The Hays (Kan.) Daily News

The federal government should allow local law enforcement to decide how best to use federal dollars . ...

The singular-minded politicians and bureaucrats in Washington surely don't know what battles are being fought in the heartland.

One of them -- a big one -- is methamphetamine manufacturing and trafficking. It is a far bigger problem than terrorism.

Yet the Bush administration wants to gut grants to fight meth in the interest of putting more money into homeland security. That is a big mistake. ...

The homeland security hysteria has Washington sending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to every little rural western Kansas county, to be used for such items as protective equipment for hazardous and biological materials, materials to disarm explosives, surveillance supplies, barriers, sensors, video systems, medical supplies and incident response vehicles. ...

While a random terrorist bombing in a sleepy Midwestern community is not out of the realm of possibility, it is something of a fantasy. The scourge of meth, however is, here and now, a real problem.

Deficit reduction and homeland defense both can be accomplished. Target homeland defense to the places that most are at risk. ...