That’s right, the Supreme Court has just expanded the government’s right to seize private property for “the public good”—which, in the case of New London, Connecticut, means tearing down people’s homes in order to make way for a Pfizer office complex:
[Lawyers representing the Connecticut home owners] argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.
As a result [of today’s 5-4 ruling], cities have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes to generate tax revenue.
Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, justices said.
“The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including—but by no means limited to—new jobs and increased tax revenue,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.
He was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
Lovely how the majority justices tried to cover this decidedly anti-Lockean decision with a rhetorical appeal to federalism (“local officials, not federal judges, know best…”). But just because the decision allows a local government (rather than the federal government, as it did with its cynical appeal to a malleable Commerce Clause) to assert what appears to me to be an extra-Constitutional claim on a private citizens’ property rights doesn’t make it any more kosher—and today’s decision, in its expansion of what can be shoehorned into the category of “public use,” gives carte blanche for municipalities to remake the geography in any way they see fit, so long as they can make the argument that they are doing so for the common weal (which in many cases is really just an excuse for gentrification—and legalizes the taking of private property from one owner and transferring it, by municipal will, to another government approved private property owner; it’s a plutocrat’s wet dream). As McGehee deftly puts it:
As of now, in American federal jurisprudence, the individual citizen is no longer paramount—the community is. The individual doesn’t even count anymore. Property rights? Only as long as someone with a bigger bankroll doesn’t want your property for themselves.
In short, This is nannystatism at it’s most cynical. And if the Bush administration were to use this ruling to push for the kinds of conservative justices who strongly object to what amounts to outright thievery and municipal bullying, I think they’d have a real winner on their hands. But don’t count on it.
If developers wish to purchase potentially profitable land for civic development, let them strike a bargain with the land’s rightful owner; allowing them to achieve their aims by lobbying unctious and pliable elected officials instead gives those elected officials far too much power, and subverts the natural workings of a free market system.
Glenn has much more here and here. Michelle Malkin reacts here. A round-up of reactions here.
Personally, I’m for starting a cyber support group for the New Londoners who are planning a show of civil disobedience when the bulldozers tractor up to the doors of their homes. Anybody else?
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update: I really like this bit, from Ed Brayton:
Is it overstating it to say that the entire experiment in limited government that we began 216 years ago with the passage of the Constitution may well have come to an end in the last few weeks with the double whammy of the Raich and Kelo decisions? If “interstate commerce” can be abstracted to give the government authority over activities that are neither interstate nor commerce, and if “public use” can be abstracted to cover private use, I dare say we have passed through Alice’s mirror into a Wonderland where words can mean whatever the Queen wants them to mean at any given time.
Up is down, black is white, Anthony Kennedy is conservative…
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update 2: Will Collier, writing at Vodkapundit:
This is a dreadful decision. If politicians have the right to take your private property and give it to somebody else just because the other guy claims that he can generate more taxes from it, then property rights have ceased to exist in the US.
The localities are still required to pay “a just price” when one of these takings occurs, but the price even a willing seller would be able to get from his property just took a huge hit. All a developer has to do now is make a lowball offer and threaten to involve a bought-and-paid-for politician to take the property away if the owner doesn’t acquiesce.
Fear not. John McCain will step in and save us all, mark my words.
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update 3: Russell Wardlow notes the important rhetorical sleight of hand operative in the entire concept of emiment domain:
the thing that really chaps my hide about the logic underlying this whole magilla is the argument that the forced seller still gets a “just price” for his property.
No, he doesn’t, dammit.
The worth of a thing can only be established by the price for which two parties are willing to transact in that thing at a particular time. If one of the parties is being forced to enter the transaction, then by definition the price he is being paid is less than it is worth to him. Namely, he’s getting ripped off. The whole lynchpin of eminent domain is that certain circumstances warrant ripping people off in that manner in the interest of serving a sufficiently important goal. Society does what it can to compensate the ripped-off individuals, but they are not being paid what their land is actually worth.
