Eminent Domain Jokes

I linked to a news story over at Eminent Domain Institute about an interesting use of the power of eminent domain. Here is how the story sounds to me:

If I understand the story line here, I'm thinking someone is telling a joke: 'You see, there was this guy in Framingham. He's the guy who owns Ken's Steakhouse, but his name isn't Ken. It's Timothy. Over 10 years ago now, government told Tim that it was going to take his property over on Worcester Road because it needed it for a Turnpike or a parking lot or something. Tim got kind of mad at the idea so he took government to court to try to keep his land from being taken. Of course, the court was a government court, and the court said Tim couldn't stop government from taking the land, that it was important for the Turnpike Authority to have his land for a parking lot or whatever the Turnpike Authority thought it was important to have the land for. So Tim's land got taken by government for the Turnpike Authority to own. Now after that, the Turnpike Authority built a parking lot, but almost no one ever uses it. And, there is an old 'historic' building called the Rugg-Gates house that no one uses either, and that the Turnpike Authority doesn't even try to keep up. It just sits there now, on what used to be Tim's land. So, Tim carries this grudge about all of this over the years. And, now, over 10 years later Tim gets a bright idea. He goes down to city hall and asks the city to take the property by eminent domain from the Turnpike Authority, and then give it back to him (the rightful owner of course). After all, there is an old blighted building on the property, and almost no one ever parks in the lot. Tim promises that if the city government will take his property back from the Turnpike Authority that he will pay out of his own pocket the amount of money the city has to pay in just compensation for taking his land back. But there's more, Tim promises economic development because if the city takes his land back he will build a new restaurant on his old land, land that almost no one makes any use of right now. He's thinking he might call this new restaurant Tim's Steak House. . . . .'

Half-Empty Media?

INSTAPUNDIT:

"MORE BAD NEWS FOR BUSH: 'Aided by surging tax receipts, President Bush may make good on his pledge to cut the deficit in half in 2006 — three years early.'

The New York Times headline: 'Bush deficit reduction plan falls off-schedule.'"

Huh? Nice, accurate headline, eh? Should we say the New York Times is the half-empty media?

The Fuller Court & Economic Prosperity

Mancur Olson suggests there are 2 necessary conditions for economic prosperity: (1) strong protection of property rights, including enforcement of contracts, and (2) minimum economic predation or rent seeking. I've posted on Olson's necessary conditions before, e.g., here and here. I'm interested in looking at the Supreme Court's opinions from the perspective of theses necessary conditions for economic prosperity. I think the so-called Lochner era of Court constitutional jurisprudence got many opinions correct from the point of view of economic prosperity, and that means the Lochner opinion is one of my favorites.

It was the Fuller Court (1888-1910) that decided Lochner in 1905. Today, many in the judiciary, as well as many in the law schools, see Lochner as a foolish mistake. Many even assert that not only the Lochner opinion, but more generally the Fuller Court’s general jurisprudence regarding regulation of the economy was either a radical departure from earlier Court jurisprudence or was primarily an effort by the Court to protect the interests of the business community.

James W. Ely, Jr., explains in The Fuller Court that neither of these negatives views of the Fuller Court make sense. Most importantly from my perspective, the Fuller Court was not a departure from the past, nor was it a political court seeking to protect a specific segment of our system of political economy:

Fuller and his colleagues built upon a constitutional tradition that assigned a high value to property rights, private economic ordering, and limited government. Recall that protection of property rights had been a central concern of the Court under Chief Justice John Marshal (1801-1835). Closer to Fuller’s era, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite . . . also manifested its willingness to uphold the rights of property owners. . . .

The Fuller Court, therefore, represented not a sharp break with the past but a flowering of time-honored themes of constitutionalism. . . .

An essential element of Fuller Court jurisprudence as the traditional Anglo-American premise that the law should safeguard private property in the name of liberty. For Fuller and his colleagues property and liberty were inseparable, and both were closely related to freedom of contract and private economic ordering. Like most Americans of the age, the justices of the Fuller Court tended to define liberty primarily in economic terms. . . .The Fuller Court championed private property and contractual freedom in order to limit the reach of government and thereby protect liberty.

