WHAT'S CONGRESS SMOKING?

Inside a computer, inside the Board of Elections and Ethics at One
Judiciary Square downtown, "lies the answer," Alice P. Miller said yesterday.

And the question?

The question is whether it should be legal to use marijuana for medical
reasons. It was on the ballot Tuesday in the District, just as it was on
the ballot in Arizona, Nevada and Washington state.

They know the answer in those states by now. Their citizens went to the
polls and expressed their wishes, and computers counted the ballots and
spit out the results, and the answer was yes in all three places. In the
District, however, citizens went to the polls and expressed their wishes,
and the computer counted the ballots but didn't spit out the results,
because Miller didn't ask it to do so.

Miller, the election board's executive director, might be dismembered or
dispatched to a concentration camp if she asked. Okay, not quite. But
Miller hasn't asked because it might not be politically healthy for
District officials and other living things to know the outcome of the
city's Initiative 59. There's Bob Barr, after all.

U.S. Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr., as you might be aware, is a conservative,
anti-Clinton Doberman whose Georgia constituents once again lost their grip
on reality Tuesday and rewarded the Republican with a third term as a
leader of the nation.

But that's democracy, a wonderful thing.

Barr, we presume, endorses democracy. Maybe, as I do, he gets teary about
it occasionally, about freedom and the will of the people. If so, he
probably gets teary only to a point. That point is the District.

He sponsored an amendment, which passed, that bars the District government
from spending money on any ballot initiative that would "legalize or
otherwise reduce penalties" for the use of marijuana.

I have no opinion on whether marijuana ought to be legalized to ease the
suffering of those with serious illnesses. I simply haven't thought much
about it. But I would note that two of the states that said yes Tuesday --
Arizona and Nevada -- will never be mistaken for summer camps for Che
Guevara's descendants, so the notion can't be written off as liberal
orthodoxy.

But inhaling for any reason apparently offends Bob Barr. He couldn't stop
Arizona, Nevada or Washington from dabbling in such outrageous democratic
exuberance as holding a referendum on the question, which must have been
frustrating. But he could stop the District, because Congress can do
anything to the District.

And does.

Sure, that power is in the Constitution. That doesn't make it right, no
more than it was right to make powerless Americans out of women and blacks,
which the Constitution also did, until modern wisdom set in. How do these
out-of-towners make peace with their consciences when they do this sort of
stuff? They rail about Cuba, Iraq, China and all the other dictatorially
smothered establishments, and then turn around and vote with Barr to deny
half a million Americans in the national capital the simple privilege of
deciding for themselves whether to ease a local drug law for humane reasons.

No democracy for you.

At least Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.), one of the chief agents of absentee
rule, paid the ultimate political price on Tuesday. There is a God.

Because of Barr's amendment, the election board decided not to print and
release the results of the initiative, fearing Congress might construe that
as spending money. Even having printed the initiative on ballots could be
so construed, although Miller noted yesterday the board hasn't paid for the
printing yet. Even having had the computer count the results could be so
construed, although Miller indicated that cost was near-zero. Who knows,
maybe Barr will go after Miller for talking with me, because she's paid
with government funds and was discussing the verboten initiative.

"We can't do anything that might attempt to defy the will of Congress,"
Miller said by phone.

So we have a situation in which the people have voted fairly and the votes
have been counted fairly, but the whole thing's been impounded immediately,
lest the city feel the wrath of the House of Lords. You know how, in Third
World nations, outside observers are called in sometimes to help the locals
vote fairly and freely? Here, the locals are fine. It's the outside
observers who've stolen the election.

"We think it is an outrage," Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the local
American Civil Liberties Union, said yesterday.

The ACLU is fighting on a couple of fronts, having filed suit Friday to
prevent Congress from nullifying the initiative results and filing a
Freedom of Information request yesterday to force the Board of Elections
and Ethics to hand over what are clearly public documents, namely, the
election results.

For its part, the board is planning to ask a federal court for a ruling on
what it should obey, Barr's amendment or provisions giving District
residents the right to vote on initiatives.

You'd think the computer at One Judiciary Square was loaded with anthrax or
sarin, instead of election results. What's Congress afraid of? Free will?