[bwteim]

Today's editorial on SCOTUS ruling.

I checked copyright (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1111944/posts?page=1,50) don't know how much can be posted from WSJ. This is a 'subscribers' only link.

[SkyPilot]

Perhaps this outrageous decision with quell any talk of Bush naming a "moderate" to the Supreme Court when Renquist retire next month.

[bwteim]

If someone can tell me whether I am permitted to drop in the whole editorial, I will do so.

[Peach]

How is it the left can so successfully frame the issues that they pretend to be for the little guy and opposed to big business when it it the liberals on the court who ruled in favor of big business?

The left particularly targets Wal Mart and pharmaceutical companies and interestingly it is the parmaceutical company Pfizer who will benefit from the eminent domain issue in New London as they will be removing homeowners so that corporation can build an office.

If the conservatives don't make television ads and learn to better frame issues themselves, we're in big trouble. We're in trouble anyway, with this ruling.

[Road Warrior ‘04]

Communism is taking over! Little did I know, when Khrushchev banged his shoe on the podium screaming that "Communism would take over the USA, without firing a shot", did he mean through our liberal/socialistic court system! Government control of personal property is nothing less than COMMUNISM!

Can Supreme Court justices be impeached? If so, how? Maybe Dr. Levin can answer this one.

[hershey]

I misread the title and assumed it was about Fat Teddy. However, there is some hope here in Supreme Court ruling...at least for the town of Hyannis. They could take the Kennedy compound by eminent domain and raze it to the ground!

[Brilliant]

We need a constitutional amendment simply invalidating all Supreme Court decisions made in the last 45 years.

[AIC]

It's been my experience when something like this decision comes down in blatant disregard for what the Constitution of the U.S. says or any law or goes against common sense, I mean, I can understand that eminent domain is for public use only. Is that somewhere somehow a pay off or bribe was made to one or some of the people making the decisions. Whether they be lawyers, prosecution attorneys, judges, congressmen/women, arbiters or what have you. My thinking is that somebody got to one or more to hand down this decision.

[proxy_user]

Well, for now they are pressing ahead with the flag-burning amendment.

I guess to some, the symbols of freedom are more important than actual freedom itself.

However, I would be inclined to re-evaluate these priorities.

[OESY]

IMPORTANT:


In his clarifying dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas exposes this logic for the government land grab that it is. He accuses the majority of replacing the Fifth Amendment's "Public Use Clause" with a very different "public purpose" test: "This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a 'public use.'"

And in a separate dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggested that the use of this power in a reverse Robin Hood fashion--take from the poor, give to the rich--would become the norm, not the exception: "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."

That prospect helps explain the unusual coalition supporting the property owners in the case, ranging from the libertarian Institute for Justice (the lead lawyers) to the NAACP, AARP and the late Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The latter three groups signed an amicus brief arguing that eminent domain has often been used against politically weak communities with high concentrations of minorities and elderly. Justice Thomas's opinion cites a wealth of data to that effect.

And it's not just the "public use" requirement of the Fifth Amendment that's undermined by Kelo. So too is the guarantee of "just compensation." Why? Because there is no need to invoke eminent domain if developers are willing to pay what owners themselves consider just compensation.

[AIC]

This is not the first time that the Gov. will take land away from others and give it to other private industries. Just remember what the Gov. and Andrew Jackson did to the Cherokees in the 1800s. They owned land, where citizens of the U.S. and even had a congressman in congress and it didn't do any good.
If someone wants your land bad enough and has the resourses, they will get it. Law or No Law.

[MamaTexan]

(sigh)

I just don't get why everyone is so blasted hopeful about Bush getting more judges.....

aren't most of the positions on the Supreme Fart ALREADY Republican nominations?

[kjenerette]

...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter(1) or to abolish(2) it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.... when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

- excerpt from The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

Note1: The 1st Amendment provides the means to ALTER the Government
Note2: The 2nd Amendment provides the means to ABOLISH the Government �

[AIC]

I think there is something that citizens can do legally, that is each state will have to amend their state constitution to reflect that when exercising eminent domain that it Can Not be for private use.

[4Liberty]

Some on the Supreme Court apparently wouldn't understand the phrase, "fair market value" if it dropped out of the sky, and hit them on their collective heads.

In a 'hot' real estate market experiencing rising prices, increased population pressures and many competing uses, the "fair market value" for a piece of property is WHATEVER price that homeowner can obtain for his/her property.

This new (current) price is decided by the two transacting parties, alone, and no one else - the individual homeowner and Walmart (or commercial developer, etc).

This SC ruling is quite simply the OPPOSITE of a market outcome. It relieves the OTHER party, the large commercial group, of the need to strike a VOLUNTARY (truly market-based) contractual agreement, with the individual homeowner. It takes the little guy, the homeowner, out of the negotiation, and deprives him or her of the right to negotiate a profitable deal for his own property on the other side of the bargaining table.

When government (the institution of force in our society) steps in, and "decides" what a fair market value is then the outcome is anything but a "market outcome." It becomes a decision based on force, not a mutually reached & peaceful transaction.

Some on the Supreme Court have flunked their Economics 101 courses decades back, or perhaps, they slept through them.

[Pagey]

How this Supreme Court is consistently labeled Conservative by Rats is beyond me.