From The Kitchen To The Supreme Court

This "How'd she get there from here?" moment, brought to you by ramblers anonymous.

Hello from flaky blogger central. Apologies and self-abasement to anyone who requires them for my random approach to posting since I returned from my summer hiatus. To be honest, I'm not particularly inspired to write much right now. I don't really have anything to say or share that isn't available from a plethora of other sources far more erudite and articulate than I, and it seems rather a waste of your time for me to spout off uninspired, when a Google search will lead you to a treasure trove of information, news and opinions on your topic of choice. My two cents seem overwhelmingly redundant these days, and not very shiny.


Further inhibiting my spouter's itch, I'm getting all domestic with the onset of fall. I've got sewing projects going, and autumn is cooking season here in Meowville (the only time of year that I actually have some personal inclination to camp out in the kitchen.) This foray into the wonderful world of cookery never lasts long--usually about as long as spring fever keeps me interested in gardening--a couple months, max. I'm not interested enough in food to keep up the culinary enthusiasm much past the first weeks of morning chill and changing leaves, but it's fun for a little while to fill the kitchen with warm, homey smells after the long heats of summer have ceased, and the very thought of turning on the oven doesn't oppress me. For the moment, the thought of homemade mac and cheese, with ham and sauteed onions, a side of green beans, and fresh-baked bread is all sorts of appealing. The big fall bonus is that I know I'll make Ked happy while the cooking bug lasts. I know, though, that it's only a matter of time (a very brief time at that) until nanobots win out over warm, buttery biscuits, and the opinion-spouter in me wins out over the dread of redundancy.


Another time-consumer in the land of Meow is some committee work Ked and I are doing at church. Our pastor is being called on to a different ministry, and now comes the task of finding someone to fill his sizable shoes. As part of the search committee, we have lots of papers and procedures to review and revise, so we've all got our editorial pens out as the committee wrestles with the job of searching for the right replacement. To be honest, I'm really not fond of committee work in general, and my personal motto is "I want no power of any kind," so I didn't sign up for this gig on a volunteer basis. My husband and I were asked to participate, and we prayerfully considered the choice before committing. So far, I'm glad we said yes. We will miss our current pastor dreadfully, but, despite myself, I'm finding it interesting work. The committee is formulating advertisements, questionnaires and interview questions, and discussing ways to determine who will be the right fit. The English major and blogger in me enjoys the writing tasks, and I'm fascinated by the group discussions of who we are as a church, what we want our church to be in future, and how to convey those ideas to prospective pastoral candidates.

Okay, that wraps up the State of the Meow Address for October 9, 2007. I had an awful lot to say for someone who said that they didn't have anything to say right now, didn't I? Apparently, my two cents are shinier than I thought, at least to myself anyway. Having rendered my long-winded, and possibly unnecessary excuses for bloggish flakery, I'm going to toss out another quick link for anyone who might be interested. I read an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that was quite informative and interesting. (I warned you that I was somehow going to get from the kitchen to the Supreme Court.) The recent release of Justice Thomas' memoirs has set tongues awagging throughout pundit-dom, and John Yoo, "a professor at the Law School of the University of California at Berkeley, and a former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Thomas," examines some of Thomas' opinions and history. If SCOTUS is your bag, have a look. It's worth your time.

Tragedy

I've been in a bit of a blog dilemma the last couple days. The shootings at Virginia Tech have been such a prominent story, and such a tragic waste of young human life and potential. I found myself pretty much unable to blog, because I didn't feel up to addressing the one thing that has the whole nation's attention (there are plenty of other people ready to weigh in anyway), but it seemed somehow frivolous and callous to babble on about nanotech, or the politics of global warming. I've also been pretty sick for the past week, from a bug my Darling suffered through first, and then lovingly passed on to me. I just don't really have the energy, physical or emotional, to jump into the fray about whether the shootings at the school prove the case for or against gun control. Don't get me wrong, I have my opinions, just no real need to articulate them at this point. I did find that this article from Glenn Reynolds summed things up well though, so I'm sending it your way, for what it's worth. Other than that, all I want to do is to express my sincere condolences for everybody who lost someone they loved.

I will add one more thing, on another topic. Some of you will know that the Supreme Court upheld the ban on partial birth abortion this morning. I have to say I'm glad. Readers of the Meow know that, while I am most definitely pro life, I understand that people on both sides of the abortion debate generally take their position from a belief that theirs is the right and compassionate position, not from any innate, evil, selfish desire for power, predilection for irresponsibility, or any of the other accusations that people fling at each other over this very emotional topic. Most people act from a true desire for our nation to make the right choice. At the same, how we think about children in the womb reflects who we are as a society, whatever our motives for the laws we make. Even as I was glad that the Justices have upheld the ban on what I believe is an unbelievably barbaric "procedure," I was saddened how calmly the AP writer talked about how doctors still have the option of "dismembering the fetus in the uterus." Dismemberment in the uterus. Wow. It hurts me right now to think about what that says about humanity. From the pro life point of view, that is just as tragic as the shootings at Virginia Tech.