The Fuller Court’s solicitude for the rights of property owners stemmed from utilitarian considerations as well as philosophical imperatives. Investment capital was vital to finance economic development. Associating the security of private property with industrial growth, Fuller and his colleagues persistently sought to protect capital formation. . . . (189-190)

I think it is important to note that the Fuller Court’s jurisprudence, as described by Ely, fits very well with Olson’s necessary conditions for economic prosperity. Specifically, the Fuller Court’s jurisprudence emphasized the protection of economic liberty by safeguarding property rights and enforcing the freedom to contract. Further, it seems that a reason for such commitments to property and contracts was an interest in securing the types of property rights that would encourage saving and investment, and the development of the capital markets that would allow people to look to the future. In addition, because the Fuller Court represented a “flowering of time-honored themes of constitutionalism,” one reads in Ely’s book an indication that the Constitution, as well the opinions of the Supreme Court, was consistent with the institutional framework for a system of political economy that would promote and encourage the economic choices of people that allow the development and enjoyment of economic prosperity over time.

But, there was also an interesting tension in the Fuller Court’s opinions between the protection of property rights and a commitment to federalism also found in the Constitution.

. . .Consistent with its dedication to a limited federal government, the Court was anxious to preserve the traditional distribution of power between the national and state government. Consequently, Fuller and his colleagues tended to defer to state governance of criminal justice, race relations, and public morals. This belief in federalism also led the justices to reject an expansive application of the Bill of Rights to the states.

. . . .Not only were most state business regulations upheld, but the justices hoped to maintain a balance between federal and state authority over the economy. . .

. . . . In the late nineteenth century state legislatures, acting under their police power to advance public health, safety, and morals, took the initiative in seeking to harness the new economic forces transforming America. Such exercises of state authority often impinged the prerogatives of property owners and employers, stimulating a stream of legal challenges. (190-191)

It seems to me that while the Fuller Court protected economic liberty well against the United States Congress, it did not do well in general with respect to state legislatures, and this is really the tension Ely notes. Perhaps this tension between what appears competing values might seem a “natural” tension found in the Constitution itself, but I think the tension may result from a definition of police power that was not consistent with government’s role as the protective state. The quotes above from Ely’s discussion point to where I think the problem can be found, i.e., in defining police power so broadly as to include public morals as well as public health as involving issues that are really private rather than public.

Many issues can and should be left to state legislatures, and this is surely the point of principles of federalism for the organization and structure of government in our system of political economy. Saying this does not preclude the Court constraining state legislative power when economic liberties are threatened by state legislatures. Police power should be defined primarily from the perspective of individual liberty by saying that such state government power involves using force and coercion to reduce or minimize the actions of some that harm the person or property of others. I do not see “public morals” as fitting within this definition. I suggest there are only private or individual morals. The term “public morals” has been used largely in ways that amounts to some in the community trying to enforce their own view of moral behavior on others in the community. The term “public health” has been used in similar ways, not just when the policy issue involves risks to life and health from communicable diseases.

My sense is that while the Fuller Court was quite good with respect to Congress in constraining the national legislature’s efforts to infringe property rights, and in constraining the national legislature’s efforts to embrace rent seeking legislation, it’s federalism encouraged state legislatures to infringe property rights and contracts, and it encouraged states to engage in rent seeking legislation. Some may argue that this is indeed the constitutional structure for state versus national governments in our system of political economy, I suggest a more sound and consistent definition of the police power reserved for state governments would have strengthened the institutional foundations for economic prosperity.

Kennedy Special Interest

In the Washington Post:

"More than 130 wind turbines are proposed for the hilltops of central Wisconsin, but that project and at least 11 others have been halted by the Defense Department as it studies whether the projects could interfere with military radar.

Wind farm developers, Midwestern legislators and environmentalists say the farms pose no risk, noting that there are already numerous wind farms operating in military radar areas. They say a renewable, domestic source of energy such as wind is crucial to energy security and independence.

