mb,

Sounds like the definition of a boat (yacht) to me....

A hole in the water, surrounded by (whatever), into which one throws money.

Typical lib program.

Run, you northerners....but not to Florida, please.  Would you be so kind as to stop at the Georgia border?  They have low taxes, there, too.

I'll venture an opinion. Democrats tend to appoint their intellectual "stars" like Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the court and simply trust them to go be intellectual lefties on the court, which is quite effective. Republicans see that their intellectual legal stars are (sorry, folks, it's just true, so I'm not braggin' in this case) often independent and inconveniently-libertarian types like Kozinski or Posner. Because of that L-word & political worries a Justice might question certain aspects of big government which Republicans consider good, Republican Presidents tend to gravitate when possible away from obvious intellect (despite campaign promises to the contrary) and towards bland political insiders like Harriet Myers. I'm sorry, but she doesn't hold a candle to AK or Posner intellectually, and that's just an obviousity if you go look at their writing in all three cases. Roberts, while smarter than Myers and equally-bland (to damn him with faint praise..) isn't much brighter, and isn't on the level of some of the left, IMO. Years of this kind of situation, combined with the pro-big government influences of just living inside the DC beltway and getting taken on prepaid foreign junkets yearly (you thought congresscritters were the only ones??) lead slowly to a natural erosion of belief in individual liberty & property rights. Thus Kelo. And my fears about Wilkie...
JMR

In response to the post about why the Court decided Kelo the way it did I have a couple comments. I was actually discussing this over the past weekend with a law school classmate of mine before I even saw this thread. At points our discussion got, shall we say, lively. I think the decision was dead wrong. She thinks otherwise.

Anyway, the thing she kept bringing up was that this was part of a comprehensive plan. The city had been very careful about how it would develop the area. Of course, we now know that their plan hasn't been much of a help. I don't know if she would change her position based on the fact that there has still been no development in the area after almost two years. To her it made no difference that at the end of the day, private individuals lost their homes. She repeatedly said that these homeowners should have banded together to negotiate a better price for themselves. I don't think that price was really the issue, but at that point I didn't have the facts to back it up. Furthermore, I don't think that a comprehensive plan cures a violation of Constitutional rights. It certainly doesn't in the context of search and seizure. Why should a comprehensive plan make any difference in this case?

The other basis for her support of the decision is much more fundamental and I think it is characteristic of people that share her views. She characterizes herself as an independent-- I would place her left of center, if not an all out liberal. Anyway, she simply does not agree that it's not the government's job to fix all of society's perceived ills. We got into a discussion of what causes poverty and how able people are to get out of poverty and "generational poverty," but I don't think that what I was trying to say really sunk in. To her, and, I think, most who support the Kelo decision, government action is a cure-all. She genuinely believes that some people are incapable of getting themselves out of poverty (citing her personal experiences through a trip to New Orleans after Katrina). When I brought up people like Andrew Carnegie and Booker T. Washington who started with nothing, she did say that it's not impossible to get out of poverty, but I don't think she was willing to concede that anyone can get out of poverty if they put in the effort that's necessary.

I think that's the root of Kelo and other decision like it: a fundamental disagreement about the purpose of government. Those who think the government should provide for people, have no problem with it because they genuinely believe people will be helped. Those who don't believe that the government is really capable of providing for people (of which I am one) see the decision for what it really is: a slippery slope for the SCOTUS to do away with private property. Based on the few conversations I've had with people regarding Kelo, those are the reasons I think people support it.