- America as a free nation died Thursday. Death came without
mercy at the hands of the United States Supreme Court which ruled, in a
split 5-4 decision, that a city has the right to steal an American citizen's
property without due course and turn it over to private developers.
-
- Death came to America after a prolonged period of life
support. The United States has, for too long, been in a persistent vegetative
state, brought on by a government that has abandoned the protections once
guaranteed by the Constitution. The Bush administration, using fear of
terrorism as a political sledgehammer, has stripped Americans of the right
to counsel, the right to privacy and threatened even freedom of expression
by suggesting that anyone who dares disagree with Dubya's extremist right-wing
views is a traitor to the flag.
-
- But the Supreme Court yanked this ailing nation off life
support Thursday by proving, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said,
the "Constitution is an outdated document."
-
- Incredible. Simply incredible. The Supremes, abandoning
any reason, ruled the City of New London, CT, can seize property of private
homeowners and give it to a private developer who wants to build condos
and office buildings along the city's waterfront.
-
- "The U.S. Supreme Court destroyed everybody's lives
today, everybody who owns a home," said Richard Beyer, who will lose
his property in New London.
-
- The Supreme Court destroyed far more. It destroyed the
American way of life, the American dream of home ownership and the concept
that one's property is their own and protected from those who want it for
their own greedy purposes.
-
- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor voted against the court's
appalling ruling and wrote the dissent.
-
- "Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic
limitation on government power," Justice O'Connor wrote. "Under
the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable
to being taken and transferred to another private owner."
-
- Up until now, we have had to depend on the court to stop
the ever-increasing encroachment by the government into our lives. The
courts have been the only path left to stop the Bush administration's assault
on freedom and the Constitution.
-
- No more. The last hope for America died when the court
sided with land speculators and fatcats who already control all the other
branches of local, state and federal governments with their checkbooks
and political action committees.
-
- At one time, we who called America home considered it
the home of the brave and the land of the free.
-
- No more. We ceased being the home of the brave on September
11, 2001, when a band of thugs hijacked airliners and crashed them into
the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Our president, seizing
on the politics of the moment, used fear to turn this nation into a police
state.
-
- On Thursday, five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court
destroyed the land of the free. If people cannot own property without living
in fear that the government can take it and turn it over to the fatcats
who own our elected officials, then we are no longer free.
-
- "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to
lose," songwriter Kris Kristofferson wrote in his song, Me and Bobby
McGee.
-
- There's nothing left to lose. The government and the
courts have taken it all.
-
- http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_6926.shtml
|
