Blog Jones

That didn’t take long. The city of Freeport (a most ironic name) has seized the opportunity offered to them by the supreme court to steal three properties from a couple of seafood restaurants to make room for a $8 million dollar private marina.

The rich guy wins. The poor guy gets screwed. Big surprise.

I wonder how many people are going to die as a result of this decision. Once all the legal options are gone to protect your property from theives, what choice do you have but to take up arms and defend it with violence?

Update: I may have been mistaken: The loser wasn’t poor:

Gore said Western Seafood’s 30,000-square-foot processing facility, which sits on the 300-by-60-foot tract, would be forced to close if the land were seized.

That facility earns about $40 million annually, and Western Seafood has been in business in Freeport since 1946, he said.

Neil Boortz says what I said in my last post, only better.

Another fundamental right died in the courts yesterday. You no longer have the right to keep your private property.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow local governments to seize citizens’ land to build… shopping malls.

Of course, they’ve been able to force citizens to sell steal citizens’ land to build things like highways for decades. But now they have been given the OK to steal land for private development.

If a county councilman decides that the county really needs a Wal-Mart in your neighborhood, he can bulldoze your house to make room for it. Oh he’ll pay you something for it–whatever he thinks it’s worth.

How can they possibly justify this from the Constitution? The Fifth Ammendment states:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Previously, public use has referred to government use like highways and water lines; now the definition has expanded to include private development, like hotels and shopping malls, if they’ll bring jobs and commerce to the area.

And what’s commerce? Well, as we learned a few weeks ago, interstate commerce means anything the government wants it to mean. When “marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana” can be called interstate commerce, then commerce, as a word, is utterly meaningless and pliable, adaptable to the schemes of any tiny tyrant.

I need to move out of the country before that becomes illegal.

Update: You know the worst part of this decision? Justice John Paul Stevens, the fool who wrote for the majority, said that local officials “know best” how to run your land. That’s right. You’re too stupid to know how to run your land the right way; you’ve got to let the government take it and give it to a company that’s obviously smarter than you are.