This is serious

[jolest]

I'm so disgusted I can barely type.
Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes

From what I've read and heard on the radio (from government officials no less), this ruling means that the state

Comments

[cybercerberus]

You can take some heart in the fact that the blogosphere is absolutely blazing to life about this issue. Everyone is outraged. I think it's likely that it will be overturned in the near future.

If I were back in the States and had a representative, my letter would be in the mail already.

Of course, overturning it does little to help the fact that it happened in the first place. How could they do it???

[wombat_socho]

The robed fools got so wrapped up in studying the trees that they lost sight of the fact that they were supposed to be managing the forest. Or, you could use the whole expansion of eminent domain powers as a good illustration of the boiling frog analogy.

[cybercerberus]

Okay, I'll bite. What's the "boiling frog analogy"?

[wombat_socho]

Supposedly you can boil a frog by putting it in a pan of cool water and increasing the heat so slowly that the frog doesn't notice the gradual increase in temperature, and eventually boils to death. The analogy gets used a lot over here in debates about civil liberties.

[dsgood]

For what blawgs (law blogs) are saying about this, see http://jurisnovus.com.

To me, what makes this even worse is that the "improvements" probably won't work. They might not even work as well as the efforts to revitalize downtown St. Paul.

"Conservatism" and "liberalism" reversed/perversed

[orangemike]

The bizarre part about this one, is that the "liberals" (not that there are any genuine William-O.-Douglas-style liberals left on this court) were the deciding majority here, and that people like Clarence Thomas were on the anti-State side on this one. (I know, not even Clarence can be wrong ALL the time; he was right on Tasini v. Times, frex.)

I am somewhat bemused, though, by your idea that "public taking" should be clarified as ONLY for public use and that should NOT include "gov.agencies"?!!? What kind of public use can there be that explicitly excludes government agencies?

Re: "Conservatism" and "liberalism" reversed/perversed

[jolest]

You're right Mike. I should have been more specific on that point.

I didn't mean that the land should not go TO a gov.agency. I was trying (poorly) to allude to the idea that the state shouldn't be able to play games by defining "public benefit" as the profit accrued to a gov.agency by taking property and then, within a year, selling it at some indecent profit (as has happened in several recent instances) to some private entity...

[bibliofile]

Of course, it was somewhat entertaining that this decision immediately began to apply to David Souter's personal residence.