Senate Democrats are preparing to play to the cameras once more while raking Supreme Court nominee John Roberts over the coals, but the fight may not be as fierce as some Liberals want. There's bound to be some huffing and puffing during the confirmation hearings, as many of the radical groups controlling the Democrats demand they fight a battle that cannot be won. It ought to be interesting, as the Senate unanimously approved Roberts in 2003. Though Democrats will probably use the "we need more documents" dodge to avoid an outright filibuster, Roberts will surely be confirmed in the end. One almost has to feel sorry for the Democrats, pushed into this fight by their own base. It's just another indication that the once-great party is losing coherence as various special-interest groups try to use them to pursue their separate agendas.

The Left dislikes Roberts because he's Conservative. That goes without saying, as they seem to hate anyone to the ideological right of Michael Moore these days. The far Right, on the other hand, distrusts Roberts because he's a relative unknown. Ann Coulter wrote, "Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever." She's right about that -- after all, Justices Souter, Kennedy and O'Connor all turned out to be huge disappointments to the Republicans who nominated and voted for them. I'm not sure I'd place Roberts in the category of "stealth nominee," however. If nothing else, he's already been in DC for years, and is less likely to have his head turned by the political atmosphere.

No one will learn anything about Roberts' judicial philosophy from the hearings that can't be discovered in his previous decisions and history. Endless questions regarding how he might rule on variations of hypothetical abortion cases is likely to take up most of the Senate's time. Those who do the best job of looking tough and serious about protecting the "right" to kill unborn children as an easy means of post-coital birth control will make a few points with the far-Left base, however. That's what the power of the United States Supreme Court has come to mean to Liberals -- it's merely a way to keep in place bad court decisions that created or altered rights and laws without going through the Legislative and Executive branches. Anything that threatens to return control to the people or their elected representatives -- as mandated by the Constitution -- threatens them.

The only thing about a Supreme Court Justice's personal beliefs that should matter is how well he can put them aside to do his job. The Supreme Court was created to oversee the rulings of lower courts, to ensure that our rights, and the limits on government set forth in the Constitution, are not violated. Only the elected branches of the government are supposed to enact laws and change the Constitution when necessary. Instead, the Supreme Court has increasingly become the author of autocratic change, bypassing the Constitution they are supposed to uphold. President Bush promised to appoint Supreme Court Justices, should he have the opportunity, who would return to the principles enshrined in the Constitution. Hopefully, Judge Roberts is that kind of person.

We can learn quite a bit about John Roberts' judicial outlook by examining his "french fry ruling" of 2004. Liberals are already pointing to it as an example of how Roberts is "hostile" to civil rights, but the facts show a strict interpretation of the law without bias. (The "mainstream media," however, makes its bias clear. The Associated Press story on Roberts' nomination began, "Judge John G. Roberts' views on abortion may be murky, but there's no question where he stands on the issue of girls eating fries in a subway station.") A twelve-year-old was arrested for violating a ban on eating in the Metro, DC's subway. The girl was taken to a police station and released to her mother. Through her lawyer, the girl claimed her rights were violated, calling the law discriminatory. The lawsuit claimed she was unfairly treated because of her youth -- an adult, being responsible for him or herself, would have merely received a citation for the offense.

Judge Roberts could find no "right to eat french fries on the subway" in the Constitution. This was inexplicable and unforgivable to Liberals, as was his failure to find a Constitutional right for the young to be treated as adults under the law (except, of course, when being sentenced for murder). Writing the unanimous decision, he said that treating the young differently was allowable as long as there was a "rational basis" for doing so. In this case, the logical reason was that the girl had no parent or legal guardian present to take responsibility for her behavior. Roberts agreed with the lower court ruling that the arrest was legal, though he chided the transit police for overreacting, calling the policy that led to the arrest "foolish." Foolish or not, the transit police did have the legal right to enforce an eating ban on the Metro.

