Now that the Republicans run everything in Washington - and, make no mistake, they do - the way they respond to every criticism of the way they use their power is to say they need more power.

That's the scary, yet by now common, trend exemplified by a little-noticed provision of the new National Defense Authorization Act, one that would explicitly authorize the president to activate state National Guard units without consulting the governors who are legally their commanders in chief.

The Constitution does anticipate that the "militia of the several States" will fall under the command of the president, "when called into the actual service of the United States."

And there is precedent for presidential moves to call up Guard units in defiance of state wishes. Dwight Eisenhower did it in 1957, federalizing the Arkansas National Guard rather than allow Gov. Orval Faubus to use it to defy school integration rulings.

Still, the time-tested tradition of federalism is offended by the idea that federal law should specify more unchecked presidential power, in this case to take unilateral control of state forces that may be crucially needed for all manner of disasters.

That's what the National Governors Association, including Utah's Jon Huntsman Jr., pointed out in a pointed letter to the leaders of Congress. From states large and small, administrations Democratic and Republican, comes the word that there is no need to change tradition. And, if there were, it is bad form to do so by slipping the provision through without even letting the governors know what is being contemplated.

Or why.

Despite some ugly turf battles in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, there has been no case made that total presidential authority would have made any difference.

Members of the House who voted for the bill, including all three of Utah's representatives, are now rightly questioning a provision they didn't even know was there.

The bill now goes to the Senate where, we trust, that bad idea will be removed.