State doesn’t like legal developments

There are many who on environmental grounds will oppose President Trump’s decision to allow drilling for oil off the nation’s coasts, but it has the potential of increasing the nation’s energy supply. That could be a good thing, because increasing the nation’s energy supply has cut our reliance on the Middle East for oil.

Most of the reason for our having a military presence in the Mideast now is our concern that the oil in that region could be weaponized by keeping it off the market for us and our friends and turning it over to our enemies to increase their war-fighting capabilities.

Over the past few years, as new developments in drilling and other oil-extraction methods have increased the American oil supply, we now have the ability to stop being a net importer of oil, which is strategically about the most important turnabout in our battle against terrorism, which is financed by foreign oil sales.

The lifting of restrictions on coastal drilling needs to be accompanied by firm rules which will protect the environments of those areas where drilling will be done.

On another matter, it was no surprise that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has decided to lift the Obama Administration soft approach to marijuana sales in states that have legalized the weed. Obama winked at federal laws against pot, but the laws remained in place.

Now, it is up to Congress to either back the attorney general or take the curse off marijuana, which now is classed as a drug alongside heroin.

Like it or not, federal law still supersedes state laws, and we are beginning to see real conflicts develop, over marijuana and immigration.

Both of those issues are coming to a head in California, where we are unlikely to see the state following federal laws.