James Joyner (Outside the Beltway) has a good discussion going about the politics and mechanisms for sorting out the D.C. voting mess. The possibilities, in ascending order of seriousness:

1. A buyout. Bribe every single citizen of the District to leave, bulldoze the privately-held land, and move the rest of the federal government in. Fill up the rest with parkland (if there’s any rest left once you’ve moved half of West Virginia into the District). Oh, and finish I-95 while you’re at it.

2. Put it on eBay. Like the buyout plan, but more fun. Whoever wins has to finish I-95.

3. Trade it to Canada for Alberta. As a sweetener, we’ll give them any part of the Lower 48 where 50% or more of the population uses the word “eh” as a comma.

4. Give ‘em the “Puerto Rico” deal: no federal taxes if they (a) stop taking federal money and (b) shut up about the “no taxation without representation” thing. If they want to vote, they can declare residency in a state of their choice, pay their state and federal taxes, and vote absentee. Oh, and they’re getting I-95 like it or not.

5. Give the damn place back to Maryland. Except they don’t want another Baltimore. Especially one without either Camden Yards or a nice aquarium. And they’re not gonna like having to build the missing part of I-95. (Detecting a pattern here?)

6. Give the damn place back to Maryland, and guarantee them an extra representative or two for being kind enough to take D.C. off the rest of our hands. (Screw Baker v. Carr.) We’ll even pay for I-95.

Ok, so none of them are serious. Ah, well.

OxBlog’s Patrick Belton links to an interesting Weekly Standard piece on how the newspaper of the future should be designed—primarily, that it should be online, and take advantage of the medium.

It’s a somewhat novel approach, but I think people are always going to want tactile feedback when reading large amounts of text. “Digital paper” will probably be the closest we ever get to being truly paperless. This is one thing I think Babylon 5 got right about the future; even in the 23rd century, people will still want a newspaper: it may be custom-built for them, but otherwise it won’t look much different from the newspaper of 2001 or 1801.