Taxpayers in the District of Columbia are bracing for a new assault by House Republicans eager to turn the capital city into a test lab for the conservatives’ social agenda.

The district’s hard-won home rule came under assault from day one with a House rule scrapping the already pathetic power of its elected representative to cast only a few limited committee votes (while never taking part in the final lawmaking on the House floor).

Then came the Republicans’ broad assault on federal financing of abortions in the states, tailored to include a particularly insidious clause, barring the Washington district government from using even local taxes for legal abortions.

This overreach was rationalized by cynically redefining the city as just another part of the federal government. These hobbles smack of the very evil denounced by the Tea Party newcomers  wholesale federal intrusion into the precincts of local government.