But this verbiage of “just price” allows people to rhetorically obscure that fact and act as if the concept of worth is separate from the volition of the act of selling something. Hence, we allow ourselves the fiction that “All we’re doing is taking away the owner’s volition, since we’re still giving him a “fair” price.
Professor Kingsfield could not have put it any better.
…But enough of this nonsense. What I want to know is, what’s up with that Holloway girl…?
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update 4: The Corner’s Jonathan Adler doesn’t see what all the [conservative] fuss is about:
I must say I’m at a loss as to why the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo was “sickening.” First, as a practical matter, the landowners did better in this case than anyone expected. Few observers predicted three votes against eminent domain, and they got four. Second, I don’t understand why conservatives are evaluating a Supreme Court decision primarily on the basis of what it allows state and local governments to do. I find the use of eminent domain for economic development to be obscene and immoral. I feel the same way about laws against consenting sexual activity conducted in private by adults. But the fact remains that state and local governments have a fair amount of power under our constitution to enact either. We often tell folks on the left that not every social ill should be cured by the courts, and that should apply no less when “conservative” interests are at stake.
I think most conservatives who are infuriated by this ruling believe that the particulars in this case moved beyond the 5th Amendment scope of eminent domain, expanding the conditions of public use to the point where, as Justice O’Connor notes in her dissent, all private property is, under the right circumstances, the government’s property to (re)distribute as it sees fit. In other words, Adler is misrepresenting the source of the outrage and begging his own question; conservatives believe that this particular expansion of eminent domain violates the intent of the 5th Amendment—and so therefore, a stricter reading of the intent of the Amendment would most certainly not constitute judicial activism. What one thinks of eminent domain itself is incidental here.
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the crazy, testicle-grabbing son of update: Uh, okay then.
I think this creates a penumbra of rights where I am able to rob people at gunpoint, but only if my motive is to take their money and therefore have more. If I rob them and throw the money away, it might still be illegal.
Is that a real Rolex you’re wearing?
The legislature wants to strip away the right to burn flags and the judiciary wants to give real estate developers the right to take away your house whether you want to smoke medicinal marajuana in it or not, which by the way you can’t.
The nannystatists are on quite a roll here in the land of the free.
We are now living in Mugabiville.
I’d definitely contribute. It’s a strange decision that prompts an almost Naderite dissent (the economic and politically powerless will be victimized by the corporate entities who are well-connected to local politicians) from Justice O’Connor.
Also remember this discussion the next time someone tries to challenge the incorporation doctrine of the Bill of Rights.
WTF?! Every time I think the SCOTUS cannot possibly behave more irrationally, they go and prove me wrong. The damnedest thing about decisions like this are that they will take at least a generation to undo – if we even get the chance. How many homes will get knocked down because those 5 fools in black robes have handed the keys to the bulldozer to all munificent “local officials”…
I for one welcome our new Robed Masters, and would like to remind them that as a high-profile blogger (quit snickering, Bill), I would be useful in rounding up the owners of under-utilized real estate to toil as gardeners and cooks in their
spiffy new mansions obtained through fradulent invocation of eminent domainmodest upper-middle-class homes.Count me as a supporter. This is one of those things that fairly begs for civil disobedience.
I wonder what will happen now… Don’t forget this controversy started well before the BRAC decision on closing the sub base in New London. Everyone’s gonna be a loser on this one:
1) Bad Constitution precident for all of us
2) Developer has now got a new office complex on what is now overpriced land
3) Land ownere probably could have made a deal for a lot more money than their property is going to be worth now, if they had “dealed” with the develper
Damn The man, Save the Empire!
Just wait five, ten years or so until the housing market is less bullish. Developers will be getting property siezed right and left once “fair-market value” drops significantly in real dollars.
I was rereading PJ O’Rourke’s essay “How to Explain Conservatism to Your Squishy Liberal Friends: Individualism ‘R’ Us” yesterday which got me thinking about the SCOTUS Medical Marijuana case.