They say their wind turbines are victims of the ongoing dispute between Cape Cod residents and developers of the proposed Cape Wind farm in Nantucket Sound. The Defense Department study was put in the 2006 Defense Authorization Act -- inserted, say wind farm developers, by senators who want to block Cape Wind."

I wonder which Senators might want to block Cape Wind? I've read in the past that the Kennedy family was opposing the project. Should we guess that Senator Kennedy was involved in inserting the study in the defense appropriation bill?

I wonder if the news article even mentions Senator Kennedy? Yes, here is the mention:

"Critics of Cape Wind, including Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), have said that the 130 proposed turbines about six miles offshore would hurt views, tourism and migratory birds."

But, I still wonder which Senator or Senators inserted the study in the bill?

Supreme Court justices are supposed to recuse themselves from matters bearing on their personal interests. Perhaps members of Congress should have to recuse themselves from participating (proposing studies) in issues bearing on their personal interests, unless of course we want members of Congress to essentially be their own personal special interest group, eh?

Corruption

GLENN REYNOLDS points to what looks like more earmark corruption.

What They Fight For

Scott Adams:

Al-Qaida issued a statement saying, “We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme.”

Death Tax Deceivers

Yesterday, a Democrat filibuster in the Senate continues the death tax. Here is an except from WSJ.com commentary ($$$):

"But special credit belongs to four Democratic Senators who voted against repeal yesterday after they'd run for office pledging the opposite. They are Evan Bayh of Indiana, who perhaps had in mind Democratic Presidential primary voters, not the home folks who elected him; Mary Landrieu of Louisiana; Mark Pryor of Arkansas; and Ron Wyden of Oregon. These flip-floppers voted not only to retain the tax but to increase it -- from zero in 2010 back to 55% in 2011 and forever after.

Mr. Pryor's Web site says he 'supports the permanent repeal of an estate tax.' No word as to when that comes down. Ms. Landrieu and her colleague Maria Cantwell of Washington were so torn on the vote that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wouldn't let them out of his sight until it was over. These Democrats no doubt fear the fate of former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, another Dem who supported the tax in 2004 and was dispatched to private life by current Senator John Thune, a Republican. In 2008 South Dakota voters will get a crack at Tim Johnson, their other Senator, who cast his vote for the death tax.

And an honorary flip-flop award goes to New York's Hillary Clinton, who during her 2000 Senate campaign declared: 'You ought to be able to leave your land and the bulk of your fortunes to your children and not the government. . . ."

I agree, don't you? You ought to be able to leave your land and any remaining fortune to your children and not to Congress. Too bad these 5 politicians can't agree with themselves on this.

Ethanol Efficiency?

Many have pointed to ethanol as an alternative to "our dependence on foreign oil." The interest in ethanol as an alternative energy source has led to many studies, and apparently a significant dispute over whether ethanol requires far more energy in production than is returned for use as a fuel. The Wall Street Journal ($$$) has an interesting discussion of this issue written by Carl Bialik, "The Numbers Guy". He makes the following observation:

"It can be disorienting to discover that reputable researchers can so seriously disagree on a single number. In an article last month, the Toledo Blade counted studies, as if that might help settle things. The newspaper noted Prof. Pimentel's work, and added, 'Five other researchers have done studies and agree. Thirteen other studies, including one paid for by the Department of Energy, show the opposite.'"

I guess I don't find this disagreement surprising. After all, I've written here on numerous occasions that when science and politics meet, politics wins.

Perhaps in this issue we can once again see the beauty in the economic analysis of public policy. A sure way of discovering if ethanol is "efficient" is to let the market test the hypothesis.

Noonan on Immigration Politics

PEGGY NOONAN has an interesting commentary on politicians and the immigration issue:

"A thought today about complexity and politics.

The American people right now are not in a mood to trust any political plan, proposal or policy that seems complicated--highly involved, technical, full of phased-in elements and glide paths and Part C's.

They are against complexity not because they don't think life is complex. They know it's complex. They know it because they live it every day. They assume public policy issues are also complicated. They know there are facts they don't know, which probably have to be factored in as policy is developed. But more and more they recoil from complicated, lengthy, abstruse proposals.

