A Republic, if you can keep it

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty-five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

- U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2.

One needn't be a strict constructionist to see that the Constitution's language is indisputable here: the U.S. House of Representatives is to be composed of members chosen by the people in each of the states, of which there are exactly fifty. The District of Columbia is not one of them.

Even so, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress are poised to give D.C. a seat in the House and to grant its occupant the same privileges as every other member of that body. Aggression against the Constitution has rarely been so bold.