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- THE WEEK, Page 19NATIONHome Rule or Death
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- By order of Congress, D.C. schedules a vote on capital punishment
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- The District of Columbia is adding something new to the
- arguments over the death penalty: the contention that a vote for
- capital punishment is a vote against home rule. Washington's
- homicide rate is down slightly this year. But one of those slain
- was Tom Barnes, an aide to Alabama Democratic Senator Richard
- Shelby. The enraged Shelby pushed through Congress a law
- ordering the District to hold a referendum on reinstating the
- death penalty, and election officials last week put a sweeping
- proposal on the Nov. 3 ballot. Nearly all the city's leading
- politicians appealed to residents to vote no as a means of
- expressing resentment against interference in the District's
- affairs. Said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city's nonvoting
- delegate to Congress: "This is not about the death penalty. It
- is about home rule." But recent savage crimes have aroused such
- anger that the proposal has a chance of passing.
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