ShareThisWASHINGTON - Look for Republicans to continue to press for a measure that would require everyone to list their citizenship status on 2010 census forms.
The Democratic majority in the Senate blocked a GOP amendment Nov. 5 that, its partisans said, would have produced solid numbers on how many undocumented aliens live here.
But GOP leaders say they won't give up. Aside from identifying how many illegal residents there are, a key motivation is that, if illegal residents are not excluded, states with the largest populations of them will wind up with more members of Congress than those with less because the reapportionment of lawmakers is based on population numbers alone.
Democrats say it would take a constitutional amendment to exclude aliens.
The last thing many Americans would want is more lawmakers serving in Congress, an institution registering rock-bottom approval ratings these days. But that is exactly what one congressman is proposing.
Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., says the House, which hasn't added representatives in 99 years, needs to expand beyond the current count of 435 because, in the last century, the U.S. population has tripled and the number of states has grown by four. As a result, constituent access and influence has been eroded, while the impact of campaign donors has mushroomed.
Hastings has introduced a bill to create a commission to study his idea. Some might wonder if Hastings, a former federal judge who was impeached and removed from the bench on corruption and perjury charges in 1989, is the right standard-bearer for the issue.
Troubled military veterans back from Iraq and Afghanistan now have a "virtual" Department of Veterans Affairs location to visit in anonymity. The Veterans Health Administration has created what's called an island on the computer-generated, 3-D world of Second Life, an alternate universe that can be entered at http://www.oefoif.va.gov/ (click on "Second Life," under "Social Networking").
There, among other sights, you'll find actor Gary Sinise on a video screen urging stressed-out or suicidal vets to reach out to the VA for help and telling them how to get it. The VA says the site does not collect any identifying information from visitors and promises privacy.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering taking a slap at the over-the-counter insect repellents used to keep the skeeters off us in summer. As it is now, those repellents are exempt from EPA's pesticide regulations. The agency says that may be bad policy, and it questions whether the repellents do what their labels claim they do. If they don't, that could mean that people who think they are protected from disease-carrying insects and ticks actually are not, the agency reasons.
A move has begun to create a museum in Washington to celebrate and study the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual culture in America. A nonprofit group called the Velvet Foundation is trying to raise funds and find an appropriate location for the museum. The foundation has purchased some of the papers of Frank Kameny, a legendary activist who was fired in 1957 by the Army Map Service for being gay.
Kameny, now 84, is best known for getting the American Medical Association to renounce its classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder. He also fought restrictions on gays in U.S. government jobs. The Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress hold some of Kameny's personal archives.
(E-mail Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com.)
Washington Calling