Why?

Because they think--they assume, at this point, reflexively--that slithery, slippery professional politicians are using and inventing complications to obfuscate and confuse. They think politicians are using complexity to create great clouds in which they can make their escape, like a cartoon character, like Road Runner.

They think modern politicians hide in complexity. They think politicians evade responsibility with it. We can't do the right thing, it's too complicated! Americans don't trust 'comprehensive plans,' because they don't trust the comprehensive planners.

This, I think, is the essential problem with Congress's immigration proposals. All the phased-in-partial-assimilation-glide-paths-to-guest-worker-status stuff seems like a big 500-page con. It's all too complicated to be understood by anyone who's not a tenured political science professor with a second degree in accounting.

What people will trust, and understand, is this: We will close the border tomorrow, and then figure it out from there."

I agree with her that many of our fearless leaders in Washington hide behind assertions of "complex" issues. I'm not so sure she is correct in suggesting that people see the assertions of complexity for what they really are.

CONTEXT -- MUST READ

Michael Yon's essay offers context for Haditha. Here are a couple of excepts I hope will capture your attention so you will read his entire piece:

The enemy rammed a car bomb into a Deuce Four Stryker in Mosul while kids were all around. They could have just as easily attacked our men a few blocks away from the kids. Instead, they cruelly wounded 15 children and killed two of them. I saw American soldiers furiously trying to save one little girl named Farah. One American officer, Major Mark Bieger, actually took Farah and her family in his Stryker and raced them all to the hospital. We needed that firepower at the scene in case of follow-on attack — we were in fact attacked there the next day — yet Major Bieger and his section, with permission from LTC Erik Kurilla who was on the scene, raced through the streets of Mosul to the hospital. Unfortunately, Farah died, and on that day some of our soldiers cried.

[ . . . ]

Ben was the first up the stairs, and he took four bullets. Only then did his buddies throw flash-bangs and eventually shot down the terrorist who killed Ben. All the Iraqi kids were fine. But Ben Morton died. Soldiers cried that night.

[ . . . ]

I visited their grave. We lost two fine Americans, and their parents lost their children, because our people are taught to control their fire.

[ . . . ]

Until the facts are released by the investigating authorities, we might benefit from a new sign:

WARNING
Speculating is Strictly Forbidden —
Violators Will be Fined

What They Fight For

Zeyad:

"Why don’t they just blow up the city and erect tents instead? It would make life much easier. We could go to school or work riding on camels. We could sit at the mosque all day, stroking and scratching our filthy beards and waiving flies away, while our women recline in their harems.

In short, they are trying to take us back to the 7th century, so we can experience the simple life of the prophet and his pious companions. We should abandon everything and anything that was not available at the time of the prophet in order to be true Muslims.

Yet the followers of this simplistic, backwards ideology have no problem with using hi-tech explosives, IEDs, machine guns and RPGs. According to their sick creed, it is not against Islam to detonate a car bomb at a bustling market or to shoot a kid twice in the head because he had gel on his hair. No, that is okay in Islam."

More Sowell on Immigration

TOM SOWELL:

"Far from 'controlling the borders' as advertised, this bill reduces our existing control of the borders. Under a provision inserted at the eleventh hour by Senator Arlen Specter, the Senate bill forbids the federal government from building a fence without first consulting with the Mexican government.

In fact, state and local governments are also forbidden by this bill to take any border control actions without first consulting with their Mexican counterparts. In other words, if the city of San Diego wants to put up any sort of barriers, it would have to consult with the municipal authorities in Tijuana before doing so.

This legislation was never about border control. The laws already on the books at this very moment allow us to control the borders, to build any fence we choose, without consulting the government of Mexico.

The laws already on the books allow any illegal alien to be arrested and expelled. Those laws are simply not being enforced. If a Los Angeles policeman arrests an illegal alien and reports him to the federal authorities, it is the Los Angeles cop who will be in big trouble."

What is going on with our fearless leaders in the Senate? Talk, talk, talk, and so much of their public talk seems aimed at fooling us.