An activist judge would have simply overturned the eating ban. He might have discovered a Constitutional "right to eat in public places," using the same mysterious method by which federal judges so frequently divine hidden "rights." The fact that he did not do so -- despite his personal feelings, which he made clear to all -- speaks well of Judge Roberts, and fuels hope that he can be the kind of Justice we need on the Supreme Court.

Finally, the long-awaited battle on Capitol Hill is about to begin. If you thought the fights over President Bush's appellate court nominees were full of vitriolic mud-slinging, just wait until he names his choice to succeed Sandra Day O'Connor in his first Supreme Court nomination. As the old saying goes, "you ain't seen nothin' yet."

Frankly, I'm happy to see this Supreme Court change at last. They've made some of the worst decisions since the Dred Scott case of 1857, in which the Court returned a free man to and upheld slavery, while denying citizenship to black Americans. In the last few years alone, this court has granted extensive legal rights to terrorists and illegal enemy combatants during a war while cutting%20down%20our%20right%20to%20free%20speech%20before%20an%20election%20(under%20the%20McCain-Feingold%20Act)%20and%20discovering a new "right to gay sex" hidden somewhere in the Constitution. They have made random and confusing decisions regarding our right to religious freedom, and admitted to basing decisions on foreign court rulings rather than our own Constitution. They only cite foreign decisions that agree with their predetermined positions, of course, so that's alright. At least I hope we won't be following Muslim shar'ia laws -- which include stoning adulterers, including rape victims -- anytime soon. The worst decision yet made by this court was to change the meaning of "public use" in the 5th Amendment from "something used by the public" to "something that might generate more money for the government." This latest decision, Kelo v. New London, allows your local government to seize your home if Wal-Mart or Home Depot wants to build a new store on the spot... or even if someone merely wants to build a larger house that could bring in more tax revenue.

During his 2000 and 2004 campaigns, President Bush promised to fill any vacancies on the Supreme Court with justices who understand and accept their proper role in the government under the Constitution. Someone like Miguel Estrada, for example, whose 2001 nomination to the federal bench was blocked by Democrats until he finally withdrew his name from consideration over two years later, would make an excellent Supreme Court justice. Democrats saw Estrada as "especially dangerous" because "he is Latino," as one of several memos setting forth the Democrat strategy to block Bush's nominations from coming to a vote pointed out. Whether they're good judges who would follow the Constitution doesn't matter -- anyone nominated by President Bush is likely to suffer attacks on their character and intelligence. Remember Senator Ted Kennedy's characterisation of Bush's judicial nominees in 2003 as "Neanderthals?" That was mild compared to the upcoming fight.

Any move towards originalism fills Liberals with panic. Whenever elements of their agenda are put to a proper vote by the people, they fail. Gay "marriage," for example, has never been accepted by the people when put to a vote -- not even in bluer-than-blue states like Oregon. In fact, a gay "marriage" ban was on the ballot in Oregon and 10 other states for the 2004 election, and passed in every single one. Californians passed Proposition 22, a similar ban, by 61% to 39% in 2000. In Massachusetts, on the other hand, the legislature voted to put a gay "marriage" ban on the ballot in November 2006... and the MA Supreme Court promptly ruled that it must be legal until then. The only way Liberals can get this or any of their unpopular programs enshrined into law is to have them forced on the public by the judiciary. The problem is that the 10th Amendment to the Constitution specifically states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." The Supreme Court has repeatedly usurped the powers of the states and the people by finding hidden meanings in the Constitution whenever they want to create or curtail a law or right.

How could a branch of government created to protect our rights abuse their power with such impunity? This runaway judicial activism must be stopped. The fact that we even consider the ideology of a judicial nominee is an indication of how far we've allowed the Supreme Court to stray from its original role. The third, and intentionally weakest, branch of government was created to oversee the rulings of lower courts, and determine whether a decision violated a citizen's Constitutional rights. Why should a judge's personal beliefs matter, if they are working within the framework set down by the Founders? Now any five members of the Supreme Court can remove those rights and create new ones at will, with no real check on their power except advancing age. Their personal opinions have become important because "They the Justices," not "We the People," are in control.

