LAST WEEK the House of Representatives seemed to be on the verge of granting the District of Columbia a full vote in the chamber. Currently, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's delegate, has a vote in committee but no power on the floor; she cannot influence final passage of legislation. For the last few years she has worked with Virginia Republican Tom Davis toward passage of a law that would grant D.C. the voting member the city so strongly desires. In order to cut down on the partisan squabbling sure to arise since D.C. is an overwhelmingly Democratic city, the plan would also give conservative Utah an extra House member, theoretically preserving the current balance of power (at least until the next census).

Sure of victory, Democrats brought H.R. 1433, the District of Columbia Voting Rights Act of 2007, to the floor. Debate went back and forth, Republicans mostly opposed, Democrats mostly in favor--it was a typically impotent floor debate. But then something interesting happened. Republican Lamar Smith rose to offer a motion to recommit the bill to committee with instructions to include a passage that would overturn the District's gun control laws, some of the strictest in the country. "District law threatens honest people with imprisonment if they unlock, assemble, or load their guns even under attack," Smith said on the floor.

Democrats were caught off guard by the motion, but responded loudly in opposition, shutting down debate and denying a vote. "We heard early on that Democratic leadership had told their members

Davis knows why the Democratic leadership didn't want a vote. "Instead of recommitting and returning to the floor forthwith, using it as an amendment," Davis explains, "they did a motion to recommit to send it back to the committee." As Davis said on the floor during the debate, doing so "kills the bill, and that is the intention of this."

"I think, in fairness, it's less directed at D.C. then it is just at frustration in not having any open bills," Davis told me. Other Republicans agreed with his theory. "It's interesting to me that the media, who was so exercised about Republicans not offering Democrats more opportunities for amendments, have been strangely silent when the Democrats have been far more strict than we ever were about open and fair debate" said Smith. When I asked one Republican leadership aide about the Democratic plans to bring the bill up again under closed rules, thus stifling Republican plans to derail it again procedurally, he called this "the nuclear option," adding that giving "Republicans zero bites at the apple, not one, would be unprecedented. You might as well not have a minority party. Obviously the hypocrisy is clear."