But I thought this was the one thing the Republicans were good for!

[fabrisse]

This link is to a NyTimes article.

I'm very glad that my finances got so bad that I had to sell my condominium to eat. Never thought I'd type that sentence.

For better or worse this country was founded on property and property rights. It was the fact that the British Crown was interfering with our rights as property owners (the whole "no taxation without representation" thing) that made us go to war.

So here we have the majority on the Supreme Court saying that the government may now condemn houses that aren't decrepit in order to award that property to a private developer because the local government think that hotels and water sports will be better for the town than homeownership.

I hope that every single house in that town is on the market for sale tomorrow.

Damn!

I thought Souter would be on the property rights side. I expect Breyer to be an idiot, but Souter!?

Comments

[thorbol.livejournal.com]

I'd hoped this might be one time when "liberal" members of the court might side with us lowly individuals, but I'm not really surprised at all. It was "liberals" of an earlier time that gave us the outrageously expansive misinterpretation of the Congress's power to regulate commerce among the states that was reaffirmed in the "medical marijuana" decision last week. The author of the majority opinion was none other than John Paul Stevens, who I gather is now regarded as among the court's "liverals." (I'm repelled by this all the more because, in a dissenting opinion in a case on prisoners' rights I read in 1979, Stevens wrote eloquently about how rights are inherent in the individual, not creations of the state.)

I also find that much of the left, like much of the right, has at best selective concern about individual rights. "Community" is the great buzzword, individualism now equated with selfishness, in too many supposedly leftist circles I've come upon.