The nation’s capital often gets the short end of the stick in its dealings with the federal government. Its delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, can’t vote on final passage of bills. Its laws can be undone by acts of Congress, which also has authority over its budget.

As we noted in Roll Call some time ago, references to the most popular book-and-movie series of the past decade are still few and far between on Capitol Hill.

That’s a shame because Potter’s world has a number of handy metaphors that would be readily understood [...]]]> Why hasn’t Harry Potter cast his spell on Washington?

As we noted in Roll Call some time ago, references to the most popular book-and-movie series of the past decade are still few and far between on Capitol Hill.

That’s a shame because Potter’s world has a number of handy metaphors that would be readily understood by anyone under the age of 29 — and quite a few older. (I mean, it’s not like it’s Parseltongue or something.)

For example: “The economy is going to be the Golden Snitch of the upcoming elections — whoever captures that issue will win the election.”

That’s why we were particularly excited to read Timothy Noah, a card-carrying member of Washington punditry, compare conservative Supreme Court justices to dementors in a recent blog post on the New Republic.

Whether you agree with Noah or not, it’s nice to see Potter get his due.

With the general election now essentially under way, pundits, scholars and voters will spend a lot of time trying to figure out which states are really in play.

Based on my experience as a North Carolina reporter in 2008, I propose a simple method: the Embed [...]]]> How do you know which states will really swing?

With the general election now essentially under way, pundits, scholars and voters will spend a lot of time trying to figure out which states are really in play.

Based on my experience as a North Carolina reporter in 2008, I propose a simple method: the Embed Index.

Because Tar Heels had not seen a competitive presidential election in years, it was obviouswhen the national news networks decided the state might be in play because they sent people there.

They changed their minds a couple of times, based on a mix of poll results, campaign spending and gut instinct. One poor NBC embed kept getting shuffled in and out of North Carolina as the election date neared.

National news networks spend a lot of time and energy trying to decide which states are competitive, but they rarely share all that information ahead of time, for competitive reasons and to avoid looking bad if they’re wrong.

In addition, they have to protect themselves against complaints from the campaigns, which often argue they have a shot long past the time when anyone else agrees.

But covering a state in depth costs money, so if you want to know what a network really thinks, look where it’s sending its embedded reporters.

Both liberals such as former Jimmy Carter speechwriter James Fallows and conservatives such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry have called for the United States to reconsider lifetime tenure for the justices on the nation’s highest court.

The idea is based on the increased longevity of many modern [...]]]> What if the Supreme Court had term limits?

Both liberals such as former Jimmy Carter speechwriter James Fallows and conservatives such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry have called for the United States to reconsider lifetime tenure for the justices on the nation’s highest court.

The idea is based on the increased longevity of many modern appointees. But a major side effect would be to reduce the randomness of the court’s appointments — and maybe make them more political.

Today, presidents nominate new justices when a sitting one dies or retires, two events rarely known ahead of time.

With term limits, however, everyone would know how many seats the next president would get a chance to fill. That might turn nominations into more of a campaign issue.

It’s conceivable that in some cases, presidential candidates might even announce whom they would pick ahead of time. (Though that would still leave the Senate free to reject the nominee later.)

Sometime today, the nine justices of the nation’s highest court met for the first time behind closed doors to discuss how they might vote on the constitutionality of the 2010 health care law.

Unlike a lot of other cases before the court, all nine justices [...]]]> Will the Supreme Court justices’ personal health history affect their rulings?

Sometime today, the nine justices of the nation’s highest court met for the first time behind closed doors to discuss how they might vote on the constitutionality of the 2010 health care law.

Unlike a lot of other cases before the court, all nine justices have had personal experiences with the U.S. health care system. And though it’s not supposed to affect their judgment, real life has a way of sneaking into opinions.

(Some court watchers think Justice Byron “Whizzer” White, for example, was less sympathetic of press freedom cases because of his experiences with sports reporters as a college football star.)

So what health problems might affect the ruling?

* Chief Justice John Roberts has suffered two seizures for unexplained reasons. If he didn’t have federal health benefits, he would be uninsurable on the private market without the law’s requirement for coverage of people with pre-existing conditions. At 57, he would not yet qualify for Medicare.

* Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has undergone surgery for colon cancer and pancreatic cancer. At 79, she would qualify for Medicare.

