Jul 1, 2005

U.S. House Challenges Supremes on Kelo: A Left/Right Coalition?

by Liberty and Power

The U.S. House has voted 231 to 189 to deny federal funds for any state or city project that uses eminent domain for private development purposes. While most of the backers were Republican, several leftist Democrats joined them including John Conyers and Maxine Waters as well as socialist independent Bernie Sanders. Mark Brady has already noted that other leftists, including Ralph Nader and Alexander Cockburn, have spoken out against the decision.

I am surprised by the tremendous interest which ordinary people have taken in this issue. Two of my undergraduates independently took the initiative of coming to my office to tell me how much they deplored Kelo!

UPDATE

My old friend Todd Zywicki over at Volokh has more details including a link to a Washington Times article that features some hard-hitting quotations from Sanders and Waters.

More Comments:

Bill Woolsey - 7/1/2005

In my local paper this morning, Democrat minority leader Pelosi was quoted as complaining that cutting off funds to "enforce" a Supreme Court decision was equivalent to "nullifying" the decision.

Well, I guess that is consistent with the left-liberal approach to abortion rights. If it is legal, then the taxpayer is obligated to fund it.

Since having local government take private property and give to developers has an effect on interstate commerce (interstate trade in construction materials, for example) presumably Congress could just outlaw the practice.