I thought, “well, they really screwed up that one, but hey folks will still smoke it anyways.”
This case makes the Med Marijuana case look tame by comparison.
First, the liberal justices want you to stop growing a freaking plant on your land. Then, they say “screw it, we’re just gonna take the hole damn place.”
Being a liberal when you’re younger is understandable because of your idealistic nature and views of the world. But when you finally grow up a bit and realize how important individual rights are, you should tend to lean in the opposite direction.
After these two rulings, I can’t understand how anyone can defend the liberal justices opinions in these cases as correctly interpreting the meaning of our Constitution.
H. D. Thoreau, An Essay on Civil Disobedience, 1849. “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”
Personally, I’m for starting a cyber support group for the New Londoners who are planning a show of civil disobedience when the bulldozers tractor up to the doors of their homes. Anybody else?
I’m in.
No Mr. Lucas, This is how democracy dies.
At least if the bulldozers are Caterpillars, it will piss off the Corries, too.
Oh, sure, now you love our “right wing extremist” judges…
Limited gov’t was dealt a mortal blow with the income tax, and died with the FDR court.
When strict constructionism (you know, following the rule of law) became passe, it was not only dead but repeatedly skull-fucked.
This is just dancing a jig on limited gov’t’s grave, singing a merry tune of nanny-statism.
Re: Income tax
Picture this scene–it’s late night, I’m watching some old silent movie on cable. I don’t remember the name of the film, I don’t remember who was in it, I just remember being mesmerized by this old images. Anyway, at one point, a little kid is asking for a job from an older man. After must gesticulating and silent miming, the little caption comes up and it says something like this:
“You think I’m so wealthy, you must think I pay income tax.”
Absolutely hilarious moment from a time when the majority of Americans paid absolutely none of their income directly to the Federal government.
The end.
This doesn’t have much to do with anything, but I’ve decided that some manufacturer who produced sunscreen in ketchup packets would have come across the Most Convenient Product Ever. Because the bottles will come open and spill in any container you attempt to transport them, including pockets and purses.
Eh. The government would just step in and take your patent rights, citing fear of sun-created melanomas.
Maybe They Thought Kelo Referred To A Quantity Of Pot.
I’m in.
Hey Jeff, brilliant idea.
Lets get the local municipality to take someone else’s Copyrights (Private property) and give it to us on the basis that we can provide more tax revenue for the municipality than the previous owner.
I think we should start with Music downloads. If we can just get any local Government to set the “fair value” prices low enough we can do 1 penny downloads and make a freaking fortune.
Dear Citizen,
We regret to inform you that this blog now belongs to Wal-Mart. The government through its use of eminent domain has decided the public good would be better served through having your DNS propagate to our low, low prices. Please remove all your belongings from this blog as this URL will be redirected. Thank you.
PS. We’re taking your DVD collection, too. We’ll also pay fair market value for the armadillo. No you can’t keep him.
Now, this is an idea whose time has truly come.
Except that it wouldn’t work on Ginsburg.
Oy. Who would have thought that the opening scenes in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy was actually a documentary about Connecticut?
Well, Buchanan and the far left have found common ground on the War, so I guess it’s not too big a surprise that communalism has now found common ground with Big Business.
The real outrage here is that the ruling will make that I Love Lucy episode (where Lucy and Ethyl buy the dress shop, then sell it at a profit, to a man who sells it at a huge profit to a developer) unintelligible to future generations. Won’t anyone think of the children?
My question is – what can we do about this? I live in NJ where the only way things get built is if you’ve got the local city or state government in your pocket…does the name Jim McGreevey ring a bell? We already have issues with cities using emminent domain and now they have carte blanche? How did this happen? I thought this whole time people were complaining that Bush was using emminent domain to force roads in our forests, etc. – how did this vote come down to liberals saying YES to big business and conservatives saying NO! Can’t we do something?
