As Chair of a Board of Selectmen in a northeast community during the Blizzard of 1993, I can attest to the Weather Service’s professionlism and information-sharing mentality. The local weather bureau called EACH COMMUNITY, including my little 2000-person town, to alert them of a coference call briefing on the coming storm and its potential effects. They had the Senior elected official’s phone number AT HOME. (I know – they called me!)

During the call, they had the electric company, phone company, state departments of transportation and state police contacts on the phone, ready to answer questions.

During the storm, I had a SKYWARN spotter assigned to the emergency operations center (better known as “the fire station”) to relay real-time information from the NWS.

All in all, it was a tour-de-force of effective national support. I KNEW long before the storm started that I should “not expect State help for 24-48 hours, and not expect Federal help for a week.”. But I also knew well in advance what was coming, and – despite losing power to my rural town for three days – had no loss of life, and no major incidents or issues.

So – when it comes to the Feds, whom I often loathe for their incompetence and stovepiping, I say “Let the Weather Service do it!!”

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117047411173597172-2el1QRyn4eonArFvLSrezcF1wFU_20080203.html?mod=blogs

“Congress in 1986 began expanding federal jurisdiction to crimes that traditionally had been prosecuted by states — imposing mandatory minimum sentences in crack cocaine cases, for example — and two years later expanded federal reach into capital cases. Still, it took 14 years before federal prosecutors under then-Attorney General John Ashcroft managed to obtain capital convictions in jurisdictions that didn’t have the death penalty at the local level.

In many cases, the Justice Department has asserted jurisdiction even though local prosecutors were prepared to handle the cases. In Puerto Rico, for example, federal prosecutors have unsuccessfully sought death sentences for four defendants since 2003 although Puerto Rico’s constitution explicitly states that “The death penalty shall not exist.”

Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Justice at the time, Anabelle Rodriguez, said her department’s only recourse was to try to negotiate with the federal government to make it “respect local idiosyncrasy” so a death sentence wouldn’t be enforced.

The rising count on federal death row comes as many states reconsider the death penalty or issue moratoriums on the punishment for a variety of reasons, including sloppy executions and exonerations of condemned inmates because of DNA evidence.

Since the 1988 reinstatement of the federal death penalty, prosecutors have attempted to bring capital cases in federal courts across the country. Typically, this has proved much easier in states such as Texas, which have death penalties of their own, than in states such as Iowa, which don’t. In 2000, there were 18 inmates on federal death row, but none were from a state that disallows capital punishment.”