They have lost the House, the Senate, the White House and a majority of governorships and state legislatures. Now the Liberals may lose control of the Supreme Court. But that's one of the main reasons the majority of Americans keep voting for more Conservative representation where they can find it -- to correct, if possible, these abuses of power. Bush's words about halting the actions of agenda-driven courts got some of the loudest applause during his campaign speeches. We're supposed to be a Republic, ruled by the people, not a group of lawyers carried away with their own sense of self-importance.

Once again, the Liberal media is trying to ramp up hysteria over the "outing" of Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame. The problem with their frenzy is that there's no substance to the charge, once all the angry flailing and faux outrage are done with.

Liberals are sacrificing what little credibility they have left with the American people in their desperate attempt to destroy the Bush administration at all costs. To that end, they have continually accused President Bush's advisor Karl Rove of giving Plame's name to the media in order to punish Wilson, after Wilson investigated reports of Saddam's attempt to buy Nigerian uranium and lied about his findings.

Wilson filed a disappointingly neutral report upon his return, but published an editorial stating unequivocally that the British-backed claim was absolutely untrue -- and that President Bush was using it anyway, to create a reason to attack Saddam. However, in his 2004 book, Wilson revealed that "It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as 'Baghdad Bob,' who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade -- an overture the official saw as a possible effort to buy uranium." So the uranium buy attempt actually did happen, and Wilson knew about it, but lied about it to try and prevent the liberation of Iraq for political purposes.

In the Liberal version of events, Karl Rove -- a consummately clever political operator by all accounts, except in this story -- revealed Plame's role as a covert agent for the CIA out of sheer vindictiveness. I don't know how that makes any sense, or what end it was supposed to achieve, but somehow it seems perfectly reasonable to Liberals that he would do this. Rove did, in fact, mention that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA to Time reporter Matt Cooper, but never indicated that she had once been a spy. Cooper was not the writer who published her identity -- that was columnist Robert Novak. The problem is that in order to prove Rove did anything illegal, an illegal act has to have taken place.

Knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent is illegal under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. If that's what Rove or anyone else did, he ought to be hung out for the crows. (I wonder whether Liberals will wail about such a violation of the Geneva Conventions, as they do when terrorists get too much or too little air conditioning?) In order for Rove (or whoever the source was) to have broken the law, he would have to know and reveal that Plame was a covert operative for the CIA. The problem is... she wasn't one anymore.

Apparently, Valerie Plame ceased to be a covert agent when her cover was blown years earlier. The CIA believed that Aldrich Ames (CIA agent/KGB spy/traitor) revealed her role, along with many other operatives, to the KGB before his arrest in 1994. Plame's former existence as a secret agent became little more than cocktail party chatter with which to thrill the uninitiated. Since her identity was not classified, not secret, and she had not been assigned to duty outside the US in the last five years, revealing her mundane desk job with the CIA was simply not a crime. Lots of people work for the CIA, after all.

What no one talks about is the reason Wilson was picked to go to Niger... the question that originally nagged Novak. In fact, whoever did uncover Plame's involvement in her husband's selection did the country a favor. Plame wanted Wilson to investigate the British claim because of his vocal antipathy to President Bush and his staunch opposition to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. He was sent not to gather evidence and form a conclusion, but because his conclusion was foreordained. Whoever sent him was attempting to exert an undue influence over America's foreign policy by sending someone who would ignore evidence contrary to his opinion. Do we really want former secret agents playing political games to determine the outcomes of investigations before they're even begun? Investigations the outcomes of which may determine the nation's course in wartime?

Once again, Liberals and their pet Democrats have chosen the wrong hill to die on. While ignoring the real problem we narrowly avoided, they try to whip us into an attack on someone who, even if their accusations are true, commited no crime.

The following email arrived in response to my 7 July 2005 blog entry, London and the Long War, which was reprinted in American Daily. After responding to it, I thought I should post his letter here, along with my reply.