It seems to me the first thing the current immigration policy debate should be about is "enforcing our borders," or can we just say, enforcing our laws. The fundamental purpose of government is as the protective state, and the government in Washington seems to simply be trying to avoid that fundamental responsibility.

Sowell also writes:

"In other words, we have make-believe border control and the current Senate legislation will weaken even that, all the while talking about "tough" enforcement. That "tough" enforcement is a promise but legalizing illegal aliens is immediate and irrevocable and its consequences irreversible and lasting far into the future.

"Border control" is just political cover for legalizing illegal aliens. The two things are put together in a package deal that is like horse-and-rabbit stew, whose ingredients are one horse and one rabbit. Border control is the rabbit.

The word games played about "amnesty" deliberately confuse the issue of violations of American law with the issue of acquiring American citizenship.

The fact that the Senate bill has requirements -- described as "tough," like everything else -- for acquiring citizenship is irrelevant to the question of letting the violations of law go unpunished."

Senate Unconstitutional

Now here is something interesting. Robert Novak discusses recent secrecy and unconstitutional actions by the Senate:

"On May 23, as the Senate raced toward passage of the comprehensive immigration bill before their Memorial Day break began, Sen. Charles Grassley moved the adoption of a new Title III to the measure. It passed easily without anybody mentioning that the amendment raises revenue, which was a violation of the U.S. Constitution's requirement that all such measures originate in the House of Representatives.

That adds another new obstacle to the formidable task of reconciling seemingly irreconcilable Senate and House immigration bills. To surmount the constitutional problem, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, in effect, must pass a new bill -- either under a procedure requiring unanimous consent or starting over with a bill subject to amendment. Considering the negative comments about the bill that senators heard from constituents last week, this may encourage new legislative attempts to control immigration.

There is no sign that Grassley intentionally sought to sabotage the immigration bill. Rather, what happened May 23 appears an extension of his normal procedure as Senate Finance Committee chairman to keep what he and his staff are doing shielded from colleagues, not to mention the public. While Grassley was amending the immigration bill, it also became known for the first time that he had quietly enacted -- and President Bush had signed -- a retroactive tax increase on Americans living abroad.

The Grassley touch on taxes may seem distinctive, but it fits the pattern of secrecy in the 21st-century Senate. When I told a senior Senate staffer last week that as a reporter I had no idea of what was happening to legislation, he replied that he had trouble keeping up himself even though this is his full-time occupation."

I think it is bad enough the Senate explicitly violated the Constitutional provision that revenue increasing measures must originate in the House. But what are we to make of Novak's reference to "the pattern of secrecy in the 21st-century Senate?" Do the fearless leaders in our Senate seek to serve their constituents? Or, do they seek to serve themselves at the public expense? If our Senators tend these days to a "pattern of secrecy" perhaps many of them no longer seek to serve their country nor their constitutents?

Protests Iran

Read Gateway Pundit for some of the details.

Tyranny

Dan Murphy & Awadh al-Taee:

"Former resident Aqeel says once the insurgents moved in, his neighbors began joining their ranks.

0ne Sunni Arab neighbor had joined the insurgents, and explained their choices of targets, he says. 'This guy told me that 'if we focus on the Americans they grind us into dust,' ' says Aqeel. 'So they prefer to hit the Iraqi police, Shiites, translators, people they think are too secular. That's easy for them.'

Aqeel decided to move his family to a Shiite district after going to buy groceries on Public Works Street one afternoon in early February. While there, a white Opel with four gunmen screamed to a halt at that corner, pulled a bound man from the trunk, shot him twice in the head and sped off.

And, more often than not, Shiites were the ones targeted.

'They started killing Shiites, just one every couple of days, in November 2004,'' says Harith, who remembers his first neighbor killed was Umm Saad. The 70-year-old widow ran the small grocery that he and his classmates used to crowd into after school when they were kids.

'Then this year it expanded. You'd see bodies on the streets all the time. A policeman was left dead in his car on my street for 24 hours, until I went to the National Guard and told them to collect the body.'

"I now see that, little by little, Amariyah was falling under takfiri control,'' he says, using the popular pejorative term for Sunnis who share Al Qaeda's vision of an intolerant and violent Islam.

