I'm a little behind in my reading, but I wanted to pass along a link to another interesting article by Franklin Foer (one of whose pieces I previously discussed here). In"The Joy of Federalism," Foer traces the historical development of a"liberal federalism" as a bulwark against the growth of the federal government under the Bush administration. As Foer puts it:

Like many of his predecessors, [Bush] entered office promising to rescue the states from federal pummeling. Yet his administration has greatly expanded federal power, and some conservatives have been complaining. Writing in National Review two years ago, Romesh Ponnuru observed that"more people are working for the federal government than at any point since the end of the cold war." State governments have their own version of this complaint. They say the Bush administration has imposed new demands—federal education standards, homeland security tasks—without also providing sufficient cash to get these jobs done. The Republican senator Lamar Alexander recently told The Times,"The principle of federalism has gotten lost in the weeds by a Republican Congress that was elected to uphold it in 1994."

The whole essay is worth a good read.