Thursday, June 23, 2005

More on Flag-Burning and the Supreme Court...

The Volokh Conspiracy reruns an old item about why a flag burning amendment is a terrible idea. Go read it.

On The Corner, this familiar-sounding tidbit ran...

RE: LANDOWNERS LOSE [Rod Dreher]

... but Republicans win. Today's ruling is mind-boggling to me. As O'Connor said in her dissent:

Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result.

It's highly important, it seems to me, how the Justices lined up on this issue. All the liberals -- Ginsburg, Stevens, Breyer -- and two of the "moderates" (I know, don't laugh) -- Kennedy and Souter -- sided with big business and big government. All the conservatives -- Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist -- and one moderate (O'Connor) stood up for the little guy.

This is going to be politically very, very potent. Everybody can understand the fear of the rich and powerful business interests colluding with big government to squish the little guy like a bug. This is not America. Except that thanks to SCOTUS, it is.


I doubt it'll work for the Stupid Party because frankly, they're too f*cking stupid and have wandered too far away from anything resembling conservative principles to have any credibility if they try to capitalize on this. It'll be too busy for the fascist Dems to say, "Since when have you cared about the Little Guy?" All the more outrageous since it's the Left that's doing away with our Rights.

Having no shame helps, I guess.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Let's see. Seven justices appointed by Republicans, 2 appointed by Democrats. Yeah, that's some liberal court. Just because a justice wants to keep abortion legal does not make that justice liberal. Anyway you look at it, this decision came from the Republicans.