An astonishing story in the Seattle Times illustrated the deranged priorities of the big government left. “STATE: TOO FEW WOMEN, MINORITIES ON TUNNEL JOB,” proclaimed the headline.

The story? On a multi-billion dollar project to replace an aging elevated highway with a new underground passage, one minority contractor sued because he hadn’t won a contract “to transport dirt,” and “disadvantaged business enterprises” hadn’t gotten their mandated share. Federal officials supported the suit, threatening to stop all work on the tunnel, citing rules demanding that “minority contractors must be used, even if that causes a modest cost increase.”

No one even claimed that minorities and women could do a better job. For a project already behind schedule and over-budget, this attitude is insane: treating a costly infrastructure effort as a race and gender-based social program, not a means for affordable improvements in local transportation.