Roper in Action

For years, America's Moonbats got marching orders via silent radio--but instead of transmissions from the planet Tobor, today's message was beamed from One First Street, NE Washington, D.C.: the chambers of Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, Roper's author, who used foreign law to interpret Constitutional rights.

Oh there's evidence--but first some background. Citizens of the District of Columbia aren't state residents, and thus lack elected Representatives¹ or Senators.² Judicial challenges repeatedly fail,³ because the Constitutional text is unambiguous. Congress can't reverse the Constitution via legislation and a curative Amendment wasn't ratified⁴--limiting D.C. residents to a non-voting House delegate.⁵ Still, a DC statehood statute is proposed every session; H.R. 2043 is this year's model.

As part of her long-standing campaign for D.C. statehood, D.C.'s delegate issued this press release Thursday:

The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today announced that she will have a key role as a member of a U.S. congressional delegation meeting here, to get international support for congressional voting rights for the residents of the District of Columbia. Norton has been named one of 12 members of Congress to the 55 nation Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which is holding its annual meeting in the District, July 1 - 5, 2005. As a result, Norton has introduced and gotten both foreign and U.S. co-sponsors of a resolution supporting congressional voting rights for D.C. residents with OSCE also calling on Congress to support our rights. . .

Tomorrow (Friday) Norton also will join DC Vote and other voting rights organizations at the "Equal Voting Rights for DC Rally," Friday, July 1, at 12:00 noon on Freedom Plaza. . . "It's very important that these parliamentarians from Europe and North America not only hear from me on the inside, but see and hear from the people I am speaking for on the outside." . . .

Norton said that securing international backing for congressional voting rights can be "highly instrumental in getting political support in Congress, particularly today when spreading democracy is a declared national priority." She will be attending OSCE meetings over the weekend to try to assure passage of the D.C. voting rights resolution. However, the Congresswoman urged residents to attend tomorrow's rally in big numbers to show the international community that the District "wants and needs their support."

In other words, busted-Constitution European parliamentarians are descending on DC to lobby, pace Roper, for an unconstitutional law. Inaudible still, the Silent Radio's turned ironic.
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¹ See U.S. Const., Art 1, Sec. 2, cl. 1.

² See id., Amdt 17, cl. 1.

³ See Adams v. Clinton, 90 F. Supp.2d 35 (D.D.C.) (three-judge court), aff’d, 531 U.S. 941 (2000).

⁴ DC residents participate in Presidential elections by virtue of the 23rd Amendment.

⁵ P.L. 91-405, 84 Stat. 848, D.C. Code, Sec. 1-291.