Proving once again that the federal government is out of control, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration has issued an opinion which reignites the the war on law enforcement officers which was the subject of the August 12, 2016 edition of Frank on Friday.  Police officers do a thankless job.  When you come running out of the building yelling, “He’s got a gun!” it’s a police officer who runs inside to face the gun.  Homicide is the leading cause of death for young black men aged 18 to 34.  Although they are about 7% of the population, black men account for 49% of all homicide victims.  93% of these victims are killed by other young black men.  Black men killed by police account for less than 1/2 of 1% of all homicides.  Yet the Left claims, and the Media dutifully reports, that there is an epidemic of police killings of black men because the police are racist.  Now, it doesn’t make any difference to the Left if the police shooter is also black, because Leftists never want to be burdened by the facts.  We are told that the police are a blood thirsty bunch that enjoys shooting black men.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I spent more than 25 years working closely with police officers.  The last thing any police officer wants to do is to take a life.  But, groups like Black Lives Matter declared open season on the police, and we have had a number of ambush killings of police officers.  Our soon to be ex-President did nothing to discourage this violence, instead supporting the Black Lives Matters thugs.  As I write this, a Republican member of Congress is in hot water for taking down a student’s painting of Police Officers as Pigs, that was displayed in the hallway of a Congressional Building by the Congressional Black Caucus.  It never stops.  Communities across the country tried to find some small way to show their appreciation and support for law enforcement.  One way was that some communities painted a thin blue line between the double yellow lines dividing the roadways, as a sign of respect for law enforcement.  The Federal Highway Administration now has issued the opinion that these thin blue lines are not in compliance with the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (MUTCD).  Due either to its bias or its ignorance, the Media immediately reported that the federal government had declared the blue lines to be “illegal.”  Wrong again.  The reason why the FHA didn’t declare the lines illegal is because the federal government has no authority to make that decision.  The MUTCD sets standards, but has no enforcement authority for a very simple reason, called the Constitution of the United States.  The first page of the Manual acknowledges this fact, stating that “States differ in how they comply with the standards.”  Although it has lately been forgotten or ignored, when I went to school, we were taught about the police powers of the States.  Simply put, the federal government is supposed to confine its activities to those duties set forth in the Constitution, things such as foreign policy, the military, immigration and interstate commerce.  There is no mention of roadway standards in the Constitution.   Everything else is the province of the States.  Each State has police powers, which encompass control over its own traffic regulations.  So the Feds can’t declare the blue line “illegal.”  Secondly, the FHA opinion doesn’t even make sense.  The opinion interprets a portion of the MUTCD that states that the double yellow line dividing the road is to be separated “by a discernible space.”  The FHA opinion states, without any authority, that a “discernible space” must not contain any other marking.  Moreover, it cannot be blue, because blue is to be used only for handicapped parking spaces.  Now, a thing is discernible when it is perceptible by vision or intellect.  In other words, if you can see two parallel yellow lines and visually make out the fact that there is a space in between them, which is what makes them parallel, then that space is discernible.  The fact that the space is blue, if anything, makes it even more apparent that they are double yellow lines.  As far as blue being used only for handicapped parking, does anyone really believe that a handicapped driver will mistake the thin blue line in the middle of the roadway as a very long and narrow handicapped parking space?  Not likely.  I’d like to believe that this bureaucrat from the Federal Highway Administration was simply doing his over-officious, meddlesome job when he issued his opinion, and wasn’t trying to stop communities from honoring law enforcement, but with the Obama crowd you never know.  Perhaps the FHA is another part of the federal swamp in need of immediate drainage.