Jeff G,
That 6:38 comment is somewhat odd. Business interests generally back whatever “-ism” it is that helps their immediate bottom line. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing… it just is.
Being a civil engineer, I think it right when governments expropriate land for necessary projects, such as roads and whatnot (in exchange for fair market value, of course). I agree that no private business should ever be able to do that, of course. No office complex or shopping mall is worth it.
I must say that I somewhat disagree with Russell’s comment regarding fair pricing. We often run into ludicrous demands from people when purchasing land for right-of-way. There must be some objective value for land, even when recognizing that people hold sentimental value on land above whatever economic utility such land could provide.
In response to “Personally, I’m for starting a cyber support group for the New Londoners who are planning a show of civil disobedience when the bulldozers tractor up to the doors of their homes. Anybody else?”
I’ll be there! Just let me know when, where, and how much ammo…
Eminent domain abuse
Nathan—I believe Big Business would rather lobby local legislators than have to put up with the demand of pesky individuals who may not want to give up their homes. That puts them on the side of eminent domain. I agree with you that this is a business reality, and that businesses tend to act in their own best interests. What I’m suggesting is that such business realities dovetail with the wishes of the petty tyrants who tend to sit on zoning boards who would like nothing more than to tell you how the municipality should be able to use your property for its fiscal gain.
Where’s Rachel Corrie when she’s needed?
3!
Spam buster: numbers …
I don’t think I can properly express my outrage over this without landing on half a dozen watchlists.
SPam Buster: SCIENCE!!!
I might as well start packing. The city council (mostly realtors) have been itching to rezone my neighborhood for years. Monday morning, I expect to see an eviction notice (for future multi-family tenement) sign on my front door.
Here in Minnesota we’ve seen this all before… Best Buy was allowed to push out a well-known, family-owned car dealership that had been around for decades (you can even see it in the movie ‘Fargo’
in order to build its new corporate headquarters. Of course, Best Buy isn’t mentioned in a summary of the court cases (notice what is said about the property being “blighted”):
Spam word: “society” As in, “What is happening to this society?!?”
Adler’s 2nd and 3rd sentences are deeply silly. The landowners certainly did not do better than anyone expected. This was it, their last shot with the courts and they lost. Not only the case, but their homes. And it doesn’t matter one whit whether they lost 5-4, 6-3, 7-2. There’s no “spread” on SCOTUS decisions. Now there’s precedent going the wrong way, and the legislators will have to fix the Supreme’s mistake. (Legislators representing the area of New London likely will be unsympathetic.) Or they can wait a decade or 2 for the ruling to be reversed. Fat lot of good it does them or us now.
Blight can mean anything from tax delinquency to dead-end roads to “diversity of ownership.” Property is now a necessary evil for the protection of government. What we need here is some backlash. Deploy the Babes Who Protest.
I’m trying to remember correctly. So far this court has pissed on the 1st Amendment by upholding McCain-Feingold, then tap-danced over the 10th and probably 9th amendments (by way of Raich) on its way to fuck the 5th amendment up its ass. Are there any amendments they’re not planning to violate/ignore?
Its a “living Constitution” dorkafork. The whole thing.
Seeing as you’ve rented me some of your property for advertising my novel, I am definitely in favor of defending property rights…
SMACK! Cluebat descends from orbit.
Hey, what am I saying, I could take your blog as “improving a blighted area”. Whats your local city counsellor, and what does he charge for bribes? And I bet I can move faster than a slow-motion behemoth like Wal-mart as we both race to the back door of the city council.
Seriously, count me in.
Eric R. Ashley
Not to mention that this ruling is a godsend for any city council that wanted to get rid of “unpopular” businesses.
I’m already wondering how long it’ll be before the Denver and Glendale city councils use this to finally shut down Shotgun Willie’s, PT’s, Diamond Cabaret, etc.
Oh We Loathe The Robed Ones.
Hey, at least we’re getting off better than the folks in Zimbabwe. Oh. Wait…nevermind. We’re still getting fucked.