* Justice Sonia Sotomayor was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as a child and takes insulin daily. At 57, she does not yet qualify for Medicare.

* Justices Stephen Breyer, 73; Antonin Scalia, 75; and Anthony Kennedy, 75, would qualify for Medicare.

* Justices Clarence Thomas, 63; Samuel Alito, 61; and Elena Kagan, 51, would not yet qualify for Medicare.

The Virginia Republican tweeted this evening that he drives a really old car, and he’s proud of it.

“Folks, my 2005 Toyota Corolla passed 300,000 miles last week and it’s still running strong. Hope to see you around America’s First District!”

(Wittman’s district includes [...]]]> Rep. Rob Wittman wants you to know that he’s cheap.

The Virginia Republican tweeted this evening that he drives a really old car, and he’s proud of it.

“Folks, my 2005 Toyota Corolla passed 300,000 miles last week and it’s still running strong. Hope to see you around America’s First District!”

(Wittman’s district includes Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the U.S., hence the grandiose nickname.)

We at Heard on the Hill were curious whether anyone else in Congress had more miles on their drive, so we did some checking. What we found was that a lot of lawmakers make lame odometer jokes about the federal deficit.

We also found these contenders for most-driven lawmakers:

* Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has several Buicks, the oldest of which has 300,000 miles on its odometer, according to a June 2011 profile.

* Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) had 199,467 miles on his fabled pickup truck, at least according to a 2010 TV ad.

* Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) drives a 2003 Audi with 149,000 miles on its odometer, according to a December news blurb.

* Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) said he spends most of his time in Indiana “and I’ve got the odometer to prove it,” but he didn’t cite any odometer readings, according to a November 2011 story.

OK, Members of Congress, can you top that? (And Rep. Pence, care to elaborate?) We await your replies. You know where to find us.

On Sunday, the Arizona Republican made his 63rd appearance on the show, defending his new besty, Mitt Romney, in a mano-a-mano with former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), who represented former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), reverse mortgages and older men with goatees. That’s a lot [...]]]> Sen. John McCain will soon be the Alec Baldwin of “Meet the Press.”

On Sunday, the Arizona Republican made his 63rd appearance on the show, defending his new besty, Mitt Romney, in a mano-a-mano with former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), who represented former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), reverse mortgages and older men with goatees. That’s a lot more than the 16 times Baldwin has hosted “Saturday Night Live.”

MTP host David Gregory noted that McCain was “making history” by tying former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole’s record of appearances. (The Steve Martin, as it were, to his Baldwin.)

“Old Bob Dole,” interjected McCain, whose chicken is not exactly springy anymore, either.

“You realize that you’ll have to have one more and then you get the Universal Studios tour package,” Gregory joked, lamely.

We prefer to think that McCain and Dole are now kings of some “Meet the Press” version of the Five-Timers Club for SNL hosts. (Though now that Conan O’Brien is on basic cable, he’s probably no longer the doorman, which is too bad.)

Politicians on Facebook are often little more than caricatures.

On official pages run by legislative staffers, they come off as wooden and dry Dudley Do-Rights touring the state fairgrounds.

On campaign pages managed by paid political strategists, they are hard-charging partisans, forever storming the barricades.

But on his Facebook page, [...]]]> Roll Call, July 26, 2011

Politicians on Facebook are often little more than caricatures.

On official pages run by legislative staffers, they come off as wooden and dry Dudley Do-Rights touring the state fairgrounds.

On campaign pages managed by paid political strategists, they are hard-charging partisans, forever storming the barricades.

But on his Facebook page, Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), 58, comes off as a regular person ­— like he could be your slightly wonky and sarcastic roommate from college.

It’s not an official page, just a regular one like the rest of us use. Instead of fans, he has friends, and he writes his own status updates about buying clothes and watching TV.

Like this one from July 15: “I just bought a couple of new ties and I realized that ties are now the skinniest they’ve been since John Kennedy was President, making all of my ties dated. I blame Mad Men.”

Or this one from July 3: “I’m drinking a beer, eating a steak, and watching [an] old Bond movie on Sleuth. I’m sure if I was paying closer attention I would know why he was wearing a tuxedo.”

Miller says his staffers actually signed up for the social networking site when he was running for re-election in 2008. At first, they posted for him, but after a while, he decided to take over the account.

“I don’t think I ever decided. I just started doing it,” he says. “It’s not like there was a plan here. … I read the kinds of things other people post and kind of followed suit.”

