Opinion: A dim-bulb constitutional idea

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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.

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