Posted on 06/23/2005 7:30:08 AM PDT by Helmholtz
U.S. Supreme Court says cities have broad powers to take property.
He is quoting the Communist Manifesto.
http://laissez-fairerepublic.com/TenPlanks.html
The Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto
1848 by Karl Heinrich Marx
Obviously you're a committed renter.
Got Vocabulary?
The 2nd Amendment empowers you. If you have the will, and the clarity, and the Constitution behind you.
This decision is cause for alarm.
You really aren't describing her argument but that's neither here nor there. The 5th Amendment doesn't sanction eminent domain for the "general welfare", it sanctions it for "public use". If they meant "general welfare" they were thoroughly familiar with the term. This is simply another example of judicial activism expanding on precedent to the point where private property can be transferred to another private owner if the government feels like it is for a "greater good". Sound familiar?
Do you really find such an analysis persuasive as opposed to well, embarrassing?
What I find embarassing is the majority decision. It is not simply unconstitutional, it is unAmerican and anti-constitutional.
And there you have it my friend.
I think you misunderstand me.
I do not argue that the Supreme Court of the United States is necessarily trampling on the will of the people of America.
I am merely an observer. And I observe that the US Supreme Court is the supreme authority in America.
The decisions this authority hands down seems to anger a great number of Americans I speak with, and some of them lash out and say that the Supreme Court does not possess such power. But clearly it does. It has pronounced today, and therefore, all of those people in that town in the American state of Connecticut will lose their homes, including the very elderly couple who have lived there for 50 years. That couple, deracinated, will surely die from the stress, but the Supreme Court has made the law, and it is absolutely certain that all of these homes will be destroyed. There is no power in America that WILL stop it, and from my observation I do not think there is any lawful authority in America that CAN stop it, other than the local authorities who desire to take the property in the first place.
I ask the question if the Supreme Court OUGHT to be the final authority on everything in America, but the reaction I most often get is a very, very angry blast back that the Supreme Court ISN'T the final, supreme authority in America.
But of course it is!
Look at your history.
The last public official in America to directly overrule the Supreme Court by nullifying an order of the court was President Abraham Lincoln. Not one official in America, at any level, has since dared to do that. A state judge in Florida and people associated with a certain prominent case directly defied a subpoena of the United States Congress with impunity. But nobody ever defies the Supreme Court of the United States.
Not once in 160 years.
That is the supreme power in America, by definition.
Why get angry at me for observing the obvious?
I think that many people who get angry at me do not wish for this to be so. But it is so, and not because I say it is so, but objectively, by looking at American history. Even a stranger can see that.
If American people do not LIKE that state of affairs, it is incumbent upon them to CHANGE them.
In France, Parliament is supreme, but when Parliament passes a stupid law, the people go on general strikes by the millions, and Parliament always caves in and surrenders the point, 100% of the time, because the will of the people, directly expressed by open defiance of the law by the millions, without violence (unless the authorities are stupid enough to send in a few policemen to try and "discipline" a million people, then there would be violence. But the authorities have been smart enough not to have attempted THAT since 1968), cannot be gotten around.
In America, there has never been a general strike over anything. It is not the American way. The residual power theoretically reposes in the People, but the People of America never assert it in a way that overrules the supreme law of the land in America, the Supreme Court. Every year or two the French people go into the streets and casually overrule acts of the supreme law of the land in France, the Parliament.
What is the mechanism to really control the court in America?
Only President Lincoln ever effectively used it.
It is simply ignoring the decision, ordering the Executive branch departments to obey the President and disregard the Supreme Court (and firing or arresting and prosecuting for lawbreaking anyone who obeys the court and disobeys the President on the matter), and then relying on a partisan majority in Congress to prevent there being a majority vote in the US House of Representatives to impeach, or two-thirds of the Senators willing to remove the US President from office.
If the President cannot be removed from office because there is not a political super-majority in the US Congress to impeach and remove him, then the US President has an absolute veto over any decision of the US Supreme Court, by overruling the decision, calling it bad law and a bad interpretation of the Constitution, and directing the executive departments of government to obey him and not the court.
Abraham Lincoln did this effectively.
No President since has.
The check on the Supreme Court is political.
There exists an de facto US Presidential veto of any Supreme Court decision, since the executive departments obey the US President and not the judiciary.
If there is not a political supermajority to remove him: the same majority required to remove a Supreme Court justice, which is never done, then the Presidential veto of the Supreme Court stands.
When we disagree with someone here, we do not attack them personally.
"The Legislature can pass a new law tomorrow to change the entire situation and SCOTUS can only react."
As it did today, for example. Merely reacting.
Or as it did with the gay sodomy decision.
Or perhaps as the Massachussets Supreme Court did with gay marriage.
As it did with Roe v. Wade.
As it did with the decision finding the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment and unconstitutional.
And then when it decided, a few years later, that the death penalty was not cruel and unusual punishment.
As it did when it decided that no teenager can be executed no matter what.
All purely reactive?
Well, my wife and I were considering buying some land to build a house. I guess we will have to call Wal Mart to find out where it is OK to build before we proceed /sarcasm.
I can't believe what I am seeing here. This decision is the most a**anine thing I have ever read. For the first time in my life, I agree with Sandra Day O'Connor. I never thought I would say that, but there it is.
I went to a drop in tonight to meet a woman running for City Council. Today's ruling made me realize the important of those councils and being sure who sits on them.
Who will be the watchdogs to make sure they aren't being wined and dined by developers and getting their pockets lined?
It won't just be Senators leaving the Senate as millionaires - it will be city council and mayoral offices too.
I wrote: [What the Supreme Court says is the law of the land in America, and this is nowhere made clearer than when the Supreme Court of the US makes laws that more or less directly contradict the language of the Constitution document.]
You responded: Well then, why do we even need a legislature for? The Supreme Court has turned into a communist run doddering old fools who suffer from the mental delusion of liberalism and marxist doctrine.
I answer: I cannot answer this. I think that it is the structure of the US Constitutional system itself that results in these judicial enormities occurring time and time again. But I do not believe that there is any desire among Americans to change their Constitution, so I suppose the most appropriate thing to do would be for people to just mildly accept the results of the constitutional structure of the place.
I agree with Einstein that insanity is conducting the same experiment over and over again expecting different results.
knock of the personal attacks
"I understand your anger, but what is the solution?" Impeach and remove judges who do not follow the Constitution but instead add to it their own social biases. This current sludge is a prime example of judges adding where the Constitutional language limited. Impeach and remove the smarmy slugs for doing something unConstitutional, changing the Constitution without the prescribed votes.
This will open up the flood gates. You're going to see a whole slew of seizures around this country, and it'll be a total wildfire. I can almost feel the gleeful greed growing exponentially across this land. Mark my words, it'll get bad enough that Congress will have to do something, or the people will have their heads.
"Got Vocabulary?"
You tell me, have I said something to offend you? All I said in so many words was that I disagreed with the ruling and thought it was a power grab by the judiciary.
Uhh...isn't that what goes on in San Francisco "Jiffy Lubes" anyway?
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