Have just read your article and would like to thank you for your support and kind words. I cannot also begin to tell you how much George Galloway is hated here in the UK (by anybody with a sense of decency), but sadly people like him are all too prevalent in this land. That this creature Galloway could not even wait a decent time (if there is such a thing) to try to make political capital out of the blood of innocent victims and families makes it even more despicable. He did it on the day, when people are dead or dying, when families don`t still know whether their loved ones are coming home that evening!!! How low can he go??

Sadly I also blame our government for a weak, ineffective immigration policy that has allowed the country to become awash with so-called "asylum seekers" and free-loaders. And a human rights policy that means "we" do nothing but give succour to suspected terrorists and murderers. If you speak out here about this, you are a racist. Well, look at what happens when you have such policies Mr Blair. It`s why when I see him bleating on TV, I want to shout at him and tell him and his bleeding-heart government to wake up to the real world.

I am a Londoner, born and bred, work there and so shared in all the grief, anger and courage that was displayed in our city on Thursday. One of my work colleagues was on one of the tube trains that was bombed. He took shrapnel wounds, but is, thankfully, alive. But he has only just started his working life. Poor kid. But trust me we will not be cowed from going about our business as usual, and will never let these bastards win. Because the moment that I or any of my countrymen refuse to leave our homes to travel to our daily business, then this scum HAVE won.

Thank you for your support, and for the support of your countrymen and women. It is truly comforting to know who our true friends are. But we have always known that.

Thanks for writing; I know it's a difficult time for all of you. Oddly enough, the terrorists followed the Nazi playbook exactly, and seem to have achieved the same result. Bombing Guernica resulted in Spanish capitulation (to Franco), but bombing London, hoping for a similar loss of nerve, resulted in resolute opposition. The barbaric scum of the Earth never learn... lucky for us.
 
I see what's happening in Great Britain as a close analogue of what happened here in America after 9/11 -- most will band together while some use the tragedy for personal or political gain. What George Galloway said was utterly disgusting, and his timing inhumanly cruel. We have more than our share of that sort here, and all their poison came out during the recent election season, even to using the number of our dead soldiers to demand we run away and hide. Galloway isn't too far from our John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and so on ad nauseum.
 
After nearly four years, some people seem to have forgotten what happened, but most Americans have the right attitude about this war: a steely determination to see it through. President Bush truly speaks for us in this regard. For some of us, it's easy to remember -- every time I go to NYC, I see that broken skyline and get angry as hell all over again. Debra Burlingame, sister to one of the 9/11 pilots, said it best. She said she was once asked whether she missed the easy solidarity of the days following 9/11. "No," she said, "I miss the anger." There's nothing wrong with being angry over these horrible atrocities the terrorists are visiting upon the innocent, and don't let any crystal-wearing, tree-hugging, dope-smoking New Age "citizen of the world" wanna-be hippie tell you differently.
 
President Bush's open border policies concern us greatly, as Mr. Blair's concern you. In addition to the illegal immigrants that are a drain on our economy, we know that terrorists are coming in from Mexico. They're all just walking through holes in the fence, but neither Republicans nor Democrats are inclined to do anything about it. But at least Bush and Blair are aggressively pursuing the leaders of these murderous scum in their hidey-holes, and pushing a policy of democritisation and freedom in the Middle East to take care of the frustration and hopelessness that give rise to terrorism. It's our best shot, I think, in the long term.
 
They can't win, as long as we refuse to let them. It's going to be hard and tough, and they will murder as many innocents as they can in an effort to  frighten and dishearten us. But in the end, they will lose.

Once again, the barbarians who are our enemies in the War on Terror have struck a blow against the innocent. This time, they have exploded multiple bombs in London, in three Tube (subway) stations as well as a passenger bus. Dozens of innocent people are dead and as many as a thousand may be wounded. How many more innocents must suffer at the hands of these inhuman creatures in the shape of men before the hard-core anti-war Liberals among us stop giving them cover and support?

