Okay, I'm getting really creeped out now.

Guess who Our Divinely Anointed Maximum Leader (ODAML) just tapped as head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Go ahead; guess. Hint: It ain't L. Neil Smith.

The Detroit auto crowd is, of course, intimately familiar with Mr. Hurley's MADD antics and have grown to just love him. If, by love, we mean really really despise:

His nomination on Tuesday sent shudders down the spines of everyone who considers motoring a special part of the joy of being American. If his prior record is any indication, we can expect more in the way of arbitrary interference with the way the car companies do business at a moment when they can least afford the burden of bureaucratic meddling.

And drivers can expect a ratcheting up of the low-grade harassment they already endure on a daily basis — in the form of more obnoxious regulations, pullover "safety" checks and very possibly lowered speed limits, ala Claybrook’s 55-mph national limit on federal interstates.

All of this will be imposed on states in the time-honored Washington way: Those that fail to comply will lose vitally needed highway funds.

As the head gauleiter of MADD since March 2005, Hurley led the group — already considered one of the most unreasonable and totalitarian-minded "special interests" in all of D.C. to even new vistas of reactionary Puritanism.

That's okay, of course: The Obama adminstration already owns the auto industry, so who gives a shit what Detroit thinks? Right?

And ditto about the opinion of every driver in the country. No ticky no washy, America. We've got your "highway funds." Sit, doggy. Roll over. Now beg!