Kelo Decision

Blogs for Bush blogged Quickest Way to Reverse the Kelo Decision - This is from National Review Online's The Corner:

The quickest way to reverse Kelo is to find some conservative town in Utah somewhere to shut down an abortion clinic in order to make room for a Wal-Mart. Also, that would be the most fun way to get Kelo reversed.

If, as the Supreme Court has ruled, a locality may take property because other uses will generate more tax revenues and other benefits for the local community, then this makes all kinds of sense - I'd like to see the abortion clinic which generates tax revenues even 1/10th that of a Wal-Mart store. There's no ban on abortion here - and the owners of the clinic would be paid full market value for their property; but don't you just know that our liberal friends would scream bloody murder if we did this?

You see, the fact that the four most liberal justices concurred in the Kelo decision indicates what it was really about - its not that they really wanted to transfer valuable real estate to private businesses (they'd probably have preferred that New London was taking the property in question to make a bird sanctuary, or homeless shelter or some such thing), but that they really hate private property and this was a nifty way for them to essentially terminate the right of Americans to own property. We should shove it right back at the liberals - make them overturn their own decision.

I don't want to reverse it, at least not right now. The Kelo decision should be very useful in the upcoming battle over nominations to replace justices on the USSC: we must have more conservative justices, who voted against Kelo, to protect everone from having their private property stolen when someone who wants it can bribe a local official to help steal their property.

To see the Kelo Decision read   Justice Stevens's opinion,   Justice Kennedy's concurring opinion,   Justice O'Connor's dissenting opinion,   Justice Thomas's dissenting opinion.