Hoyer & Iraq War Soldier Amongst Wintesses to Testify On The DC Voting Rights Act (1/22/09)

Washington, D.C. - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said today that she was elated to learn that House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) has requested time to speak during the Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the D.C. House Voting Rights Act, H.R.157, next Tuesday, Jan. 27, 10 a.m in room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building. Hoyer, who has long been a major proponent of D.C. voting rights, last session successfully derailed a Republican effort to attach to the bill a provision eliminating the District's gun safety laws. Because of the Majority leader's authority to schedule hearings and votes on the House Floor, Norton is particularly encouraged by this outspoken support from the Majority Leader.

The Congresswoman said that she was delighted that three other witnesses also will testify. They are: Captain Yolanda Lee, a member of the D.C. National Guard, an Iraq War veteran and a D.C. resident, who graduated from Ballou High School and the University of the District of Columbia; Viet Dinh, a Georgetown law professor and a former U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy in the Ashcroft Justice Department under President Bush (the office that advises the President and the Attorney General concerning constitutional matters); and Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Norton has requested a vote on her bill near Feb. 12, the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth and the centennial of the NAACP's founding, a date suggested by Henderson.

"We couldn't ask for a stronger panel on our side: a leader of the House, a third generation Washingtonian who is an Iraq War combat veteran, and the leading constitution authority on the bill," Norton said. The Congresswoman has dedicated the bill to the first D.C. resident to die in the Iraq War, Specialist Darryl T. Dent, a 21-year old graduate of Roosevelt High School, and the unknown soldier from the city, who was the first to die in the war for Independence under the slogan, "No Taxation without Representation."