John Paul Stevens and your Home

A few days ago, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote to President Obama informing him of his decision to retire from the bench this summer.

Owners of private property all over the United States would have benefited greatly if he would have made this announcement in 2005.

It was in that year that he wrote the majority opinion in one of the most dreadful Supreme Court decisions in the history of our republic.

In the Kelo v. New London, CT decision (liberty lovers need not be reminded of what this case was all about...) Mr. Stevens found that "[p]romoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government. As with excercises in urban planning and development, the city is trying to coordinate a variety of commerical, residential and recreational land uses, with the hope that they will form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the 5th amendment."

To Stevens - and the rest of the Constitutional revisionists of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court, our home is nothing more than a "part" of a "whole" and government knows better than we do what to do with that part.

Good riddance, Mr. Stevens. May you enjoy your retirement in your home - that has not been targeted for an eminent domain taking.