The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Supreme Abomination
If there was ever an example of the dangers of a runaway activist Supreme Court, today the judicial "perfect storm" has occurred. In what may be the most outrageous USSC decision since Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Court today voted 5-4 to in effect completely invalidate the 5th Amendment. In the wake of this abomination, Americans coast to coast are literally exploding with rage over this decision: until today, the 5th Amendment is what made our government different from Castro's Cuba or Chavez's Venezuela or any other government which openly seizes the private property of its citizens. One blogger summarizes it perfectly:
As of now, in American federal jurisprudence, the individual citizen is no longer paramount—the community is. The individual doesn’t even count anymore. Property rights? Only as long as someone with a bigger bankroll doesn’t want your property for themselves.
Forget the Schiavo case—if you want to see a ruling that leads to contempt for, and anger at, the judiciary, over the long term this is the one.
He's right. This is where a Supreme Court, with the deciding vote cast by Anthony "which way is the wind blowing today" Kennedy, decides that the United States Constitution is now as meaningless as the parchment it is written on. Brash Lindberg lays it out perfectly:
While You Were Busy Protesting The Patriot Act...
...the government took your house. I'm sure the residents of New London, Connecticut will be happy to know that while their houses are being demolished, their library records will be safely locked away.
I hate to comment on a Supreme Court ruling before the actual opinion is released, but this is too outrageous to let simmer:
"A divided Supreme Court ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth conflicts with individual property rights."
The case in a nutshell is that the city was suing individual homeowners who refused to sell their homes in order to make way for corporate development.
The city's main contention was that the case fit within "the scope of the Fifth Amendment, which allows governments to take private property through eminent domain if the land is for 'public use.'" Although the city planned to build a large corporate center, they argued that the additional jobs and tax revenues would serve the public, and therefore fulfilled the "public use" condition.
If you've been drinking the Left's Kool-Aid, you'd reasonably assume that the liberal judges on the court stood up for the little guy, while conservative ogres like Scalia and Thomas sided with big business. Hell, they probably volunteered to drive the bulldozers. [Ha!! --DT]
Open your eyes Little One, it's time to wake up to your socialist paradise.
What the Left didn't tell you is that the little guy is only worth protecting if he belongs to some larger, underprivileged group [and definitely not the trial lawyers..DT]. The plaintiffs in this case were small business owners, and lived in Victorian Era houses; the state should be redistributing their wealth, not protecting it. Individual rights be damned, the greater good must prevail, the bourgeois must be defeated, the Motherland must survive!!!
Whoa, got a little wrapped up in the character there. At any rate let's look on the bright side: sure you're homeless, but Justice Ginsburg and the rest of the ACLU will defend your right to squat in the library, and anything you read while you're there will be strictly confidential.
Think about what this means: almost any private enterprise could be argued to serve some public good; in Nevada I'm sure the Mustang Ranch serves to "relieve public tension". So if you are a homeowner and someone wants to put a brothel in your back yard, and the "madam" forks over enough cash to grease some corrupt councilman's or mayor's palm, presto, your house -- the one that has been in your family since your great grandfather came over on the boat; the one you have been paying for all your life-- is now theirs. Goodbye America: Welcome to Havana.
If EVER there were a clearer for placing originalist judges on the court who will interpret the law of the land instead of some city councilperson with a sleazy developer's Big Bucks stuffed in his front pocket, who is coming for YOUR house, so that a chemical plant or shopping mall can replace it... And the Democrats have the unmitigated gall to call themselves the party of the people???? Who are they kidding?
In my mind, this Constitutional joke of a ruling will so galvanize opinion in the President's favor when it comes time to nominate a new Justice, that it likely will be a slam dunk; even a nuclear option is much more likely now should the Democrats continue in their 24x7x365 obstruction. And the time is almost upon is, friends, probably within the next month.
Good luck getting an activist judge on the court now. NO WAY. The Judicial branch has declared war on the rest of our government and its people. The Constitution means nothing. We are now living in an activist judicial dictatorship, and that is fact is today dawning on hundreds of millions of Americans for whom it was not clear yesterday. This day will go down in history, mark my words. The tide turns today.