All your property are belong to us.
First they took our right to secede from the Union, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a Southerner;
Then they came to take our money and instead issue only paper, and I did not speak out–
because I did not have very much gold;
Then they came for a tax on our incomes, and I did not speak out–
because I was not wealthy;
Then they came to socialize my retirement and health care, and I did not speak out–
because I was going to be old one day;
Then they came for my property–
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
I like what Hubris said, not only because I like to hear about people getting their nuts pulled off, but because I think a very important aspect of this whole debacle is that the concept of property has been reduced to cash–i.e., fair market value. You can no longer say the gov. is taking your “property” away if they give you FMV for it. The quintessential element of economic freedom—the right to keep what you actually BUY with your money—has simply gone up in a puff of smoke.
We should probably consider attending this:
The Colorado Eminent Domain Activist Conference is scheduled for 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Aug. 6, 2005 at the Embassy Suites Hotel, Denver-Aurora, 4444 N. Havana.
Speakers include Steven Anderson, Castle Coalition Coordinator, Washington, D.C.; Joseph Becker, Staff Attorney, Mountain States Legal Foundation, Lakewood, CO; Sen. Shawn Mitchell, Colorado State Senator, Broomfield, CO; and Dave Minshall, Minshall Media Strategies, Centennial, CO. The meeting will be chaired by Tom Wambolt, Save Our Lake, Arvada, CO.
Background
The city of Arvada used eminent domain proceedings on a lake to make way for a big box store. The city of Wheat Ridge used eminent domain on several small business to make way for another national retail outlet. The city of Sheridan used eminent domain on a row of businesses and part of another city’s golf course to make way for a development. The city of Westminster used eminent domain proceedings to take away agriculture land from a pioneer family. The people on the eastern slope saw a huge portion of land being taken for a super toll road. Metropolitan Denver and suburbs will see eminent domain used along the FasTrack routes throughout the area.
Purpose
The conference will bring together eminent domain activists from across Colorado to exchange ideas and to discuss the necessary techniques and resources needed to fight abuses like these of eminent domain in their communities.
For more details, contact Tom Wambolt, 6035 Garrison St, Arvada, CO 80004, 303-421-5668, email
Gail,
Fair Market Value (FMV) is defined in IRS Publication 561 as:
“…the price that a property would sell for in the open market. It is the price that would be agreed upon between a willing buyer and a WILLING SELLER, with NEITHER BEING REQUIRED TO ACT, and both having reasonable knowledge of the relevant facts.” [emphases mine]
People whose homes are taken under eminent domain are not willing sellers (generally) and they are being required to act. Both of these facts violate the FMV standard.
Buyers using eminent domain would have to use Investment Value, which considers a specific buyer and/or a specific seller.
Unfortunately, the Supremes decided to follow the Constitution (what a novel idea!) and only required those whose land was taken to receive “just compensation.” Just compensation can mean just about anything to anybody. And, since individual land owners tend to have shallower pockets than developers, their fight to define “just compensation” likely will be limited, which means more bad case law on which to define “just compensation.”
This whole decision is a travesty and a sham and a mockery. It’s a traves-sham-mockery. (thanks, Miller Lite!)
Eminent Domain is as wrong as slavery. Both were grievous errors by our founders. I think if somebody took my land and gave it to a developer, whatever was built there would not stand.
So the government has effectively taken away my property rights, as well as my right to burn the flag in protest as a metaphor for what they’ve done to my Constituion. What the fuck am I supposed to do? Leave? Rebel? There’s no way I can turn the tide via politics or public speaking, because Tom Cruise and his goddamn scientolgy are clogging the airwaves! Honestly, the only place I’ve seen this topic discussed at all was on blogsites, the media just reported it without really discussing it. It’s a very Orwellian/Animal Farmish turn of events.
SW=head. As in, this is making my head hurt.
Thanks for clarifying the different forms of compensation, A Fine Scotch. It is indeed a travesty.
