Republicans to Nix Freedom in DC

We keep hearing from Republicans that they want to move the base of power from the federal government to state and local governments.  They refuse to compromise on that issue, and it is the foundation of their opposition to Health Care Reform, Financial Reform and more.  However, when it comes to crushing DC’s local government of their power, Republican jackboots come down hard.

Taxpayers in the District of Columbia are bracing for a new assault by House Republicans eager to turn the capital city into a test lab for the conservatives’ social agenda.

The district’s hard-won home rule came under assault from day one with a House rule scrapping the already pathetic power of its elected representative to cast only a few limited committee votes (while never taking part in the final lawmaking on the House floor).

Then came the Republicans’ broad assault on federal financing of abortions in the states, tailored to include a particularly insidious clause, barring the Washington district government from using even local taxes for legal abortions.

This overreach was rationalized by cynically redefining the city as just another part of the federal government. These hobbles smack of the very evil denounced by the Tea Party newcomers — wholesale federal intrusion into the precincts of local government.

Far from empathizing, the House’s new right-wing Republican Study Committee, which includes two-thirds of the majority members, is now piling on with a proposal to overturn the district’s legalization of gay marriage duly enacted last year under home rule.

The study committee also wants to eliminate the $200 million in annual federal assistance that the district government receives to compensate for the expensive array of services and protection it must provide as the host city to the national government (anti-federal deconstructionists included)… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

The hypocrisy of these actions boggles the mind, but Republicans love draconian social experiments, like the one they are trying to start in Uganda to execute gay men.