Tide1986 said:

Reference the statement in boldfaced type above. Does this mean that Article IV, Section 3, is beyond the power of Article V?

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Tide1986 said:

I'm thinking of the 14th Amendment which guarantees "equal protection of the laws." For example, the Nevada statehood act of 1864 admitted Nevada to the Union under unequal terms as compared to the majority of other states. Seemingly, the 14th Amendment could invalidate the terms of the statehood act in which the citizens of Nevada were forced to cede the vast majority of the territory to the federal government in exchange for early admission to the union.

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Tide1986 said:

I didn't move the goalposts. I was developing a line of reasoning.

I asked if Article IV, Section 3, prevents the section from being amended due to supremacy over Article V (the amendment process provision). If it can't be amended, then I would think the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment cannot supersede Article IV, Section 3. If the 14th Amendment can supersede Article IV, Section 3, then it could be argued that Nevada and its citizens (as an example) were not admitted under equal terms of statehood and that the relevant statehood act of 1864 is invalidated as a result and a more equitable distribution of land is required.

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Tidewater said:

I do not know if this adds anything, but the theory behind statehood for states other than the original thirteen has been that the people of a territory "create" the state and Congress admits them on the same equality as the other states. Sort of a proto-State or a nascent state. The Congress does not "create" a state (it may create a territory). The people of the state create the state and Congress admits it. I guess an interesting case might be if the people of a state created a state and did not request admission to the Union.
The Reconstruction era created de novo the idea that a state can "commit suicide" and then request re-admission once the people of the offending state had jumped through whatever hoops Congress decides. This thinking is "creative" (in the bad sense of that term), and flows mostly from the barrel of a gun.

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Tidewater said:

I guess the Federal government, which obviously has the authority to "make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States." The Federal government could have ceded land within the state boundaries when the state was admitted to the Union, but the fact remains that the Federal government did not cede that territory.
States have ceded land to the Federal government for specific purposes. The land for Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter was ceded by South Carolina for the purpose of building fortifications on the land for the defense of South Carolina.
All that being said, I do not see how the Bundy's (or any citizen living next to a parcel of land owned by the Federal government) have any legal claim.

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Tidewater said:

Absolutely. The Federal government paid the price to Mexico, and Nevada was not even a territory at the time, so could have had no part in gaining the land.
Incidentally, the cession of the Federal District was due to prevent the seat of the general government from being within a state. People of Pennsylvania, during the RevWar, had physically threatened Congress and Pennsylvania had not done enough to defend Congress. If Congress was in a Federal District, this could not happen. But if we make the District of Columbia just like another state, then we would have the same problem we had in Pennsylvania.
For this reason, whenever I see a DC license plate with its "Taxation without Representation," it reminds me that my solution is to de-annex the district (return it to Maryland), except the Federal office buildings in which nobody lives and the White House. That way, the resident population of the District of Columbia would be the President and his/her family. Period. Problem solved.

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