As has happened in my little town twice now, a person can be harmed by having his home taken away even if he is given fair market value for it.
I live in a nice, older community that has a couple neighborhoods of smaller houses, one of which was predominantly non-white, though, of course, that had nothing to do with the decisions that were made. The non-white neighborhood has already been wiped out for a Wal-Mart/Lowes/Target megaplex. Another neighborhood is now slated for destruction for a mall on the other side of I-44. Even though these homeowners got what might be considered fair market value for their homes, they and their families are screwed. They cannot now buy another home in as nice a city with good schools as they had. on every block in my neighborhood, small homes are being demolished to build new two and three story homes selling for 4-6 times what the smaller homes were purchased for. What are these poor folks with low incomes but maybe $50-80K or so in their pockets going to do now?
Does this perhaps help to explain why some people are reluctant to give up their homes just to satisfy a developer’s idea of utilitarian value?
Turing Word – get. I think your machine is psychic.
*Smack*, Mr Fork, *smack*!
Gail, does Warren know you have a thing for balls getting wrenched off?
The Horrendous Failure of This Presidency
A Viewpoint
Trashing The American Constitution
As the President of the United States, Mr. Bush’s, Oath-of-Office is a promise to every American (under a legal accountability) that he will uphold and protect the American Constitution; a document he appears to routinely ignore.
In setting up dangerous and arrogant precedents of disregarding the human-right of due process, this President spits on the foundational American ideal (and human-right) that a man or woman are innocent until “proven” guilty.
An ever-present example—Guantanamo Bay—where human beings have been being held without any due-process rights for over 4 years.
Holding any human being without respecting his/her human rights on the possibility that he/she has in fact acted or will act within a criminal intent disregards this most fundamental of our American ideals—due process of Law.
When a President disregards and destroys the human rights of others with impunity, ALL human rights provided by the Constitution are destroyed for every American (it becomes merely a matter of time and Presidential-seen “necessity” until every American citizen risks losing his or her Constitutional protections of due-process under the Law).
This President has supported spying on American citizens (without going through the required legal procedures to obtain warrants) ignoring and setting aside the Constitutional protections within the Bill of Rights of privacy in our persons and “effects” which is an extension of our human-rights of being considered innocent until “proven” guilty.
How can this single and despotic act NOT be a direct suspension of American rights under the Law and an act of betrayal of the Presidental, Oath-of-Office?
The Presidential “spin” on this behavior appears to be that this warrantless spying is not against individuals, but merely a tracking of phone calls (i.e., a “faceless” security activity), going to assumed or known terrorists.
A reality-check exposes the manipulation behind the statement that this spying is “faceless,” as a reasonable person knows that any “spying” that cannot find the assumed criminal perpetrator, is meaningless (thus, it is not “faceless” warrantless spying).
This is personal and individual spying upon millions of Americans. If if were not, why would any security office activate it? Spying, in its results, locates real people.
American citizens have been betrayed by this direct dismissal of their Constitutional right to be private in their person and “effects.”
Modeling Despots of History:
News Reports reveal that President Bush is aware that the CIA kidnaps people suspected of being terrorists and these “suspects” are being taken to secret CIA camps to be interrogated.
How is it possible that the American people have forgotten the kidnapping off public streets of those who Hitler found offensive to him and to Germany?
This thug-like activity is a well-known dismissal of human-rights that have taken place under communism, as well, and by other dictators through-out time.
Who can doubt today, that those being held in secret compounds are tortured (military men have stated in public interviews that American policy now allows torture).
The ideals of the American people have historically recoiled at any and all abuses of human-rights regardless where they took place in the world.
Geneva Conventions:
President Bush has allowed the Geneva Conventions to be dismissed and ignored (playing “lawyer-speak”) regarding people we hold imprisoned within CIA or other military compounds.
This is a foolish and haughty act that will surely come back to haunt the men and women (and their mothers and fathers) of those Americans captured by enemies of the United States (who doubts that the Geneva Conventions will be thrown out in regards to Americans as Bush did for those being held by the United States).
