In honor of recent events, I suggested a new activity for our family’s Fourth of July celebration. We usually march in the Morgan Hill parade. We always hold a barbecue for family and friends. We take turns reading the Declaration of Independence aloud. We walk over to the high school to enjoy the aerial fireworks, and finish up at home, watching the children light off our personal fireworks.
This year I suggested to my husband that we also hang in effigy the five Supreme Court Justices who last week gutted the Fifth Amendment, destroying private property rights for all Americans.
To my surprise, my husband demurred. “Smacks of rebellion, my dear'” he said.
To which I can only quote Thomas Jefferson, in the spirit of the season: “… that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
In case any readers have been on desert islands or comatose for the past week, on June 23, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, found that the town of New London, CT could exercise its power of eminent domain to destroy nine homes to make way for a privately owned hotel and office complex.
Until now, the Fifth Amendment has only allowed governments to take people’s property for public use, such as roads and bridges. But now the Supreme Court has found that New London has a right to seize the land because it will generate more tax revenue from a hotel than is paid by the nine families currently living in those homes, including the married couple in their 80s who have been in their home for more than 50 years.
This decision overturns 229 years of property rights. Now if a developer decides that your home would make a dandy location for a 7-11 or a Hilton or a McMansion, it can petition the city or county to force you to sell it to them.
Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, who perhaps not coincidently announced her retirement Friday, wrote in the 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.”
The losers, I might add, will be disproportionately the poor, the disadvantaged, the elderly, and the politically powerless. No one will be immune. The land grab rush has already begun. On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements filed a request with the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire, seeking to seize a home at 34 Cilley Hill Road. Mr. Clements wishes to build a hotel on the property.
Mr. Clements says no other property will do, as this home is of historical interest. It belongs to someone largely responsible for destroying private property rights in America: Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter.
Mr. Clements proposes to call his hotel the Lost Liberty Hotel. It will include a cafe called Just Desserts and a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit about the loss of freedom in America.
My husband approves. We can think of four other people who deserve to have their homes seized: Justices John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer.
Better yet, the Land Grab Five should be impeached. Anyone wishing to sign a petition to that effect is invited to do so online at www.PetitionOnline.com/lp001/petition.html.
I know some liberals who share my dismay at this decision, and who are even more dismayed that their favorite justices have found against individual liberties and for government and moneyed interests. At the same time, they are unwilling to call for impeachment, because then President Bush would be able to appoint not one, but five Supreme Court justices.
Let me point out that it is in America’s interest to appoint five justices who believe in a strict interpretation of the United States Constitution. Kelo vs. New London demonstrates why.
