Posted on 06/28/2005 9:25:16 AM PDT by janetjanet998
Time for action...we must start a grass roots drive to pass a Constitutional Amendment to define what "public use" is.
This site has an on-line petition as well as hard copies you can download to pass around your town. We must educate the public as to what is happening. Besides news junkies it seems no one has a clue.
Click here and start the drive!
True, but when they get it seriously wrong, there is ample precedent (e.g. the Eleventh and Thirteenth through Fifteenth Amendments).
Also, a statutory prohibition of federal funding toward any project in which property seized by eminent domain is transferred to (other) private hands would go a long way.
Well, I don't know about the 13th and 15th. However immoral the policies were that they corrected, virtually no one believed them to be unconstitutional prior to the enactment of those amendments.
But as to the larger point, it doesn't really matter in the final analysis if there's precedent for it. The precedent should not be continued, or the Constitution will be made to look like your typical state constitution: many dozens of amendments, replete with phrases like "notwithstanding the rules laid out in Section 34(a),vii," just total bureaucratic gibberish inaccessible to the common citizen. In addition, it will create the impression that those simple provisions in the original Constitution are just anachronistic relics devoid of hard legal meaning unless reinforced by a more recent amendment. Just think of the implications that will have for the second amendment.
If I was to advocate an amendment to the Constitution, it would be an amendment to make it harder to pass amendments - say, raising from 75% to 90% the number of state legislatures required for ratification.
Not until we take over the property owned by the 5 clowns of the SCOTUS for tax revenue generating hotels and convention centers!
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