A minimally-covered scary precedent

This _should_ scare the shit out of most people, but I suspect most haven't heard about it. As you may remember from your high school civics class, the government is granted the power of "eminent domain" to seize property so long as the seizure is for public use and the residents are given fair market value. The point is to be able to grab land for things like military bases, public utilities, etc. But the Supreme Court just ruled that land could be seized under eminent domain for commercial development. As in, a community in Connecticut was uprooted to make room for office buildings.

Think about that. It's fucking scary. The rationale here is that the economic benefit to the community as a whole by removing the homes and re-zoning the area commercially constitutes a justifiable public good. But Jesus...you can make that argument about just about anything. Economics is a sufficiently hazy pseudo-science that you can make a case that's compelling to at least some people to justify almost anything. Just ask the Bush Administration. So, effectively, now government can legally claim any private property they want to at any time. Scary.

Interestingly, it was the conservatives who were in the minority on this one. Makes sense if you think about it...conservatives are all about limited government, and liberals generally are in favor of allowing the government broad power.