In late April, the neighbors to the right of his home, also Shiites, made the mistake of bringing a moving truck when they decided to abandon the neighborhood, and were gunned down before they reached the highway.

In early May, his neighbor in a small house to the left - a divorced mother of two and a Sunni who worked as a maid, was gunned down. "She had been warned to stop working." Harith and his family fled soon after - leaving all their possessions behind."

Read the whole thing.

[Via The Mudville Gazette]

Efficiency & Pollution Victims

TIM HABB explains that the revenue from a corrective tax should not be used to compensate the "victims" of pollution:

"So what happens if we compensate the victims according to how much pollution they are exposed to? The costs of staying are reduced and the cost/benefit ratio shifts in favor of staying. That is, the victim is willing to bear more pollution costs to stay--the demand for pollution increases! This is a classic moral hazard problem. The solution to the problem actually creates the incentive for more of the problem.

So are there anyways to compensate victims of pollution using revenues from a pollution tax without distorting the incentives? Sort of. A lump sum payment to all victims--that is a payment independent of the amount of damages the victim incurs--will not distort the victims' incentives. By simply making a payment of $100 to each victim, the victim still must bear the additonal (marginal) cost of each unit of pollution. The marginal damage from the last unit of pollution is the relevant cost in the benefit/cost decision. A lump-sum payment doesn't change that cost."

I believe the conclusion is correct, but I don't think using the term "victim" fits with the normative analysis of efficiency.

If the normative criterion for evaluating the allocation of resources is pareto optimality, then I don't think there is a victim when there is market failure. Rather there is just an inefficient allocation of resources. This normative perspective then suggests there may be an explicit role for government to play in the economy, and this role is not to make things "right" for the victims of the market failure. Rather, the role is to achieve an efficient allocation of resources. The normative framework of economic efficiency seems to me to be intended to take a specific "social point of view" with respect to economic activity. As such, I don't think efficiency can identify specific "victims." Instead, the "victim" of an inefficient allocation of resources is some concept that relates to the entire economy and not to specific identifiable people. When we use efficiency to discuss pollution, we might ask who is at fault for causing the external cost. Such a question seems to me to fit with the "victim" terminology, but I think this too is a use of language that is off the mark for efficiency analysis. The fault is not the actions of any specific individual, even if he or she is a polluter. The fault is found, for efficiency analysis, in an institutional structure that does not internalize the entire marginal social cost of resource utilization decisions.

I would suggest that the term "victim" is much more appropriate to the normative perspective of individual liberty. In this case, we would be looking for harm caused to some individual (or to a set of individuals), which results from the actions of another or others. If there is harm caused by the actions of another or of others, then it would seem quite natural and appropriate to say that the person harmed is a victim of the actions of another or of the actions of others. Further, on this normative perspective the idea of having those causing harm compensate those who are harmed (the victim or victims) is quite direct and obvious.

I suggest that using terms like "victim" when discussing efficient policy with respect to pollution really amounts to adding a second normative framework to the discussion. Or, using such terms perhaps is the result of paying too little explicit attention to the nature of the normative framework which is being used to evaluate environmental policy alternatives. Often times efficiency and liberty are normative frameworks that point to the same policy choices, but there are some policy issues for which these normative frameworks point to different policy choices. It seems to me that pollution is one of the issues where these normative frameworks point to different policies. For example, getting an efficient level of pollution (generally greater than zero pollution) is really not going to satisfy the normative perspective of individual liberty since the efficient pollution will mean there is still uncompensated harm to some which is caused by the economic behavior of others. And, as Tim essentially points out with his explanation, if "victims" are compensated with the revenue from a corrective pollution tax, then the result will be inefficient. The result in other words would actually be more consistent with the normative perspective of individual liberty, and it would not be consistent with efficiency.

Sowell on Congress & Immigration

THOMAS SOWELL:

"Of all the insults to our intelligence in the current discussions of immigration legislation, the biggest insult is the claim that border control legislation and legislation on the illegal immigrants already in the country must go together.

