As is pretty much always the case, there are just too many interesting things appearing in Colorado Politics these days, making my job as a commentator challenging (ed: seriously?).

As a huge space program nut, I’m tempted to write about the recent launch of the Artemis spacecraft, now on its way to the Moon. There are lots of great reasons to support NASA and our space efforts and there are lots and lots of Colorado connections to Artemis. Very cool things are built here in the Centennial State that end up on Mars, orbiting the Earth and, well, heading to the Moon as we speak. It is certainly true that there are lots of legitimate questions about what we should or should not be doing in terms of human-crewed missions, but I’m going to let that controversy pass for now, and I’ll move on.

I’m always tempted to write about the elections just past, especially the ongoing counting in Colorado District 3, where Colorado’s most famous (and infamous) member of the House, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, appears to be hanging on to a slim margin of votes, darn it. But I’m sure you are all quite tired of election news, so I’ll let Boebert go for now too.

Heck, I thought I would write about the election outcomes that were most confusing to me: the voters of Colorado deciding that it will be OK in the future for people to pick up a bottle of wine in their grocery stores, next to the already present beer, but that it is not OK for food delivery services to bring a bottle of beer along with a burger you order from a local restaurant or bar.

So basically, if you want a beer to go with the Red Robin burger (whiskey river BBQ burger, no onions) you are having delivered, you yourself need to run to the grocery store for the beer, because it is somehow wrong to get the two delivered together? Seems silly to me, and I truly don’t understand why people voted that way. But as I have nothing to add, we’ll let that issue slide as well.

Instead, I’d like to draw your attention to the town of Hobbs, New Mexico. As reported in the always interesting Out West Roundup, the all-male city commission of Hobbs voted 7-0 to block any abortion clinics from opening up in that lovely southeast New Mexico town. These men want their city known as a “sanctuary city for the unborn.”

The state of New Mexico has a Democratic governor, who just won a new term, in part on a pledge to protect abortion rights. And New Mexico, like Colorado, is overall likely to be a place where women can make their own reproductive decisions without the government butting in. Both states will reject the post-Roe efforts by the far-right elements in the GOP to get a total ban on abortion state by state, if the GOP can’t get one nationally. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called the Hobbs commission’s declaration to be “(an) affront to the rights and personal autonomy of every woman in Hobbs and southeastern New Mexico and we will not stand for it.” And, of course, it is.

But here’s the thing: federalism.

When I was teaching the Constitution to my students at the Air Force Academy, I found that they easily grasped the concept of separation of powers – a key protection built into the Constitution dividing the government into different branches – legislative, executive and judicial. In theory, this structure of government prevents any one person or small group from obtaining too much power. But the other big protection the founders installed, the concept of federalism, was much more challenging to fully understand.

Most all governments have different layers, often national, state and local governments. But in what are called “unitary” systems, like France and many other countries, the top level of the government – the national level – gets to oversee and control the layers below it. The middle level gets to oversee the lowest level. Thus, the old poli sci joke that on any given day, the French minister of education could look at his watch and know what page of what textbook every fifth grader in France was on. It isn’t quite that exact, but you get the idea.

A system that uses federalism, however, is different. Though sharing the same basic structure of federal, state and local levels of government, the key difference in a federal system is that each level has areas of responsibility that cannot be overruled by any layer above it. Thus, though the New Mexico governor can rail against what she sees as an outrageous example of male domination and control of the rights of local women, she can’t actually do anything about it. The Hobbs city commission has voted, and that commission does get to alone decide which buildings can be built and what types of businesses can open. There are exceptions, of course, but you take my larger point). So there won’t be an office of Planned Parenthood in Hobbs, and that’s a pity.

Hobbs is a relatively small city of about 34,000 people, so it was unlikely to become a major reproductive rights center anyway, and the vote by the all-male commission certainly suggests a level of paternalism and religious zealotry, if not outright misogyny, but the decision would seem to be wholly within the powers granted to said commission. The people of Hobbs will have the opportunity to eventually vote on these commissioners, and if they do not reflect the will of the community, they will be replaced by other elected officials who do. That’s one of the great things about our system.

So, in the small community of Hobbs, New Mexico, we see yet another example of the wisdom of the Founders and how well they put our system together. Federalism remains an important bulwark against tyranny, even when we may not agree with a particular decision.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.