Almost immediately, seemingly before the echoes of the blasts even stopped, the recriminations began -- not against the sadistic monsters who target innocent men, women and children for death, but against those world leaders who are trying to stop them, especially President Bush and PM Tony Blair. Leftists like the despicable George Galloway, who was expelled from Britain's Labour party for his comments about the Iraq war, were at their terrorist-defending best. Galloway, who apparently received millions of dollars in oil vouchers from Saddam for his opposition to Saddam's overthrow, stated that "Londoners have now paid the price" for Britain backing America in the War on Terror. Well, London has paid the price for standing up to evil before.

Galloway suggested that retreating from Iraq immediately might appease the terrorists, echoing a persistent defeatist theme coming from the Left. Somehow, the Liberals have deluded themselves into thinking that there was no such thing as terrorism before President Bush and the other Coalition leaders removed one of the biggest terror supporters in the Middle East from power. They have themselves convinced that if America runs away from them, the terrorists will simply leave us alone. But they can't convince those of us who remember 9/11 so easily, no matter how hard they try to pretend that it didn't happen, or didn't matter.

Since 9/11, the US and our allies have finally responded to the menace of al-Qaeda and other terror groups. Al-Qaeda's main base in Afghanistan was destroyed, and the Taliban as well as Saddam Hussein's regime have been replaced with growing democracies. Democracy and freedom are the only cures for terrorism, and the terrorists know it. The fight in Iraq, according to a Congressional study, is the "central battle" for al-Qaeda. That's why they're pouring so much of their resources and manpower into Iraq, trying to prevent the fledgling democracy from taking root there. Meanwhile, the "useful idiots" (Stalin's term for his unwitting Western supporters) on the Left have spent the last three years fighting al-Qaeda's public relations war for them, thinking only of their own political gain.

Our enemies haven't been killing only Iraqis and Americans; al-Qaeda is responsible for the Bali nightclub bombing in 2002, the Istanbul mosque and Casablanca bombings of 2003 and the Madrid train bombing of 2004. The so-called "Chechen separatists" responsible for the Russian plane crashes and school massacre of 2004 were, outside of the "mainstream" media's euphemism fetish, Islamic terrorists linked to al-Qaeda. It seems that not even trying to stop the invasion of Iraq was protection against terrorist attacks, so the Liberal insistence that abandoning Iraq will stop terrorism is ludicrous. Al-Qaeda's goal is to bring the entire world under the sway of their radical brand of Islam, and refusing to fight them won't stop them from fighting you.

It has always been a matter of civilisation versus the barbarians who care nothing for the lives of innocents, who fight to destroy, not expand, civilisation. Our various ancestors fought pirates, Mongols, Huns, and Vikings. The reference to "the shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Hymn refers to the war against the Barbary pirates of North Africa two centuries ago. The Spanish fought the tide of Muslim invasion for centuries, a millennium ago. The Romans fought the Visigoths and Ostrogoths before Rome fell. Even the Sumerians repeatedly fought off those who tried to destroy their civilisation. The fight against Islamofascism is merely the current incarnation of the long war. Now we fight terrorists around the world, and the latest battleground is London.

The British have never been a people liable to meekly surrender to threats. They didn't bow humbly to the Vikings, the French, the Spanish, the Germans or even Irish terrorists, and they don't appear to be faltering now. The British people face the choice whether to band together with us -- as Tony Blair has done -- to hunt and fight the enemy wherever they hide, or fight each other and let the enemy win. According to all reports, the British are coming together exactly as we Americans did after 9/11, and we must stand by them as they did us. We can only win this war together.

"Honor to the Soldier, and Sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country's cause. Honor also to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field, and serves, as he best can, the same cause -- honor to him, only less than to him who braves, for the common good, the storms of heaven and the storms of battle."
- Abraham Lincoln, 1863

Hat tip to ALa of Blonde Sagacity

Well, the much-ballyhooed Live 8 concert has come and gone, and suddenly there's no more poverty in Africa, right? What was the point of all that, anyway? Turns out it was the same Liberal answer to everything: let's throw someone else's money at the problem! And it'll do just as much good as the original Live Aid concert in 1985: namely, none.

