Growing the octopus

The Obama administration isn't doing anything to try to curb the impression that it sympathizes with socialism.

You may think that texting while driving is a bad thing and that it should be discouraged. But, my question is, why should the federal government take control here? Each state is perfectly competent to decide what to do about this matter within its borders.

Of late Obama's transportation secretary has been hot on this matter, and allied Dems in Congress are promoting a measure to high-pressure states to adopt such laws or to rigorously enforce them. If they don't, 25 percent of federal transportation funding would be cut off.

This little trick has been going on for some time, and it's merely a way to get around the constitutional checks and balances system, specifically to vitiate the rights that were reserved to the states and to the citizenry of those states.

Even though the Reconstruction-era 14th amendment permits more federal involvement in the internal affairs of states, it seems unlikely that the amendment authors envisioned such an encroachment on state authority as is seen with the federal revenue-withholding gambit.

The erosion of state autonomy effectively gives aid and comfort to the covert coteries of socialists anxious to remake our country on the sly.

I wonder whether this revenue-sharing/withholding tactic has ever been challenged in the Supreme Court as an infringement of the ninth and tenth amendments. If not, let us hope it will be challenged and overthrown.