[Jim_Curtis]

Negative externalities not incorporated into the price system are a bitch. Land use is all about economic externalities, positive and negative. Ranting about takings, while ignoring the economic externalities, is well, obtuse. Take another shot. This one misses.

Karl Marx couldn't have put it better in the first plank of the "Communist Manifesto".

Which doesn't mean quite yet that I will associate Roberts with your philosophy.

[FReethesheeples]

As I said, I still want to remain open on Roberts until I have digested the full implications of this and maybe have seen other writings of his, but this is a most unsettling analysis by a fellow who is a Senior Legal Analyst with Pacific Legal Foundation, which is a very respectable conservative/libertarian group.

So is Acton Institute, through whom this article is also published, quite impeccable as advocates of private enterprise and free market economics.

However, I have zero tolerance for anyone who is a candidate for the Supremes who is soft on Private Property Rights, which are so terribly fundamental and so key to understanding what makes America America, and Property Rights are absolutely fundamental to the Founders' thinking as to be literally sacred, and their undertstanding and protection is an absolute and inviolable sine qua non of being a "qualified judge" at any level.

Roberts needs to give some comfort and clarity and even assurances, somehow, on his view of private property rights. He cannot do so on unadjudciated cases. He may be able to do so on past cases, but at some peril to the important position that he should not, nor should any judicial candidate, give an indication prejudicial to future cases. What a dilemma and what a conundrum.