The purpose of holding the simultaneous concerts around the world, besides giving a shot in the arm to the careers of several dozen aging pop stars, was to "raise awareness" of poverty in Africa. And what are we to do with all this newfound awareness? Did the concerts actually raise any money? No. Did all that concentrated brainpower come up with a solution to world hunger (besides "dude, if the people are hungry, they should order a pizza")? No. Did they at least tell those who might want to make a donation to some worthy charity where to send the money? No. So what was the point?

In fact, the concert cost uncounted millions of dollars, between posh hotel rooms for the pampered performers and their entourages to limousines for ferrying them around to the $12,000 "goodie bags" each singer received. Why couldn't that money have been used to benefit the poor? The real point of this event was convincing you to tell the government that they need to take more of your weekly paycheck and send it to the corrupt leaders of African nations. This will make you feel good, apparently more so than if you simply contributed money on your own to private organisations that might actually help the people there. But taking money from its own people at gunpoint to give to people in other countries should not be the business of a democratic goverment. As President Bush said, when asked about American aid, "Aid is more than gifts from governments. It is also individual contributions. We contribute billions of dollars each year."

Yes, there are a lot of poor people in Africa, and they do need help -- real help, not temporary measures. The poor in Africa are really poor, unlike many of our house-owning, car-owning, air conditioner owning, cable tv-owning "poor" in this country. Those people in Africa really have evil dictators crushing their economy, destroying their rights and killing them, unlike the reedy Liberal exaggerations about such things we get to hear in America. That's why the poor in Africa require a real solution, not some feel-good concert in which a bunch of pampered poseurs posture on a stage without doing a single thing to actually alleviate the problem.

Pictures of starving Ethiopians were flashed on giant screens during the concert to encourage guilt, which these performers were using to convince people to urge their governments to send money instead of sending it themselves. What good will that do for the actual hungry people? Maybe some government agencies will send food. Everyone gets to feel good about that, for a short while. If they actually get hold of it (remember the warehouses full of rotting food and expired medicine in Iraq?), the people will eat the food and be hungry again the next day. Hey, maybe we can have another concert!

Maybe the governments of industrial nations will give money to the corrupt governments of those African nations. "Here, this is for your poor." "Gee, thanks! They could use some more rifles and bombs, I think." Maybe the leaders of the industrial nations attending the G-8 conference will forgive the debts racked up like high scores on a pinball machine by the corrupt politicians and petty warlords that run those poor nations. That will enable them to begin borrowing to pay for their Mercedes limos, weapons stockpiles and palaces all over again. Throwing money at the problem will never help, never!

As long as those nations have no infrastructure, no economic development and no free markets, there will be no jobs at which the poor can earn money to feed themselves. ("What?" I can hear the Liberals saying. "Asking people to work for a living? How mean!") Organisations like USAID (US Agency for International Development) try to improve conditions in Africa, but their efforts are hampered by the local governments. As long as those nations are controlled by totalitarian dictators and self-serving corrupt politicians, there can be no meaningful improvement in the lives of their people. The answer is not to simply send money and food -- that's a narcissistic feel-good band-aid kind of answer. The only realistic answer is to push for economic freedom and democratic change in those countries, and help the people build a real, sustainable economy. "Give a man a fish," the old saying goes, "and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life."

Try telling that to some of these self-indulgent, egotistical singers that appeared at Live 8, though, or most of the fans in the audience, and their eyes just glaze over. "But we're sending good wishes, and asking for the government to send money; that's what's really going to help," most would say. Roughly translated, that means, "we think the government should decide where to spend our money -- yours, too." It makes a thinking man want to scream in frustration. If the people who performed at the concerts simply donated, say, 10% of their personal income -- which they get from us in the first place -- to fund some serious economic development projects, there would be no need for them to demand that the government take more of our money to send. That, however, wouldn't give them a chance to strut in the spotlight.

The only poor beneficiaries of the concerts were the waste disposal crews, who (I have heard) received double overtime pay to clean up the unbelievable mess in Philadelphia. At least Live 8 wasn't a total waste.

