When I was in WDC (my home town) a month ago, I noticed there was something new on the license plates since I left. Is this goverment sponsored civil disobedience or a collective effort to finally give DC statehood? Either way I think this is great. More about it here.
The backstory to this is quite colorful: One of the events leading to this license plate change was in 2000 when Congress cut funding for D.C.\’s medical marijuana initiative (http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/2000/nov/11-21-2000/edit/02.html) — because D.C. is basically run like a colony and old white men from South Dakota get a lot more say about governing D.C. than D.C. itself. The history of this arrangement is fairly complex; IIRC it comes from the fact that Thomas Jefferson didn\’t want the U.S. to be dominated by one city such as London or Paris. It\’s a valid concern — albeit one that\’s exceptionally informed by Jefferson\’s pro-agrarian slant — but the consequences have been pretty bleak for modern D.C. residents.
Personally when I heard about this, I thought \”If D.C. were to try seceding over medical marijuana and there was a civil war, I\’d enlist in that army.\” Though when you think about it, we\’d probably make a lousy army, too busy dealing with the munchies to learn how to use our bayonets …