Why hasn’t there been a move in our congress to make the Geneva Conventions permanent (and impossible for any President to set them aside) for every human being held by the United States of America anywhere they are being held.
How is it that possible that President Bush (via Rumsfield) has allowed the institution of torture against anyone suspected of a criminal act without allowing the person to obtain any due process and human-rights protections (news reports indicate that those holding the prisoners use obvious deceptions, apparently to hide the truth of what is going on within these prisons)
News reports indicate that when human-rights groups attempt access to those being held without due-process or Geneva Conventions protections, the people who hold “authority” there, state that this “access” would hold the prisoners up to “public humilation.”
How could any reasonable person NOT believe that these statements are nothing more than subterfuge, and that access to the prisoners are denied because it would have the effect of showing what is actually going on inside these prisons.
A secrecy that protects those who put into place, acts of torture and the arrogant dismissal of human-rights for those being held against their will (these prisoners are without any due-process hope) should be stopped by instituting a Law that would bring this activity to an end.
This American citizen, doesn’t believe this administration gives a damn about humilating those being held in these camps.
It seems clear, this administration is not allowing access to these prisoners because the world would then know the horrifying torture going on against people who are being held without any regard for their human rights.
ABC reported the death of two men who were so badly brutalized for more than 5 days that they died.
They were forced to stand up hand-cuffed to chains day and night, enduring excruciating pain as their legs were pounded to a pulp by the brunt-force trauma acted-out by the torturer(s) as they pounded the thighs and legs of the prisoners repeatedly (the report indicated that if these men would have lived, they would have lost their legs.
The medical examiner who did the autopsy wrote down as the cause of death: “murder”
It has been reported that no one has been charged with murder and the two torturers who murdered them have had nothing of real significance happen to them.
Two men said in a television interview that they were told to torture them (pointing out, that, in fact, they had been given instruction on how to torture).
Why doesn’t their deaths make Rumsfield and Bush, murderers (the buck stops at the authority who instituted such hideous anti-human policies, doesn’t it)?
Does anyone doubt that there are many more who have been tortured because of this Bush and Rumsfield policy?
All torture should stop!
Torture is inhumane and it is one of the primary reasons the United States accepted the Geneva Conventions in the first place.
Recently, a Television network referred to pictures of tortured prisoners they were given recently and implied these were people who were being tortured by Americans.
The torture scenes are so terrible they weren’t willing to show them on TV.
Why are these pictures not being shown?
We should not, as a people, look the other way or provide protection for those who mutilate, maim and murder people by torture!
First Strike:
President Bush has set-up a dangerous precedent of “first strike” against any nation or persons (which allows the Commander-in-chief to act out an act of military imperialism against anyone that the President happens to believe or claim is an “enemy”… an extraordinary change in our foreign policy regarding the exercise of our military might worldwide).
Is it possible that the American people will continue to allow “Fear” to be the tool of manipulation by those in power who desire to activate anti-American policy?
Shouldn’t a sitting-President be held accountable for betraying his Oath of Office?
We as a people, appear to have forgotten the words of one President who claimed that fear, itself, is the real enemy of a free people.
History has seen “fear” used in this manner before:
Hitler used fear to gather total power to himself (after his thug-cronies set a fire against government institutions) and we Americans later asked repeatedly why did the German people not stop him?
Isn’t it time, we, as a people, remember how short a time it took from that power-grabbing moment, until Hitler had unleashed untold suffering and destructive hell on earth.
It isn’t that the news isn’t getting out to the American people, is it?
— news reports reveal that Bush (and Rumsfield) have stood-by while unleashed robot-bombers entered the soil of sovereign nations and have killed people (and those with them), who were not in the final reality the people being targeted or who they were thought to be, by those who activated the strike).
That this type of behavior by any nation is reasonably seen as imperialistic tyranny can be seen by the fact that Bush is not allowing this “bad-guy” bombing on American soil.
