But DC isn't voluntarily part of the union.
It can't secede.
Rise up and throw off their oppressors, then!
word got around the Capitol yesterday that the National Rifle Association was planning to turn a procedural vote related to the bill into one of its infamous "test votes," which means House members would be scored by the NRA on their friendliness toward pro-gun legislation just by deciding to bring the current D.C. voting bill to the floor.
I should have listened to more School House Rock, I guess, but I can't follow what happened here at all.
3: The Senate added an amendment to their version of the bill which removed the DC ban on semiautomatic weapons. The House version does not include it. The NRA chooses specific votes to "score" members against their scorecard and use in campaigns. So they are saying if a House member votes to bring the House version to floor (which does not muck with DC gun laws), they will score that as an "anti-gun" vote.
The NRA's clout was evident last week when the amendment -- removing D.C.'s ban on semiautomatic weapons, its registration requirement and trigger-lock rule -- was adopted by the Senate, 62-36.
Today's best headline: Republicans Looking For Bottom.
7: I think I saw the same ad on Craig's List.
With both hands.
Tune in next week for the followup story: Bottom Located -- Republicans Attempting to Distinguish From Hole In The Ground.
The gun control amendment is just a way for the right to remind DC that even though they may have an actual voting representative in one of the two houses of congress, they are still congress's bitch.
Becks isn't worried because she isn't sharing a house with Saiselgy anymore.
So the NRA could say that any bill is a "test bill" and if the bill doesn't have pro-NRA language the congresscritters fail? Sounds like a sweet setup for the NRA.
11: Lots of special interest groups do this, actually. They quantify how well legislators support their signature issues by checking how everyone voted on certain bills. It seems odd (read: motivated by partisan concerns, specifically intended to prevent Congressional representation for DC) that they would identify such a vote in advance, but the practice itself happens all the time.
12: is it really not abnormal? I get the test vote thing, but the using the failure to attach an unrelated amendment as the basis for it? Aren't all bills that don't overturn DC gun laws anti-NRA then?
13: Maybe it is unusual to use a vote on whether to include an amendment to unrelated bill - a procedural vote that's not an actual bill itself - as a test bill, I don't know.
Aren't all bills that don't overturn DC gun laws anti-NRA then?
They could use every bill as a test bill if they wanted but that would be self-defeating. Even the most pro-gun politicians aren't going to propose an amendment like this to every bill that goes through Congress, so lots of "failures" would be added to the report card of even the most pro-gun politicians.
The NRA has a bug up its ass about DC gun laws that goes beyond the usual for them. Part of it is that they actually have traction there since DC government is subject to congressional tinkering, but larger part of it is the fact that DC is the capital, which has symbolic importance as well as meaning that there are lots of targets for assassination there. The NRA dances around the issue, but it's pretty clear that intrinsic to their gun fetishism are fantasies about assassinating their political enemies.
6: My favorite quote today was from another Politico article today entitled "GOP Finds Pelosi an Elusive Target":
And there's another thing that makes her harder to hate on, Republicans say -- she's a grandmother of eight."Pelosi's a particularly tough demographic to demonize," says a senior Republican strategist who has okayed several anti-Pelosi ads during the 2006 campaign.
"And believe me, I know. I've demonized a lot of people, and grandmothers of slightly-larger-than-average families are the worst," he continued.I'm not surprised that such people exist, just because there's a market for them and everything. But I never fail to be amazed that they'll talk to the media about what they do.
On second thought, it's not surprising at all that they talk to the media. Talking to the media about anything is the only way to control what they write. But you'd think the strategists would pick the subjects and steer the conversations better.
On third thought, the guy in question was a Republican strategist who worked on 2006 campaigns. So we already know he isn't very good at his job.
15.last may be a tad overwrought, but the points about traction and symbolic importance are right on. Various other cretins have abused D.C. this way. Witness this awesome episode:
District Reconsiders Mace Ban; Move Averts Debate On Hill About Crime, WP, 7/10/92
The District may be about to join Maryland and Virginia in legalizing Mace, and the reason is not crime but politics.
Reversing his support for the city's 16-year-old ban on the use of the chemical spray against would-be attackers, D.C. Council Chairman John A. Wilson this week introduced a bill to legalize Mace.
In doing so, Wilson averted a move by Rep. Bob McEwen (R-Ohio) to accomplish the same thing by amending the D.C. appropriations bill, which the House passed Wednesday night. Wilson also may have averted a congressional debate about the city's efforts to combat crime.
I can't remember exactly what happened after that. I think the proposal must have just died in the City Council after McEwen was appeased. His genius reasoning, by the way? Tourists from other states might bring their Mace® and then have it confiscated when they tried to enter a federal building like, I don't know, let's just say the Capitol. Oh, it would have been delicious to see him hoist on his own peppery petard.