Technically, Miller’s staff set up the account incorrectly at the start. Politicians and other public figures are supposed to use “fan pages,” a special type of Facebook page that allows other users to become “fans” but does not give the same direct access that a “friend” has. (You’re also limited to 5,000 friends but can have unlimited fans.)

The official Facebook pages for Members of Congress have become a popular way to connect with constituents. More than 400 Members now have a fan page, and they’ve become so popular that the House recently had to issue new rules on franking to regulate how they are used.

Miller’s staff eventually realized its mistake, and he set up a fan page, run by his campaign, that now has more than 1,800 fans. It’s updated infrequently and mostly features information about fundraisers and other campaign events.

But his personal page is more popular — with more than 2,600 friends — and more interesting.

Every morning, Miller, who serves on the Financial Services Committee, spends an hour on his Dell computer reading his favorite blogs on economics (“Calculated Risk,” “Economist’s View,” “Naked Capitalism”), major newspapers and magazines (the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal) and online outlets (Project Syndicate, the Huffington Post).

He then usually posts a link to his Facebook page with a pithy, somewhat snarky comment.

Like this one from Thursday on a New York Times article about freshman Republicans who support federal spending in their own districts: “They’re going to stop the out-of-control spending in other Members’ districts!”

Or this one from July 17 on an item from Times’ columnist Paul Krugman’s blog post about problems setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: “Paul Krugman is sad. So am I.”

Or this one on a link to video of a floor speech about a proposal to change how Medicare works from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): “I want to thank anyone younger than 55 who is willing to pay taxes for the rest of your working life so I can get full Medicare benefits, when all you’ll get is a pissant little voucher for private insurance. I think you’re a chump, but I appreciate your generosity.”

It’s not unusual for Miller to be this outspoken. He has a sharp-tongued blog on the liberal website the Daily Kos that he infrequently updates. (His most recent post, from April, is a breezy recounting of how he got into Columbia Law School by way of criticizing Donald Trump. He jokingly uses the phrase “cracker quota” in describing what some might think of the school’s policy on diversity.)

Still, he says his staff is not entirely excited about his Facebook musings.

“I think they wake up every morning with trepidation to see what I’ve written,” Miller jokes.

One thing he says staffers don’t have to worry about: the kind of social networking that former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) engaged in on Twitter with young female fans.

For one thing, he says, he’s not technologically adept enough to post a photo on Facebook. But Miller, who is divorced, also says he’s not interested.

Because his page is a personal one, and not a fan page, Miller’s friends can send him emails through Facebook. A few have written asking about veterans’ benefits or other problems. But a few have written unusually personal emails.

“There are a few perfect strangers who worry me a little bit,” he says. “I think it might be an Anthony Wiener-like setup to draw me into something that would be politically embarrassing, so I obviously avoid that. And it’s not my nature.”

Miller also vets his friends. If he sees a friend request from someone who has listed that they also like conservative commentator Glenn Beck, for example, he doesn’t accept. And he’s unfriended people who personally criticize him.

“Somebody posted in a comment that we’d all be better off if I just played golf,” he says. “That’s not adding to an enlightening debate.”

Mileah Kromer, an assistant professor of political science at Elon University in North Carolina, says Miller’s approach to Facebook is unusual for a Member of Congress.

Kromer, who has studied how state legislators use Facebook, says most of them update their own pages because they don’t have the staff to do it for them, unlike their Congressional counterparts.

After looking at hundreds of pages, she says she can usually tell which ones are staff-written and which ones, like Miller’s, are done by the politicians themselves.

“It really is quite obvious to me that he is the one updating his page,” Kromer says. “You can tell a stark difference from Members of Congress who use a staffer to update it with very vanilla commentary that anyone could have written.”

She says that as more state legislators make their way to Congress, the trend will shift toward more pages like Miller’s. Writing a good status update might be seen as a skill, like speaking on the stump or handling a TV interview, that politicians are required to have.

Miller says he doesn’t think that far ahead. For now, he is focused on a difficult re-election campaign caused by redistricting changes in North Carolina. He doesn’t think too much about how his personal Facebook account will play into that either.

“I basically use Facebook the same way that most other Americans do,” he says.

Shortly before he took the U.S. citizenship exam in 1947, eccentric Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel sat down to read the Constitution.

