CAPITAL BULLETINS

SLOW DEATH

It was a modest proposal: Let states raise the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit. Not anywhere they want—let’s not be radical—but at least on interstate highways outside communities of fifty thousand or more. That’s the rider Senate Republicans attached to authorization of a four-year, $52-billion highway and mass-transit fund. Repealing the national speed limit has been a dream long cherished by conservatives concerned with states’ rights and by Western drivers concerned with getting from Boise to Butte before they die of a) boredom or b) old age.

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SLOW DEATH

It was a modest proposal: Let states raise the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit. Not anywhere they want—let’s not be radical—but at least on interstate highways outside communities of fifty thousand or more. That’s the rider Senate Republicans attached to authorization of a four-year, $52-billion highway and mass-transit fund. Repealing the national speed limit has been a dream long cherished by conservatives concerned with states’ rights and by Western drivers concerned with getting from Boise to Butte before they die of a) boredom or b) old age.