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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Evicting David Souter - do not miss this one. Weare, New Hampshire LOGAN DARROW CLEMENTS doesn't seem like the sort of fellow who'd go around stealing the houses of Supreme Court justices. He's mild mannered and laughs easily, often at his own jokes. Physically he resembles a less creepy Ralph Reed: He looks like a 36-year-old altar boy whose mom made him scrub up and dress for dinner. An Ayn Rand devotee, he heads an objectivist discussion group back home in Los Angeles. A zippy evening for the group might entail a field trip to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center or sitting through a presentation on The Force Minimization Theory of Ethical Taxation. As an objectivist, Clements is committed to Rand's notion of rational self-interest, self-reliance, and pretty much anything beginning with the prefix "self." Like all objectivists, he profoundly distrusts government, which has a "monopoly on the initiation of force," so he'd only seek public office reluctantly. When conscience (or rational self-interest) called in 2003, he tried to do just that in the California gubernatorial recall election. But there was a whiff of the born-loser libertarian about him. Despite proposing crowd-pleasers such as privatization of all public schools, he finished 131st out of 135 candidates. He was beaten by the likes of Angelyne, a model with no last name who wanted to paint the statehouse hot pink, and Kelly Kimball, a business executive who ran as a member of the ButtMonkey Beer party. If Clements was a man whose causes had not yet found full employment for his talents, that all changed on June 23, 2005, the day the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Kelo v. City of New London, Conn. decision. It was also the day that Clements, in response to that decision, resolved to swipe the house of Supreme Court Justice David Souter, and put up in its place the Lost Liberty Hotel. The Kelo decision might well be the most important in the history of eminent domain, a term that can cause instant drowsiness among the easily bored. Though "eminent domain" sounds like a badly named subdivision, it is not as euphemistic as it seems. It derives from the Latin dominium eminens, meaning "supreme lordship," giving its victims an unsubtle hint as to how they'll fare if eminent domain is used against them. If the government asks you to sell your property at its price and you decline, you can be forcibly removed. It's the ultimate buyer's market. Eminent domain's dictionary definition is "the right of a government to appropriate private property for public use, usually with compensation to the owner." That must be from an old dictionary, since "public use," after decades of constitutional erosion, has been transformed into "public purpose." In practice, a "public purpose" is anything that land-grabbing cities and the private developers they're in bed with want. Throughout the country, cities now continually seize properties for every reason from economic development to elimination of "blight." As Dana Berliner writes in her book Public Power, Private Gain, "blight" these days can include "too-small side yards, 'diverse ownership' (different people own properties next to each other), 'inadequate planning,' and lack of a two-car attached garage." CONTINUED 1 2 Next > Print Crud - please go to the website to finish this one - long, but great. Enjoy.
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#1. To: lodwick (#0)
I'm surprised at how well-organized and how much effort Clements has put in. Great description of Souter's decrepit house. Makes me feel better about my own house ;^) When the Weekly Standard makes fellow traveler Ralph Reed the standard of creepiness, you know Ralph Reed is toast.
Truly laughing out loud at this. Too freaking funny. (I feel the same way.) Thanks for reading this one.
#3. To: lodwick (#2)
Thanks, Lodwick! I hope to read more about this latest chapter in the Lost Liberty Hotel saga, when a media outlet other than The Israeli Gazette (to which I refuse to give a click) publishes it. Nothing personal!
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