We've got to take our country back. And we simply cannot wait any longer. It is endgame. Graham. DeWine. Spechter. McCain. Warner. You may now save this country or lose it. As President Lincoln said: "You have a republic, sir...if you can keep it." It is time to make that decision.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey doesn't pull any punches either:
Unsurprisingly, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority that they had deferred to legislative action in this case, a position with which Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer agreed [DT - These are the traitors who have sold out the United States and everything it stands for]. However, the other four justices argued -- correctly, in my opinion -- that eminent domain should not be used to transfer property from one private owner to another. The power of the government should not overrule the private marketplace unless the land goes for a specific public -- i.e., not private -- use. Not surprisingly, the court relied on a 1954 Warren Court decision which broadened the term "public use" to include blighted areas that required public funds for urban renewal.
This does a tremendous injustice to the property owners of New London and everywhere in the United States. This puts the entire notion of property rights into jeopardy. Now cities can literally force people off their land in order to simply increase their tax base, which is all that New London accomplished in this smelly manuever.
I recall the words of Mark Twain, who famously lost a copyright case involving a bootleg publication of one of his novels despite having the law clearly on his side. (Unfortunately, I cannot find the reference -- perhaps a CQ reader can locate it.) Upon his loss, he remarked that since the judge was so cavalier with Twain's property, Twain planned to offer the Judge's house up for sale -- and if he got a good enough offer, he might let the buyer take the contents as well.
Can anyone come up with a good use for Justice Stevens' house? A bowling alley or a Bennigans, anything that improves the tax base for his community? We could urge its confiscation under eminent domain and perhaps put in a Mark Twain Museum instead. Now that would be justice.
UPDATE II: CQ reader bRight and Early found the Twain reference here. And because I could only dream of even approaching Twain's gift for prose, here's the original from the master himself:
[Twain] It does look as if Massachusetts were in a fair way to embarrass me with kindnesses this year. In the first place, a Massachusetts judge has just decided in open court that a Boston publisher may sell, not only his own property in a free and unfettered way, but also may as freely sell property which does not belong to him but to me; property which he has not bought and which I have not sold. Under this ruling I am now advertising that judge's homestead for sale, and, if I make a good a sum out of it as I expect, I shall go on and sell out the rest of his property.
Brilliant, of course. The entire letter, in fact, is a masterpiece of sarcasm from one of America's most accomplished practitioners of the art.
As of now, in American federal jurisprudence, the individual citizen is no longer paramount—the community is. The individual doesn’t even count anymore. Property rights? Only as long as someone with a bigger bankroll doesn’t want your property for themselves.
Forget the Schiavo case—if you want to see a ruling that leads to contempt for, and anger at, the judiciary, over the long term this is the one.
He's right. This is where a Supreme Court, with the deciding vote cast by Anthony "which way is the wind blowing today" Kennedy, decides that the United States Constitution is now as meaningless as the parchment it is written on. Brash Lindberg lays it out perfectly:
While You Were Busy Protesting The Patriot Act...
...the government took your house. I'm sure the residents of New London, Connecticut will be happy to know that while their houses are being demolished, their library records will be safely locked away.
I hate to comment on a Supreme Court ruling before the actual opinion is released, but this is too outrageous to let simmer:
"A divided Supreme Court ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth conflicts with individual property rights."
The case in a nutshell is that the city was suing individual homeowners who refused to sell their homes in order to make way for corporate development.
The city's main contention was that the case fit within "the scope of the Fifth Amendment, which allows governments to take private property through eminent domain if the land is for 'public use.'" Although the city planned to build a large corporate center, they argued that the additional jobs and tax revenues would serve the public, and therefore fulfilled the "public use" condition.
If you've been drinking the Left's Kool-Aid, you'd reasonably assume that the liberal judges on the court stood up for the little guy, while conservative ogres like Scalia and Thomas sided with big business. Hell, they probably volunteered to drive the bulldozers. [Ha!! --DT]
Open your eyes Little One, it's time to wake up to your socialist paradise.
What the Left didn't tell you is that the little guy is only worth protecting if he belongs to some larger, underprivileged group [and definitely not the trial lawyers..DT]. The plaintiffs in this case were small business owners, and lived in Victorian Era houses; the state should be redistributing their wealth, not protecting it. Individual rights be damned, the greater good must prevail, the bourgeois must be defeated, the Motherland must survive!!!