It is a reasonable question to ask: If it is lawful and moral to attack suspected international criminals in this manner within sovereign nations, why doesn’t the President order security forces to fly-in robot-bombs against drug-lords who are driving on our highways or against suspected terrorists in the United States?
It is uncomfortably easy to believe today, that he doesn’t care that it isn’t a moral or internationally “legal” act ( one suspects it is against international law) to send in robot-bombers (or activate any other “police” action) within a sovereign nation without the consent and participation of its government.
Isn’t it reasonable to believe that he doesn’t do it here because he would fear the political fall-out when innocent American citizen(s) would be killed by such raw use of power.
Setting new precedents should never be undertaken lightly by any sitting-President.
Seeking out the enemies of the United States who may be within other nations should be done within the constraints of international Law and American Law (news reports show that these robot-bombers are condemned by the sovereign nations on whose soil it has taken place).
When the innocent are murdered in this manner, has there been an apology, reparations paid, or has there been merely a deafening silence by the Bush adminstration?
How can this type of imperialistic behavior NOT be an arrogant misuse of political power and unlawful policy?
Should not Bush see to it that every security office works with the nations that may have international criminals (terrorists) in their countries (as has been American policy long before Bush took the White House)?
This administration appears to be the most secret in history, hiding important military and human-rights decisions policy from American representatives and American citizens at-large.
Why? The executive branch of government is that..a branch…not the whole TREE of government.
When whistle-blowers provide information to media they are risking their pensions and jobs. A reasonable person must conclude that there would be no whistle-blowers if the adminstration were being transparent to the people it is supposed to SERVE.
Double Jeopardy, another important Constitutional Protection, has been junked with little protest by the American people.
Recently, a Dutch court noted that for all intents and purposes the American double jeopardy “protection” has become meaningless when a man or woman acquitted by the criminal court can be stalked forever via a civil court action for the same crime.
The United States was founded upon the type of government that is defined a representative government — A government, of the people, by the people and for the people, and no presidential administration should be allowed to hide acts that ignore, dismiss or deny human-rights to any person that is held in the name of this government.
We had good reason to despise imperial power; there should be no such secrecy as we have witnessed by this administration.
This American finds him appalling and arrogant in his “leadership”…His political choices imply that he may define himself by how profoundly he is able to disregard the very Constitution (and the ideals behind that Constitution) that he gave an oath to defend.
A reasonable person must ask, “What is wrong with our representatives in Washington? Why have they allowed such dangerous and risky precedent-setting activity by this President?”
Why have they allowed the trashing of the American Constitution by a sitting President?
What has happened to our “fearless” Media? Where is that American media that pounds away, day after day, chipping away at injustice until it recedes off the media map?
Why aren’t Editor’s (the American Warrior) setting-up in-house, human-rights task-forces whereby research and “focus” on human-rights within the American Ideal is analysed within a constant commentary (if the columnists aren’t doing the job or there is not enough of them on this primary human-rights issue, shouldn’t Editors make new policy?).
How is it possible that so many Americans do not appear to see that this President should be reined in and his executive privilege should be reduced to a minimum?
How is it possible that we are allowing our cherished Constitutional protections to be dismantled in the name of fear?
How can we continue to doubt that this President has high disregard for Constitutional ideals?
The human-rights abuses of his administration, the disregard for our Constitutional protections, the imperialistic and arrogantly initiated war, surely, clearly reveals a failure and betrayal to his Oath-of-Office.
Now, most recently, the trashing of the Constitutional Separation of Powers acted-out by the FBI.
One-by-one, the protections of our human-rights provided by the American Constitution, is being trashed by the very “Leader” who, by his Oath of Office, promised to protect them.
Why aren’t more of us asking; doesn’t this blatant betrayal of this President’s Oath-of-Office open him up to impeachment?
[…] the Kelo v New London case? Jeff covered it in June 2005. [T]he Supreme Court has just expanded the government’s right to seize private property for […]