print“The Con-stitution And The Power To Confiscate” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:
Bolstered by the U S. Forest Service, Summit County authorities, in Colo., are scheming on seizing 10 acres of verdant land that belongs to Andy and Ceil Barrie.
The parcel of land is situated within the White River National Forest. The authorities claim the couple’s use of a motorized vehicle on the preserved land risks “damaging the alpine tundra and streams and the habitat of the endangered lynx.”
Since it is the nature of government to “turn a wormhole into a loophole,” the solution sought by the county’s commissioners and attorney general is to confiscate private property under the guise of “open-space” conservation.
On their side—and against the right of private property—the knaves of this Colorado county have a thing even more formidable than the U S. Forest Service: the U. S. Constitution.
Or, dare I say the Con-stitution?
Any discussion about the plight of the Barrie couple must be prefaced by noting the following:
There is no dispute as to the right of government grandees to grab private property.
What remains of some dispute is whether the county has exceeded its authority to steal. For the Constitution gives authorities the right to seize private property for the “common good—that catch-all constitutional concept. Has not the General Welfare Clause, in Article I, authorized all three branches of colluding quislings to do just about anything which in their judgment will tend to provide for the general welfare?
The term for state-sanctioned theft of private property is “eminent domain.” A section of The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution reads as follows: “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
Understand: Compensating the individual if and when government confiscates his land for the ostensible greater good: that is not what’s so wicked here. Rather, it is that implicit in the Bill-of-Rights clause mandating “just compensation” is the acknowledgement that government has the right to confiscate private property, in the first place. …
Read on. The complete column is “The Con-stitution And The Power To Confiscate,” now on WND.
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