🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep17.173347.12202@linus.mitre.org> m23364@mwunix (James Meritt) writes:
>In article <1992Sep17.022418.26784@openage.openage.com> ghost@openage.openage.com (Glenn Host) writes:
>}m23364@mwunix (James Meritt) writes:
>}
>}
>}>Two items:
>}>1. Since the constitution prohibits the formation of a new state from
>}>other states, and DC was made up from Maryland refuse, can DC be made
>}>a state without constitutional correction?
>}
>}Sorry this in not true - see West Virginia.  In addition somehere
>}in my memory was a clause that Texas or California had the right to
>}split later if they choose.  In fact legislators in California have
>}talked about just that as have the upstate New Yorkers for many years.
>
>Out of curiosity, did you bother to check the constitution before you
>said this?  (I doubt it, since I did before I wrote it)


Oddly enough, Texas does have the right to split into up to 5 more
States whenever *it* wants to. This isn't in the Constitution but
holds force because it is one of the terms of the treaty that brought
the Republic of Texas into the United States. You could look at it as Congress
already having given its approval to a split--opposite of the usual procedure.

But as the District of Columbia is a Federal Territory the feds are
free to grant it statehood without permission of any state. Not that
that will happen. But, as Parliament said to the Americans, you *are*
represented by virtue of being English. (It did help the argument that
most Britishers were in the same boat on having no vote on MPs.) :-|

---dave

-- 
"Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship."
                                          --Harry S Truman

dave murphy djmurphy@wam.umd.edu uunet!haven!wam.umd.edu!djmurphy