The number of pro-Miers posts seem to be increasing and the decibel level of the anti-Miers seems to be decreasing. Perhaps the Bush admin, after initial shock, is getting it's act together.

Related note - saw at another site (which I won't name to not offend OJ) that compared NRO to a bunch of ivy-league secret club types drinking brandy and smoking cigars and complaining that the rabble were not following their lead. Rang pretty true to me.

$250 billion in annual tort costs is what you get when Republicans dismantle the regulatory sysem: tort instead of contract. Just deserts.

. . . like the Sahara or the Gobi?

Though still marginally pro-Miers, I'm suspicious of business interests. They are not conservative, they are rapacious. KELO was a "pro-business" decision (and fascist to boot)

This doesn't make me comfortable. Business would love to make money off of trafficking in human flesh (cloning, patenting 'genes', selling stem cells from aborted fetuses)

Further, they'd sell their mothers in exchange for squelching competition.

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Re: Rick P.

Your comment is totally non-sequitor. Chancellor Kent (1780s?) said that mankind's progress was marked by the movement from "status (i.e. regulatory) to contract (i.e. privately agreed positions protected by common law)."

State Regulation has no relation to "contract". It is 100% "status" (class, feudalism, etc.)

Your conflation of 'tort' with the 'dismantling' of regulation indicates that you either;

a) failed contracts (in law school)
b) failed torts
c) failed both
d) passed both - but are blinded by Silly Marxist Dogma
e) understand neither - but are still blinded by Silly Marxist Dogma

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Regardless, "regulatory systems" have been co-opted by business interests since the inception of regulation.

There are exceptions, but 90% of "regulation" is "protection from competition" - and specifically requested by "business interests."

Kelo was according to the specific text of the Constitution--is the Constitution fascist?

Rick:

Exactly. So dismantle torts too.

OJ,

I respectfully disagree.

Relevent 5th Am. text

"...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.

KELO affirmed the "taking of private property" for "private use."

Now, you and I could argue over whether "tax revenues" created by condemning people's homes and replacing them with commercial developments constitutes "public" or "private" gains.

Solomon might cut the baby in two and say "both."

I suppose you could argue that this is "constitutional", but I feel I'm on solid ground saying that the "original intent" of the founders would have them spinning in their graves over this decision.

This brings me to "just compensation" (did the court interpret "just" as "only" or "fair" - enquiring minds want to know.

A truly "just" decision here would be to give the original owners the "benefit of the bargain" at the very least, and make them the "owners" of the supposed "private" enterprise so valued by the local government pigs.

Let's take the pretenses out of this debate. Piggish private interests bought/bribed piggish public interests at the expense of individual property owners, who a) lost rights to their properties, and b) were forced to accept lower compensation so that both public & private pigs could benefit.

As the Sea Wolf would say, they proved to be a bigger part of the ferment.

No, the Constitution isn't fascist, but the people interpreting it are.

I invite the readers to go here

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=us/000/04-108.html

to make their own decisions.
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"Two polar propositions are perfectly clear. On the one hand, it has long been accepted that the sovereign may not take the property of A for the sole purpose of transferring it to another private party B, even though A is paid just compensation. On the other hand, it is equally clear that a State may transfer property from one private party to another if future "use by the public" is the purpose of the taking; the condemnation of land for a railroad with common-carrier duties is a familiar example. Neither of these propositions, however, determines the disposition of this case."

--
If that doesn't determine the 'disposition', what does? It's simple - the arbitrary & capricious opinions of 9 elitists.

America (great as it is) has become a pretense. We have become a nation of 9 (wo)men, not laws.

My view is that such a broad "balancing" test - so prevalent in Con Law - simply begs for corruption & equivocation.

The exact same reasoning could be used for forced embryonic stem cell research, forced organ harvesting, etc. etc.
__

in closing..

In an article in the 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana, written by Giovanni Gentile and attributed to Benito Mussolini, fascism is described as a system in which "The State not only is authority which governs and molds individual wills with laws and values of spiritual life, but it is also power which makes its will prevail abroad. ...For the Fascist, everything is within the State and ... neither individuals or groups are outside the State. ...For Fascism, the State is an absolute, before which individuals or groups are only relative."

http://www.politicsdefined.com/content/fascism.htm

Respectfully,

Bruno

Forget the taxes--a public entity having it developed by a private developer is by definition a public use.

Just compensation is the correct way to attack such cases legally.

The proper way to deal with them in general though is legislatively or constitutionally, which is what's happening.

The notion that the Court is fascist is too risible to warrant serious condsideration.

Clearly then, we disagree.

Time will tell, and I will happy to be proven wrong.