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If the car is the instrument of the crime, then why cannot it be seized as evidence?

The car is not the instrument of any crime. Are you saying that a home is "an instrument of a crime" if it contains an illegal firearm for instance? Would a car be an instrument of a crime if it brought an abortion protestor to a clinic where he stepped one foot too close to the building? So its okay for the government to seize all these "instruments of crime"? How about seizing the garage that housed the car that carried the boombox that jack built? Maybe the factory that built the car that carried the boombox? We can sue gun manufacturers, why not seize car factories? Real conservative.

You have yet to articulate a standard... it seems that you agree with seizure only for certain types of crime, but you have not come out and said so.

The minimum necessary government intrusion and power to solve the problem. That is the standard. Government seizure of a person's automobile is not the minimum necessary government power to solve the problem of noisy stereos. Got it? Thats the standard.

Since the car itself is the instrument of the crime this is perfectly reasonable.

No, its not. If you go faster than the speed limit, your auto is the instrument of a crime. According to you this makes it okay for the government to seize it and that government has the power to do so. That is an utterly and completely ridiculous position to take and not conservative in the least.

You say that there is a differing level of government interest but give no details on how you quantify it.

Anyone with a brain can see the differing levels of government interest in a) preventing murder with a deadly weapon, b) stopping loud noises. If you have trouble seeing the varying levels of government interest there. I cannot help you. I suspect you are being deliberately obtuse.

I'd say there's about the same level of interest as in stopping grafitti spray-painting... would you at least concede that seizing the spray cans in acceptable?

At least you have avoided a fallacious argument. The point is to hand over the minimum power necessary for government to effectively perform the specific duties delegated to it. The least impact on individual liberty and still enable the smooth functioning of society. Keeping this goal in mind, what is the impact on individual liberty of providing the power to seize the spray can? What is the impact on individual liberty providing the power to seize an automobile? Different impact on private property? Considerably. Should government be blind to the difference? Should seizure of your car for parking in two spots or speeding equate to seizure of your spray can? You seem to say yes. As if we should be blind to the huge difference in power between the two actions.

The effect of these carstereos in many cases is that of an assault, something you are not acknowledging at all.

No, I don't. Assault is a very specific word that has meaning. Words mean things. You are talking an assault on the senses, which is far difference than a physical assault. If I paint my house pink it would be an assault on the senses. But it would not call for seizure of my house for assaulting you.

You seem to provide no possibility of remedy to the homeowners. What would you do if you owned a home and your sleep was disturbed regularly with these vehicles?

The remedies that government has always used for these sort of ordinances. A ticket, a trial, a fine. Second offense, a ticket, a trial, a bigger fine. Third offense, a ticket, a trial, some time in the orange suit. You continue to act as if there is no choice other than "nuttin" or "take the car".

If you cannot provide an alternate remedy then you are saying to the homeowner "live with it". There is no justice whatsoever in that position.

There have always been remedies for disturbing the peace. Its not a new offense. We have had remedies for disturbing the peace for hundreds of years. This is a new and vastly expansive extension of governmental power. Its a new remedy, not the only one, and not the historic one.

You propose to vastly expand the seizure powers of the government over private property for what is essentially a nuisance disturbance of the peace offense. That is NOT conservative thought.

You have no concept of what effect the precedent you are setting will have on you and your private property rights, or don't care about them. You might commit a minor nuisance offense that bug the majority also...accidentally parking in two spaces comes to mind (hate that)....or driving slow in the fast lane and impeding traffic.....if seizure is expanded to those offenses....you'll change your tune....won't ya?

Where you are going wrong on this is the false separation of the stereo and the car. Those stereos are not being transported by the car; they have been integrated into it - they are one, car and stereo. The car is also the means of moving the stereo to the location of the crime. Connecting the car to the crime is immediate and integral to the crime. You cannot easily remove a bolted-in speaker system from a car, thus there is no argument that a reasonable person should remove the former from the latter. This is not a stretch of reason by any means, and certainly not the stretch made in the analogies put forth in your counter argument. If the source of the disturbance can be removed from the car without the use of tools then I would agree the car should not be seized.

Furthermore, your private property argument is further shattered once you consider that the car must be on public property (the street) at the time of the offense.

Addressing your "slippery slope" argument, I find it to be a fine argument, and make it quite often myself. Only in this case it's absurd, considering we are well at the bottom of the slope. Your breath is better spent for the decent citizen who lost his right to his home under Kelo than for those who manufacture suffering for everyone within earshot. So before we even discuss whether a local government can legally do this, that point is moot. A principle upheld only when decent citizens who have committed no crime are disadvantaged is a twisted evil achieving exactly the opposite of the intended result.

You should take all that principled passion and put it towards a more noble use than defending the "right" to damage others' ears and disturb others' sleep.