UPDATE: In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, Kenyan economist James Shikwati explains how aid pouring into Africa from industrialised nations keeps the Africans in poverty, begging, "For God's sake, please just stop!" Food aid puts farmers out of business. Clothing puts tailors and textile workers out of business. Malaria is a worse problem than AIDS, but "There's nothing else that can generate as much aid money as shocking figures on AIDS. AIDS is a political disease here, and we should be very skeptical." Shikwati confirms everything we've been saying all along. "No one in the low-wage world of Africa can be cost-efficient enough to keep pace with donated products."

Hat tip to Betsy Newmark of Betsy's Page for the Spiegel interview.

Own a nice home in a good area? Don't bother to settle in, if a corporation or developer might want to build on your land. The Supreme Court declared that it's perfectly alright for your local government to take your property away and give it to someone they feel can generate more tax dollars or jobs from the site, in a stunning blow to individual rights last week. Better start schmoozing with your local politicians, if you want to keep your home. They have the power to take it away from you at any time.

The concept of "eminent domain" has been with us from the start, limited by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which states: "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." The guaranteed right to own a piece of land was the prime reason many immigrants came to America in the first place, fleeing countries where all land was seen as belonging to the government. In America, the government could only take your land for public use... until now.

What is "public use?" Obviously, something owned and used by the public, like parks, roads, sidewalks and bridges. Public buildings, perhaps, like libraries, schools or courtrooms. "Public use" meant exactly that. Over the years, however, it's become more common to use eminent domain to take some property for less obviously-public usage, transferring it to private owners. Government officials have transferred abandoned or disused private property, mostly in inner cities, to developers with plans to rebuild and revitalise the area... developers who, no doubt, contributed to the election campaigns of those same local officials in many cases. Corrupt local officials have even gotten occupied and useful property condemned so it could be bought cheaply, on occasion. In most cases, tax revenues from those formerly "blighted" properties have increased -- how many tax dollars does an abandoned warehouse generate, anyway? -- and new jobs often created as well. So the purpose of eminent domain has slowly expanded from public USE to public BENEFIT, although that's not what the Constitution says. But no one cared about that -- corporations were making money, government was making money, and people were finding jobs.

All was right with the world... until some began to wonder why only blighted inner-city areas could be turned over to corporations for improvement. Why not more... desirable property? If increasing the tax revenue from a piece of land is a good thing, then why limit it to abandoned or disused land in areas no one wanted? So the city of New London, CT decided to turn over some 90 acres of prime waterfront property to private developers, who plan to build office complexes, upscale housing, and a marina on the site.

Unfortunately, 15 homes on part of that property belonged to people who didn't want to sell, for one reason or another. They disputed the use of eminent domain to force them to sell to a private corporation. So the homeowners took the case to court, represented at the Federal level by the Institute for Justice (a Libertarian civil liberties group). First the Connecticut Supreme Court, then the US Supreme court ruled that the mere possibility of generating higher tax revenues or jobs qualifies as "public use" under eminent domain, allowing local governments to forcibly transfer property from one private owner to another. The old saying, "a man's home is his castle" no longer applies in America. As in the countries our forefathers came here to escape, the government can dispose of "your" property as it sees fit.

The interesting twist on this case is how the US Supreme Court justices voted. The Liberals on the court -- John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, along with "wild card" Anthony Kennedy -- all voted in favor of government seizure of private property for transfer to another private owner. The Conservatives -- William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, joined by perennial swing-voter Sandra Day O'Connor this time -- voted against the action. In her dissent, Justice O'Connor wrote, "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms." She also wrote, "As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result." Doesn't this decision show the Liberals squarely on the side of Big Government and greedy corporations against the "little people" trying to protect their homes? The mask slips from time to time.

All is not lost, however. Justice David Souter owns a home in the town of Weare, New Hampshire, as it happens. A company called Freestar Media, LLC has filed a bid with the local Board of Selectmen to seize that particular property and turn it into a revenue- and job-generating hotel. In a letter to the Code Enforcement Officer or Weare, Logan Darrow Clements affirms: "The justification for such an eminent domain action is that our hotel will better serve the public interest as it will bring in economic development and higher tax revenue to Weare." If three of the five selectmen agree, the Lost Liberty Hotel (featuring the Just Desserts Cafe and a permanent museum to the loss of freedom in America) will be built on the site of Souter's home. And I'll be packing my bags to visit the town of Weare. I hope the hotel has an indoor pool. And, of course, internet access.

