Further Erosion of the Bill of Rights

The Supreme Court this week, in a 6-3 decision, declared that government can take your property and give it to another private property owner. Such transactions usually involve taking property from poorer folks and giving it to richer folks, and all that’s necessary is for those desiring the property of others to prevail upon a city council or other legislative body. Given the obscenely prominent role of money (legal bribery) in the formulation of public policy in our nation, such is easily accomplished.

As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stated in her dissenting opinion: "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."

Justice Thomas, who most often hews to the Scalia party line, also dissented; noting that the Supremes decision was "far-reaching and dangerous" and that in such situations property is usually taken from lower income folks and given to those of greater means.

The instant case involved the desire of the New London, Connecticut city council to increase its property tax revenue by seizing “seizing people's homes, clearing the land and turning it over to private interests that would build a residential, office, retail complex supporting new $300 million research facility of the Pfizer drug company.” Read about it here and Here

The fifth amendment to the U. S. constitution provides that, amongst other things, “…nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Remember, the Bill of Rights was amended into the Constitution, four years after adoption of the Constitution, to protect individual citizens from the type of excesses and injustices perpetrated upon the colonies by the British crown.

Is it a “public use” for government to take property in order to hand it over to folks or corporations who will then use the property to enhance their personal or corporate wealth? The Supremes say yes.

A similarly inexplicable decision of the high court was its early June decision that federal anti-marijuana laws trump state medical marijuana laws. The court, in a fit of rhetorical gymnastics, construed there to be interstate commerce implications to the states’ medical marijuana laws. Again Sandra Day O’Conner, a true conservative, dissented, saying that the court was overreaching to endorse "making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use”.

Once again the Supremes have eroded the Bill of Rights, which in the tenth amendment provides that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The Supreme Court, throughout its history, has generally restrained federal jurisdiction to matters involving interstate commerce.

Even the right reverend Justice Scalia, who forever is lecturing us dumb ass masses that judges should construe the Constitution from an “originalist” perspective, voted with the majority in the medical marijuana case. Scalia, being a Straussian philosopher, needn’t bother himself with consistency when it comes to regulating our private behavior. What an absolute hack.

The Supremes, some years ago, declared invalid federal legislation that enhanced penalties for those convicted of a crime involving guns when the crime was committed in proximity to a school, concluding no interstate commerce implications. Apparently providing marijuana as medicine to folks, who otherwise have found no medical relief, involves interstate commerce.

The fascism that has been creeping along in this nation for most of its history is now up and walking; and, with the advent of the national security state, it should soon be sprinting.