A pioneer in the use of logic in higher math, Gödel grew agitated when he saw what he considered a flaw in the document, which would allow the U.S. [...]]]> Roll Call, June 16, 2011

Shortly before he took the U.S. citizenship exam in 1947, eccentric Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel sat down to read the Constitution.

A pioneer in the use of logic in higher math, Gödel grew agitated when he saw what he considered a flaw in the document, which would allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship, according to several biographers.

On the day of the exam, Gödel’s friend Albert Einstein had to help keep him from expounding his new theory to the judge and hurting his chances of becoming a citizen.

To this day, it remains a mystery what Gödel saw that upset him, but constitutional scholars say he’s not alone in finding a few flaws in the framers’ work.

“There are imperfections,” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. “The framers viewed this as an imperfect process. They were fully aware that the Constitution was a product of compromise and urgency.”

Turley and other scholars say the framers got most things right: separation of powers between three equal branches, protection of basic civil rights and an amendment process that would allow the country to fix any mistakes down the road.

But they also say there are a few quirks the framers didn’t catch — small oversights of how the new government would function that could have very real consequences.

Some are minor and haven’t caused much trouble. Others have already been addressed by constitutional amendments. And one nearly tore the country apart.

Below are a few bugs that scholars have found:

There is no way to remove a Supreme Court justice who has become disabled.

In 1878, Associate Justice Ward Hunt suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed.

Though he could no longer attend oral arguments or deliver opinions, Hunt refused to step down.

The reason: He had not been in office long enough to receive a pension.

He’s not the only one, Turley notes. There have been Supreme Court justices with severe mental illnesses, crippling drug addictions and age-related physical impairments who did not step down.

“The Constitution is silent on this problem,” Turley said.

Article III, which outlines the structure of the Supreme Court, lists no qualifications. (Justices are not even required to be lawyers, even though all have been so far.)

It says only that justices “shall hold their offices during good behavior” and that impeachment can only happen for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” — but not for disability.

In the case of Hunt, Congress eventually voted to give him a special pension if he would retire within a month. He took the deal.

Inflation has massively expanded the scope of the Seventh Amendment.

The Seventh Amendment is short and to the point: Americans have a right to a jury trial in most civil cases.

The only exception is for cases where the amount in dispute is less than $20.

It’s not easy to say how much 20 bucks in the 1790s would be worth today, but to put that in context: $20 in 1913, when the Consumer Price Index was started, is worth about $454 today.

That means the threshold for a jury trial is now radically lower than it was in the framers’ day.

Still, not everyone is convinced the amendment’s wording is a bug.

Akhil Reed Amar, author of “America’s Constitution: A Biography,” says the framers were well aware of inflation, having lived through several boom-and-bust cycles. At another time during the Constitutional Convention, they even debated pegging judges’ salaries to the price of a bushel of wheat for that very reason.

Amar argues that the framers figured more jury trials would be required in the future as the value of a dollar went down, and they were OK with that.

“It’s designed so that as the years go on, we err on the side of more jury trials,” he said.

Congress determines the size of the House of Representatives — and does not have to increase it.

The framers knew the country would grow — and made provisions for Congress to grow along with it.

The Constitution requires the federal government to conduct a census every 10 years and reapportion Congressional seats afterward.

At first, Congress increased the size of the House about once a decade. It grew from 65 in 1789 to 213 in 1821 to 325 in 1883. But starting in 1912, Congress basically stopped increasing the size of the House, leaving it at 435 members.

As a result, the average number of constituents for each Representative has grown, from about 30,000 in the 1790s to about 700,000 people today. (Incidentally, that’s about seven times the average in the lower chambers in Canada and Great Britain.)

Sean Cain, a political science professor at Loyola University New Orleans, says the framers were naive to leave the issue entirely up to lawmakers. After all, if Representatives vote for an increase, they’ll each become slightly less powerful in the new, larger House.

“There’s no incentive for them to make any change,” he said.

Cain argues that the larger size of Congressional districts forces Representatives to rely less on face-to-face contact with constituents and more on town hall meetings, social media and other formats that attract more partisan audiences.

The vice president could preside over his own impeachment hearing.

The framers saw the president of the United States as a more limited version of a king. But the vice president was a completely new idea at the time.

Perhaps as a result, the framers didn’t really think through how the office would function.

Eugene Volokh, law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, says there were several quirks in the vice presidency.