Why? What will happen if they are done separately? And who will be worse off?

The claim that the two pieces of legislation must be passed at the same time has been repeated endlessly. But endless repetition is not a coherent argument.

At the heart of this issue is the question whether Congress and the Bush administration are serious about controlling the borders and about letting the number and kind of immigrants allowed into this country be decided in the United States, not in Mexico.

Whatever number and kind of immigrants the United States wants to admit into this country, that decision means nothing unless that limit is enforced at the borders. Nor is there any way to know in advance how effective any particular method of border control will turn out to be in practice.

The only way to know whether fences, national guardsmen or anything else will work is to wait and see before issuing blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, virtually guaranteeing that millions more will follow, as has happened in the past.

A Congressional package deal is not about border control. It is about trying to get the Hispanic vote without losing the votes of other Americans. It is about allowing politicians to vote on both sides of this issue to cover themselves politically."

Yes, this is right on the mark. Many of our fearless leaders in Washington are indeed trying to get the Hispanic vote while not losing the votes of Americans, and their strategy is to try to trick We The People. Shameful, eh? It is the responsibility of Congress and the national government in general to enforce our laws, to enforce our borders, to devote their attention to our security. They haven't been doing this, and instead of turning to the responsibility today and in a forthright manner, so many of them are trying to trick us.

I'm with Sowell:

"Some say that the Democrats would filibuster a bill that offered border control separately. Fine. Let them!

Let them show their true colors in an election year and then go face the voters in the fall.

Of course, those Republicans who are either weak-kneed or who share the Democrats' views would also lose the political cover of being able to vote on both sides of the immigration issue.

But the country would be better off not to commit itself to guaranteeing the permanence of millions of illegal aliens and all their descendants thereafter without getting anything more than pious hopes about controlling the border."

Make them vote yes or no on enforcing the border!!

Unconstitutional Supreme Court?

RANDY BARNETT:

"JunkYardLawDog: Yes, indeed courts can act unconstitutionally in their rulings. One virtue of originalism is that it provides a benchmark external to case law by which to judge judicial behavior. As the first sentence of Restoring the Lost Constitution states, 'Had judges done their job, this book would not need to be written.' Allowing precedent to trump original meaning (where that meaning is clear), which is supported by all ideological stripes when it is convenient, actually puts the rulings of judges above that of the Constitution."

I think this is an important point. I have heard and read others who do seem to think the Supreme Court cannot make unconstitutional rulings, because "the constitution means what the Court says it means." If that is a person's view, then indeed it must be clear that the Court cannot amend the Constitution or act unconstitutionally. In my view, the Court can, and has done both. In my view, when the Court decided to read the Takings Clause as "public purpose" instead of "public use" we have just one clear illustration that it has done both.

I also had not thought of the point Barnett makes about precedent, but it seems correct.

Wal-Mart Predators?

Apparently a city in California is thinking about taking 17 acres of land from Wal-Mart. I have a short post on this over at Eminent Domain Institute

Katrina -- The Real Story?

LOU DOLINAR:

"Let's try that again: The cavalry wasn't late. It didn't arrive on Thursday smoking a cigar and cussing. It was there all along.

The National Guard's response to Katrina was even more robust than I suspected in my reporting for RealClearPolitics in September, and in more detail for National Review, where I revealed for the first time that rescue operations saved up to 50,000 lives, with perhaps an equal number making their way to shelters on their own.

Fifty thousand New Orleans residents were in danger of death from drowning, heatstroke, dehydration and disease. That was a tough one to get through the media reality-distortion field, but the numbers have since been confirmed by Congress, the White House, Louisiana state officials and the relevant agencies themselves. If anything, I understated the size of the rescue effort. What I didn't understand was the critical role the Superdome headquarters played."

After Katrina I posted several comments that were based upon what I could read and hear from the news industry. The essay I point to above paints a much different story than I got then, and apparently it is more likely the accurate story of what happened after Katrina had passed New Orleans. Apparently there were significant rescue efforts that saved many, many people.

Perhaps I should take this as a reminder that the news industry, on the whole, is not a very good source for information that leads to true understanding.