Whoa, got a little wrapped up in the character there. At any rate let's look on the bright side: sure you're homeless, but Justice Ginsburg and the rest of the ACLU will defend your right to squat in the library, and anything you read while you're there will be strictly confidential.
Think about what this means: almost any private enterprise could be argued to serve some public good; in Nevada I'm sure the Mustang Ranch serves to "relieve public tension". So if you are a homeowner and someone wants to put a brothel in your back yard, and the "madam" forks over enough cash to grease some corrupt councilman's or mayor's palm, presto, your house -- the one that has been in your family since your great grandfather came over on the boat; the one you have been paying for all your life-- is now theirs. Goodbye America: Welcome to Havana.
If EVER there were a clearer for placing originalist judges on the court who will interpret the law of the land instead of some city councilperson with a sleazy developer's Big Bucks stuffed in his front pocket, who is coming for YOUR house, so that a chemical plant or shopping mall can replace it... And the Democrats have the unmitigated gall to call themselves the party of the people???? Who are they kidding?
In my mind, this Constitutional joke of a ruling will so galvanize opinion in the President's favor when it comes time to nominate a new Justice, that it likely will be a slam dunk; even a nuclear option is much more likely now should the Democrats continue in their 24x7x365 obstruction. And the time is almost upon is, friends, probably within the next month.
Good luck getting an activist judge on the court now. NO WAY. The Judicial branch has declared war on the rest of our government and its people. The Constitution means nothing. We are now living in an activist judicial dictatorship, and that is fact is today dawning on hundreds of millions of Americans for whom it was not clear yesterday. This day will go down in history, mark my words. The tide turns today.
We've got to take our country back. And we simply cannot wait any longer. It is endgame. Graham. DeWine. Spechter. McCain. Warner. You may now save this country or lose it. As President Lincoln said: "You have a republic, sir...if you can keep it." It is time to make that decision.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey doesn't pull any punches either:
Unsurprisingly, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority that they had deferred to legislative action in this case, a position with which Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer agreed [DT - These are the traitors who have sold out the United States and everything it stands for]. However, the other four justices argued -- correctly, in my opinion -- that eminent domain should not be used to transfer property from one private owner to another. The power of the government should not overrule the private marketplace unless the land goes for a specific public -- i.e., not private -- use. Not surprisingly, the court relied on a 1954 Warren Court decision which broadened the term "public use" to include blighted areas that required public funds for urban renewal.
This does a tremendous injustice to the property owners of New London and everywhere in the United States. This puts the entire notion of property rights into jeopardy. Now cities can literally force people off their land in order to simply increase their tax base, which is all that New London accomplished in this smelly manuever.
I recall the words of Mark Twain, who famously lost a copyright case involving a bootleg publication of one of his novels despite having the law clearly on his side. (Unfortunately, I cannot find the reference -- perhaps a CQ reader can locate it.) Upon his loss, he remarked that since the judge was so cavalier with Twain's property, Twain planned to offer the Judge's house up for sale -- and if he got a good enough offer, he might let the buyer take the contents as well.
Can anyone come up with a good use for Justice Stevens' house? A bowling alley or a Bennigans, anything that improves the tax base for his community? We could urge its confiscation under eminent domain and perhaps put in a Mark Twain Museum instead. Now that would be justice.
UPDATE II: CQ reader bRight and Early found the Twain reference here. And because I could only dream of even approaching Twain's gift for prose, here's the original from the master himself:
[Twain] It does look as if Massachusetts were in a fair way to embarrass me with kindnesses this year. In the first place, a Massachusetts judge has just decided in open court that a Boston publisher may sell, not only his own property in a free and unfettered way, but also may as freely sell property which does not belong to him but to me; property which he has not bought and which I have not sold. Under this ruling I am now advertising that judge's homestead for sale, and, if I make a good a sum out of it as I expect, I shall go on and sell out the rest of his property.
Brilliant, of course. The entire letter, in fact, is a masterpiece of sarcasm from one of America's most accomplished practitioners of the art.
