The simple fact remains that the mayor, city council and DC gov't exist b/c Congress wanted them to exist. If Congress were to decide to revoke the Home Rule Act, DC residents would have no say in the matter. And it would be perfectly constitutional for Congress to do so since DC is a constitutionally-created federal enclave with exclusive jurisdiction by Congress.

Now, we could go through a whole discussion of the Founders' intent of DC and how it was affected by them getting bumrushed back in Philly, and how it was a way to avoid being indebted to a state for basic services, etc. But that wouldn't do anything to affect the simple bottom line, which is that DC is a federal entity and that Congress can intervene whenever it desires, so long as its legislative mandates are constitutional.

Were the Council to enact legislation that was as hostile to the First, or Fifth, or Fourth Amendments as the current regulations are to the Second Amendment, there's little doubt the hoi polloi would be asking for Congressional intervention to correct such a blatantly unconstitutional stance by the local DC officials. But b/c the Second Amendment is involved - an amendment that in the view of Tommy Wells is an antiquated and useless collection of words - somehow the debate is shifted away from a concern about blatant constitutional violations, and into one on home rule. I think that's a neat debating trick, but it's intellectually dishonest.

Cranky,

I've been consistent on this one - I don't want congressional intervention for anything. The D.C. Council could mandate that we all wear green hats and that bloggers be arrested on sight, and I would still advocate that such a decision be overturned the way it should be - via elections and court decisions. Period. Congressional intervention in local affairs violates the spirit of Home Rule, subjects us to the whims of unaccountable politicians and forces me to write angry posts about it. And I don't like being angry.