The “Federalists” of today, such as the activist judges and libertarians who are members of the “Federalist Society,” want to limit the central government.

The real irony in this is that today’s Federalists don’t seem to understand that a federalist state is not the same thing as a unitary state, where subnational units only have the rights and powers that are granted them by the national government. In the United States, which is a federalist system, the states have powers and rights that cannot be unilaterally changed or infringed upon by the central government. (There are, of course, several areas where the power of the central government over the states is open to interpretation of the Constitution.)

Today’s Federalists, like yesterday’s “Anti-Federalists” and the Confederates of the Civil War, want the states to have more independence than the U.S. Constitution grants them. If they want to change the power structure, they will have to do what the original Federalists did and either make a new constitution or amend the one that exists.

WGP

Hiding columns will not only NOT give error but be faster by orders of magnitude….

As an aside, I have found Gnumeric to be more efficient than Excel and both Open Offices. One spreadsheet in particular with thousands of calculations which gave Excel (XP version) indigestion, and slowed OO to a snail’s pace, works flawlessly in Gnumeric — which also saves it in a fraction of the original size. Although it lacks the formatting candy and macros — but in just doing basic spreadsheet work, it’s in another league (that’s my experience, anyway).