[USMA:25952] point #4

[Paul Trusten, R.Ph.]

4.National.   Article I,  Section 8, of the United States Constitution provides, in part, that the Congress "shall have power...To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;..."    As part of the same concept as that of coining money (a truly national arrangement), the US Constitution empowers the US Congress to establish a standard of measurement for the United States. That the US Congress has ever fulfilled its responsibility under this article is debatable. But the jurisdiction is clearly theirs, even though a few states, left to dangle without the federal metric mandate promised but not delivered under the 1998 US Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21),  have nevertheless forged ahead to design highways using wholly metric standards (some of thes states abandoned the effort because they were not part of a national measurement change).  Attempts at  metrication in the US shall never survive such a metrological Civil War, with non-metric states bordering metric states. It must be a process as national as the Constitution conceived it to be.   Paul Trusten, R.Ph. 3609 Caldera Boulevard, Apartment 122 Midland TX 79707-2872 USA 432-694-6208 [EMAIL PROTECTED]   "There are two cardinal sins, from which all the others spring: impatience and laziness."                           ---Franz Kafka