Advertisement
Opinion L.A.

Opinion: A dim-bulb constitutional idea

By Michael McGough
Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

In the good ol’ days, Southern states tried to circumvent federal law for a serious, if wrong, reason: to prevent racial desegregation. Now South Carolina may be on the verge of asserting states’ rights against a less consequential target: light bulbs.

Thanks to the Americans for Limited Government -- and unlimited illumination -- I learned that a state legislator in South Carolina plans to introduce a bill allowing residents of the state to continue to buy incandescent light bulbs, not the wimpy environmentally friendly kind pushed by a liberal Congress.

Advertisement

Advocates of the old light bulbs have an intriguing constitutional argument for defying the federal mandate. As a sympathetic conservative spokesman put it, ‘since the bulbs would be made entirely in South Carolina and sold in South Carolina, the federal government has no power to regulate it under the Interstate Commerce Clause.’

Trouble is, this argument was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2005 in a case involving marijuana.

Clearly, the legislators need to be enlightened, by whatever bulb they choose, about the Constitution.

-- Michael McGough

Opinion L.A.
Michael McGough

Michael McGough is the Los Angeles Times’ former senior editorial writer, based in Washington, D.C. He wrote editorials for The Times from 2006 to 2021. Before that, McGough worked for 30 years for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as a reporter, editorial writer, editorial page editor and Washington correspondent. He wrote about law, national security, politics, foreign policy and religion. McGough is a graduate of Allegheny College and also attended the University of Kent at Canterbury in England and Yale Law School, where he received a master of studies in law degree.

Advertisement