To whom can Souter appeal to prevent the loss of his own home to the eminent domain decision he himself made? Perhaps the Protection of Homes, Small Businesses, and Private Property Act quickly introduced by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) will help him retain his property. And if not... exactly where do the other Justices who voted with him live, again?

The US House of Representatives has passed a proposed Constitutional amendment that will prohibit one of the favorite activities of the hate-America crowd: trashing the American flag. The proposed amendment reads, "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." If the measure passes the Senate by a two-thirds vote, then 38 states (3/4) must ratify it within seven years.

Until 1989, 48 states already had laws prohibiting the desecration of our national symbol. There was also a Federal law to the same effect passed in 1968. All of that was thrown out by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision saying that burning the flag is a kind of "free speech," thus protected by the First Amendment. The only way to overturn a Supreme Court decision is to amend the Constitution itself, and that may finally happen after several attempts. But is it really necessary?

Desecrating the most widely-recognised symbol of America, in my opinion, is not any kind of speech at all. The Supreme Court was wrong. It's the opposite: the end of speech, the end of debate, the end of principled opposition. Those who do so make it clear that there can be no compromise or argument with them. Once you think that burning or besmirching an American flag will make your point, your argument is already lost. If you can't express your point of view in words, it probably isn't worth consideration anyway. Anyone who burns an American flag is, in effect, symbolically setting fire to America. They're willing to seek our destruction in order to get their way. Trashing the American flag, the one symbol all Americans can claim as their own, is not merely unpatriotic... it's anti-patriotic.

Let them burn the American flag if they want to... just allow real Americans to defend it appropriately. They can make no clearer statement to the effect that they hate America and everything it stands for than that. Our flag, and our country, have been through a lot worse than having some hemp-smoking hippies declare their everlasting hatred of us. We should make it clear to them, in turn, that disrespecting the American flag will automatically lose the support of all true Americans for whatever their lost cause is. Causing harm to the flag only hurts them, not America.

There's no reason to change the Constitution to protect the flag. What we really need is a federal law giving Americans the right to rescue a flag from desecration by any means necessary, short of causing death or permanent injury. I wouldn't mind seeing a bunch of America-bashers interrupted in their flag burning by a gushing firehose or a string of firecrackers going off, would you?

So Ed Klein comes out with a torrid Hillary-bashing book, chock full of personal anecdotes, juicy gossip and accusations, pretty much guaranteed to destroy Hillary Clinton's carefully-crafted political persona. Don't expect to see me dancing in the streets waving a copy, though. I'm not buying it -- literally or figuratively. Something about it just smells fishy.

Many of the accusations in The Truth About Hillary seem too deeply personal to be called anything but personal destruction: she's a lesbian, Chelsea was conceived by rape, and so on. It's distasteful tabloid fodder at best, even if it all turns out to be true. As much as I don't want Hillary Clinton holding any sort of office whatsoever, I don't believe ripping her personal life apart in public is the way to defeat her. I'll continue to base my opposition on her Marxist background and destructive political agenda, thanks.

If nothing else, we've seen how personal attacks often backfire on the attackers, as happened when Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for Governor of California. When opponents exposed him as having groped women on movie sets, the backlash actually increased his support. The constant negative attacks on President Bush probably didn't help John Kerry's 2004 Presidential campaign as much as the George Soros/MoveOn.org "BushisHitlerandhelookslikeachimp!" crowd hoped, if at all. But exposing someone as a victim of rape? That's incredibly low, in my opinion, even if -- especially if -- the story's true. And what has Chelsea done to merit that sort of cruel attention? If we believed that using Dick Cheney's daughter to attack him was wrong, then we have to believe the same applies to Chelsea Clinton.