In yesterday's Loose Lips Daily, LL referred icily to the anti-District voting rights stance of Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who holds firmly that the D.C. House Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. LL said the new, famously office-dwelling congressman is "playing armchair constitutional expert," seeing as the man holds no law degree and spent his professional career as a political aide and public-relations man.

LL's comment earned him this comment from "Trenton," who seems to run a conservative blog in Utah: "While your cheap shot at Rep. Jason Chaffetz might make you feel better, it only tells me you have no serious argument to make in that debate."

You're right, Trenton: LL has no serious argument to make in that debate---just like Jason Chaffetz shouldn't. You see, LL holds no law degree and has spent his professional career as a smartass alt-weekly reporter.

LL is perfectly willing to stipulate that there are very serious constitutional questions involved with the DCHVRA. Highly respected legal scholars have taken differing, equally well-reasoned positions---in some cases in ways that oppose their political interests---e.g., liberal law prof Jonathan Turley says DCHVRA is unconstitutional; conservative law prof Viet Dinh says its perfectly constitutional.

Here's the beautiful thing about the United States of America: We have an entire branch of government devoted to sorting out these questions. And it's not Congress.

Nope---Congress' job isn't to sort out matters of constitutionality. That's for the federal judiciary to decide (thank you, John Marshall). Congress' job is to conduct oversight of the federal government and to pass legislation in keeping with its principles and policy objectives. That's not to say Congress should go legislating willy-nilly where there's already well-settled law---say, by passing a flag-burning ban---but a D.C. House vote is not a well-settled situation.

If Congress believes as a matter of principle and policy that the nearly 600,000 residents of the District of Columbia should have a vote in Congress, it should legislate thusly. If it doesn't, that's fine---but members like Chaffetz (and there's plenty of them on both sides of the aisle) shouldn't hide behind the trope that such a move wouldn't be constitutional.

That's not what you're here to decide, congressman---you need to decide whether D.C. deserves to be afforded a vote, with Utah gaining one in the process. If you think that leaving the federal district disenfranchised is a worthy policy goal, say so. But leave the questions of constitutionality to the courts.

I think Joe Biden was president for a few minutes there, today, if my jailhouse reading of constitutional law is correct. The constitution says that "Before he enter on the Execution of his Office," the president-elect has to take an oath of office. The 20th Amendment says that "The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January," and that "If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified."

Biden was sworn in before noon; Obama wasn't. What are your memories of the brief Biden presidency? Yo Yo Ma played the whole time!

UPDATE 1:21 p.m.: My friend Ken Katkin, an actual constitutional law professor, wrote this on my Facebook page (Ken, please don't sue me!) in response to another friend who asked whether the oath weren't meaningless:

No, the oath is *not* legally meaningless, even if it is a ritual. Art. II Sec 1. Cl. 8 of the US Const. clearly states that "Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following oath. . . " Therefore, from 12:00 noon until about 12:01 pm today, the President of the USA was Condoleeza Rice. From 12:01 until about 12:03 pm the President of the USA was Joe Biden. Interestingly, this means that, technically, Obama was *not* the first African-American President! (And yes, I actually am a constitutional law professor!).

I was right! Joe Biden WAS PRESIDENT!

Ken also wrote:

I should add that the language of the Presidential Succession Act actually puts the Speaker of the House of Representatives (Nancy Pelosi) ahead of the Secretary of State in the line of Presidential succession. But most Constitutional scholars believe that an "interbranch appointment" of this nature would unconstitutionally violate the doctrine of Separation of Powers. Which is why I said that the Secretary of State would be next in line, rather than the Speaker of the House.

This is, obviously, completely awesome.

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