[xzins]

You need to read: Federal Land Retention and the Constitution's Property Clause (Univ Colorado Law Review) The above is the Freeper thread:

The entire article is: http://constitution.i2i.org/sources-for-constitutional-scholars/federal-land-retention-and-property-clause/

[DoodleDawg]

That changed in 1803 with the Louisiana purchase. Since most of the Founders were still around then and didn’t complain about it then I have to assume they were OK with the government owning it.