As a tax-and-spend Liberal, and a big fan of anything that pisses off the suburbanites who come in and crowd up my streets, I'm 100% behind the DC City Council's decision to go to court over the cause of a "commuter tax." Here's the thing. Every work day, 500,000 non-residents from Virginia and Maryland pour in to D.C. (population 600,000). They use our roads, they are protected by our policemen and firemen, and then they leave and pay (much lower) taxes to the states of Virginia and Maryland. D.C., in turn, has to overtax its own residents to maintain the level of services necessary to attend to its doubled work-week population. Currently, there is a ban on the imposition of a commuter tax that MD and VA residents who work in DC would have to pay. DC is going to court to overturn the ban.

"In effect, D.C. residents wind up paying their share of services and the share of nonresident workers who get services as well," said Walter A. Smith, director of the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit advocacy group coordinating the suit. "We call it discriminatory taxation without representation."

Like I said, I'm all for it. And VA and MD can offer tax deductions for residents who have to pay into other jurisdictions. The rate wouldn't have to be very much to bring in millions to DC. DC residents get the shaft on every possible issue it is possible to be shafted on. If I had my way, VA and MD residents would also have to pay higher prices for drinks in our bars, have to take their own cab services, and also have to go to the end of any line I happen to be standing in.