United States
As provided by the Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, the seat of the United States government is a federal district known as the District of Columbia. When created in 1790, the District comprised 100 square miles (260 km2) of land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia. Columbia was a poetic name for the United States used at the time.
The City of Washington was built in the center of the District, but other towns were also located in the territory such as Georgetown and Alexandria. The United States Congress returned the Virginia portion of the District back to that state in 1846. The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 revoked the charters of the individual cities of Washington and Georgetown, and instead created a single government for the whole District of Columbia. The City of Washington no longer exists; however, the name continues in use and the city is often referred to as just Washington, D.C.
Since the Home Rule Act of 1973, the District of Columbia has been run by an elected mayor and city council. Congress retains ultimate authority over the District and has the right to review the local budget and taxes, overturn laws passed by the city council, and terminate home rule. District residents pay federal taxes and are represented by a single, non-voting member in the United States House of Representatives.
Because of the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution, the people of the District of Columbia are allowed to vote for President of the United States. The District is allotted three electoral votes, equal to that of the least populous state. Before this, the residents of the District were not afforded the right to vote for the President who resides within their territory. The District still does not have voting representation in Congress, however, despite having a larger population than that of the least populous state, Wyoming.
Read more about this topic: Capital Districts And Territories
Famous quotes related to united states:
“The parallel between antifeminism and race prejudice is striking. The same underlying motives appear to be at work, namely fear, jealousy, feelings of insecurity, fear of economic competition, guilt feelings, and the like. Many of the leaders of the feminist movement in the nineteenth-century United States clearly understood the similarity of the motives at work in antifeminism and race discrimination and associated themselves with the anti slavery movement.”
—Ashley Montagu (b. 1905)
“Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you’re looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)