House Votes To Undercut High Court On Property (Nancy Pelosi expose follows excerpt)

The Washington Post ^ | July 1, 2005

[Founding Father]

The House voted yesterday to use the spending power of Congress to undermine a Supreme Court ruling allowing local governments to force the sale of private property for economic development purposes. Key members of the House and Senate vowed to take even broader steps soon.

---snip---

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized the measure. "When you withhold funds from enforcing a decision of the Supreme Court, you are in fact nullifying a decision of the Supreme Court," she told reporters. "This is in violation of the respect of separation of powers in our Constitution."

[VRWCRick]

Maxine Waters and Sheila Jackson-Lee both have something that Pelosi doesn't, a bit of intelligence, at least when this eminent domain bill came up.

The voting pattern should be clear to anyone with the intelligence of an amoeba or better, it is the radical left Democrat party that favors this hideous ruling. Another reason to hope that Janice Rogers Brown is Bush's Supreme Court nominee.

[Still Thinking]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized the measure. "When you withhold funds from enforcing a decision of the Supreme Court, you are in fact nullifying a decision of the Supreme Court," she told reporters. "This is in violation of the respect of separation of powers in our Constitution."

SCOTUS is only there to interpret the intent of legislation and to verify that that intent conforms to Constitutional limitations on government. They didn't rule that there was a Constitutional bar to legislation preventing ED abuse, in fact they explicitly pointed out that there was not, so creating such legislation is not "undermining" SCOTUS but correcting what SCOTUS sees as an omission.

Besides, what "undermining"? SCOTUS doesn't say "we can't overturn evan a bad law, that would violate separation of powers", so shy would Congress have to do so with respect to these inane decisions?

[Still Thinking]

And besides, Congress isn't trying to prohibit states from exercising the rights SCOTUS claims they have, just saying we choose not to pay you with federal money to do it. SCOTUS disn't say "There's no Constitutional problem with abusing ED, and furthermore, Congress is REQUIRED to fund such abuse." The ruling had nothing to do with Congress, and Congress' action has nothing to do with the ruling (other than expressing a desire not to fund it). Big woop.