XPost: soc.culture.african.american, talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: remove.blacks@dc.com   
      
   In article    
    wrote:   
   >   
   > Now, put the niggers who authored it out of fucking work.  Fire them.   
   >   
      
   In Washington DC, the law prohibits the playing of bandy and   
   “shindy” in the streets, the arson of one’s own steamboat and   
   potentially even being a “common scold” – a common law offense   
   levied against those who quarreled with their neighbors.   
      
   Aware of the need to clean up this 120-year-old criminal code,   
   lawyers in America’s capital city have spent more than a decade   
   and a half going through the law books in a modernization   
   campaign described by those involved as long overdue, only to   
   see the effort stymied this week at the hands of Joe Biden and   
   an unlikely alliance of Republicans and Democrats.   
      
   “Many residents are worried about taking their kids to school or   
   going to the grocery store. But rather than attempt to fix this   
   problem, the DC city council wants to go even easier on   
   criminals,” Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy said in   
   February, when the chamber’s lawmakers approved a resolution   
   blocking the city council’s passage of the new code.   
      
   Weeks later, Biden surprised his allies by announcing he would   
   sign the House bill, and last Wednesday, the Senate passed it   
   overwhelmingly – even though the president and many Democratic   
   lawmakers support making Washington DC, the country’s only   
   federal district, a full-fledged state.   
      
   That Republicans would meddle in Washington DC’s politics is no   
   surprise: they have few friends among the leadership of the   
   overwhelmingly Democratic city. But for Democrats, their   
   willingness to go along with the GOP effort is a sign of just   
   how nervous the party has become to accusations of being weak of   
   crime, which played a role in their loss of the House in last   
   November’s elections. Residents’ frustrations with violence are   
   also seen as a reason why Democrat Lori Lightfoot failed in her   
   bid for a second term as mayor of Chicago.   
      
   No city in America has political dynamics quite like   
   Washington’s, where Congress has the power to overturn the city   
   council’s will – which it did, for the first time in 30 years,   
   over what local officials say was merely an update that would   
   bring its criminal code in line with national standards.   
      
   “We are an easy mark,” said Charles Allen, a city councilman who   
   chaired its judiciary committee as the body was considering the   
   revisions. “We don’t have representation in Congress, we have no   
   senators out there that are arguing for us. We don’t have any   
   full members of Congress in the House.”   
      
   Sandwiched between Virginia and Maryland, Washington DC’s   
   population of nearly 700,000 is greater than Vermont or Wyoming,   
   but unlike those two states, the capital city’s only   
   representation in Congress is a House delegate who can’t cast   
   votes. The city government officially backs Washington DC   
   becoming America’s 51st state, which Republicans universally   
   oppose.   
      
   In 2006, the council started reviewing the city’s criminal laws,   
   which date back to 1901, and sought out the thoughts of the   
   public defenders office, local prosecutors and criminal justice   
   reform advocates across the city. The outcome of the 16-year   
   process was a new code that removed mandatory minimum sentences   
   for nearly all crimes, aligned sentences with what judges were   
   actually handing down, added new offenses and raised the   
   potential penalties for others, while also stripping out common   
   law penalties that lingered in the turn-of-the-century document.   
      
   But after the council unanimously passed the revised code last   
   November, the city’s Democratic mayor Muriel Bowser announced   
   she would veto it, citing its reduction in maximum sentences for   
   gun offenses, among other issues. Republicans pounced after the   
   council overrode her veto in January, and the following month,   
   Biden unexpectedly signed on to the GOP effort.   
      
   “I support DC statehood and home-rule – but I don’t support some   
   of the changes DC council put forward over the mayor’s   
   objections – such as lowering penalties for carjackings,” the   
   Democratic president tweeted.   
      
      
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