MORE ON D.C., PLUS TWO CORRECTIONS: I’ll respond to the Lord Mage of Good later (probably tomorrow). For the moment, some good points (including correction #1) from Steven desJardins: Correction: We do know that DC’s Medical Marijuana initiative passed in 1998, with 69% of the vote, because a federal judge ruled that Congress couldn’t prevent us from counting the vote. The results were announced 321 days after the election.

You reject the idea of merging DC with Maryland because Maryland wouldn’t take us. Okay. But what about a merger just for federal voting purposes? A Constitutional amendment providing that DC and Maryland shall be considered as a single unit for purposes of federal representation, while maintaining separate governments, avoids the problem of giving DC two Senators. (We still would have Senators who would be responsive to our needs, but we’d share them with Maryland.) We would get our own Representative. Our representation in the Electoral College would drop from three delegates to a one-delegate increase in Maryland’s electoral tally, but those Maryland delegates would be more likely to swing Democratic. The result is a small overall plus for the Democratic party, but a

tremendous increase in fairness to DC. Speaking as one of the disenfranchised, I’d be happy with it.

This still wouldn’t solve the budget-oversight problems, would it? But it’s better than status quo, and an intriguing idea.

And Rodney Welch notes, for correction #2, that the Sex Pistols album I like so much is, of course, Never Mind the Bollocks, not “God Save the Queen.”