At first, the vice president was simply the runner-up in the presidential ballot. Because U.S. political parties didn’t exist at the time, the framers didn’t realize that could be awkward. (Imagine Vice President John McCain serving under President Barack Obama.)

They also didn’t differentiate between votes cast for president and vice president, leading to the debacle of the election of 1800, which could have led to vice presidential candidate Aaron Burr being elected president.

Those bugs were fixed by the 12th Amendment, which was added to the Constitution in 1804.

But Volokh notes another one remains unaddressed.

One of the jobs of the vice president is to preside over the Senate, except when it is debating the impeachment of the president. To avoid a conflict of interest, the Constitution specifies that the Chief Justice of the United States presides over impeachment trials of the president.

But it says nothing about the impeachment of the vice president, meaning, in theory, the vice president  would still preside.

Volokh says it’s unlikely the Senate would let that happen, but it would still be messy.

“This is a time when you would want all the rules to be set,” he said. “You would not want to have a debate about that in the midst of a constitutional crisis.”

Slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person when determining the size of Congress.

The framers knew what they were doing when they decided to count slaves as three-fifths of a person when determining the size of Congress.

Slave-holding states in the South would not have signed off on the Constitution if it gave too much power to the North, for fear that the new Congress would simply outlaw slavery.

And Northern states would not have agreed to count each slave as a full person and give too much power to the South.

But Amar argues that the resulting compromise gave too much power to the South anyway, making it impossible to gradually eliminate slavery in a peaceful way and setting the country on the path to war.

Because slave-holding states controlled more seats in Congress, they also held more Electoral College votes, helping elect presidents from slave-holding states. Those presidents then appointed judges who were sympathetic to the institution.

Amar believes the North could have struck a different deal — perhaps giving Southern states more seats up front but gradually reducing the amount over time. But the three-fifths compromise was too rigid, and once it was in place, it could not be undone.

More than anything, Amar says, the three-fifths compromise shows the Constitution is not perfect.

“It failed,” he said. “We call that failure the Civil War.”

© Roll Call, 2011. Used with permission.

A recent caller to a C-SPAN morning show said the network was allowing so many black viewers to call in that it should change its name to “Black-SPAN.”

Commentators from Mediaite to Jon Stewart noted host Bill Scanlan’s composure as he listened to the caller, with some arguing he should [...]]]> Roll Call, April 3, 2010

A recent caller to a C-SPAN morning show said the network was allowing so many black viewers to call in that it should change its name to “Black-SPAN.”

Commentators from Mediaite to Jon Stewart noted host Bill Scanlan’s composure as he listened to the caller, with some arguing he should have responded more forcefully.

In an interview with Congress.org’s Craig Crawford last week, C-SPAN founder and CEO Brian Lamb said he has long struggled with the question of where to draw that line.

“It’s every host’s personal decision,” he said. “Some are more tolerant than others.”

Cable companies created the network in 1979 as a way to show live coverage of Congress. It later added its own programming, including call-in shows such as “Washington Journal,” but it has always strived to maintain a strictly objective viewpoint.

For that reason, Lamb argues the network will never screen its callers the way its for-profit counterparts routinely do.

“We have not done it and we will not do it,” he said. “It sounds goofy in some people’s mind, but it’s the people’s network. … The idea is to let it go, let it flow, let them say exactly what they want to say. Don’t be so jumpy that you think you know better than they do. And you know, there’s a lot of wisdom that comes through those calls.”

Over the years, Lamb has changed his mind over where the line is. When he started the network, he thought it was “terribly important and exciting” to keep the phone lines as open as possible, but after a while he found that frustrating.

“I sat there day after day and listened and found that I was being taken advantage of and the network was,” he said. “People were calling up and saying things that just had no basis in fact.”

After that, Lamb said he began challenging callers who said things that were untrue.

He said the network also checks callers to make sure they are coherent and are not drunk before putting them on the air. They also try to limit people from asking questions more than once every 30 days.

And, he said, the network has always cut off people who use swear words.

“If they get terribly nasty and if they use four-letter words and are abusive to the guest, cut ’em off,” he said.

Still, Lamb said he’s not averse to all swear words.

The network did not take down video of the recent off-color comment made by Vice President Joseph Biden before the signing of the health care bill.

“It’s available and uncensored,” he said.

© Roll Call, 2010. Used with permission.