Common Sense

The Supreme Court decided on October 20th that it was too close to the upcoming November elections to suspend a new Arizona law, requiring voters show ID in order to cast their ballots. Amanda Crawford, at The Arizona Republic, explains the situation:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that Arizona can go ahead with requiring voters to present a photo ID, starting with next month's general election, as part of the Proposition 200 that voters passed in 2004. The ruling overturns an Oct. 5 decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which put the voter ID rules on hold this election cycle.

The Supremes didn't decide on the constitutionality of the Arizona law, as that decision is still pending from a lower court, but did make the determination that the 9th Circuit made a "procedural error" in issuing an injunction delaying implementation of the Arizona rules, because the 9th didn't wait for an explanation from the lower court that had previously refused to grant the same injunction. Wow, all this wrangling over procedure, and none of it's even about whether it was okay for Arizona voters to make ID mandatory, but rather just about whether the appeals court should have overturned a lower court without listening first. And we wonder why things take so long to move through the courts. Did you notice that the Arizona proposition was passed in 2004?

Whatever the basis for the decision, the results are the same; if you want to cast a ballot in Arizona, you will have to provide ID this time around, regardless of whether the law will hold up to future constitutional scrutiny. Of course, it takes lawyers to figure out the legality of such things, but what blows me away is that there is any debate, among lower forms of men (i.e. non-lawyers), about the general common sense and decency of such a rule. I find it amazing that there is even a question about whether requiring identification is acceptable. Why wouldn't it be? Crawford sheds a little light on the issue, but the argument against ID seems pathetically weak on its face:

The new voter ID rules were passed, in part, to keep illegal immigrants and other non-citizens from voting. Opponents have argued that legal voters, especially the poor and the elderly, might also be disenfranchised because of the rules.

This argument seems to imply that the elderly and poor somehow manage not to need ID for any other aspect of their lives. I'm sorry, but that just doesn't hold water. The implication that the voting booth is the first place old people or poor people will ever need to prove they are who they say they are, or that they live where they say they do, is patently ridiculous. It would take far more effort and trouble to find a way to get by in the modern world without identification, than it would just to get the darned ID in the first place--unless, of course, these people never need to pay a bill, cash a paycheck (or welfare check/social security check), or even receive mail. All that's being required here is a photo ID, showing a current address, or two other forms of ID with the voter's name and current address, such as bills. What is unfair about that? Anybody living anywhere with an address has such kinds of proof by default.

Maybe some think that it's unfair to require an address at all, let alone proof. That's as silly as the concept that old people have managed to live a long life in America without the need for identification. Voters have to have an address just to register. Arizona has the right to keep voters from Massachusetts from voting in Phoenix, or transients-for-hire from bouncing wherever the highest bidder wants to take them to fill out weak party numbers. You can't tell me it's unfair to require an address--otherwise, what's to stop political parties from shipping in as many people as are needed to win an election in any given place, ferrying around warm bodies to reach the victory threshold? Good grief, by that standard, it's unreasonable for the citizens of Arizona even to expect its voters be American citizens!! Heck, ship 'em in from Mexico, if that will win the election for you!!

Could we get a little common sense here? I'm glad the Supreme Court decided the way it did in this case, and that, at least for now, Arizona can go ahead with such a reasonable voting standard, but it's appalling that such a decision was even required in the first place. I'm pretty disgusted that there are people who would tie up the courts trying to stop a rule that seems so basic and fair that you'd think this was one thing on which everyone could actually agree. I have to question the motives of the people who would buck this. I tend to give most people the benefit of the doubt--my husband says I'm far too naive--but the only real reason I can think of for trying to prevent the voter ID requirement is that the people who object want to cheat to system, and the new rule will make that harder. Call me skeptical, but the "disenfranchisement" argument is so weak that it must be a front for less honorable motives. That's just common sense.

The Perils Of Property Rights

Matt Labash, at The Weekly Standard has an eminent domain tale that reads like the Perils of Pauline, the silent film serial which had its theater debut in 1914. Wikipedia says:

The very popular silent Perils of Pauline was a cliffhanger serial shown in weekly installments featuring Pearl White as the title character, a perpetual damsel in distress. She was menaced by assorted villains, including pirates and Native Americans. At the end of each installment she was generally placed in a situation that looked sure to result in her imminent death. The start of the next episode showed how she was rescued or otherwise escaped the danger, only to face fresh peril again.

In an article titled "This Land Is Whose Land?," Labash tells the story of the Halpers, and their fight to keep the farm that had been owned by their family since 1922. It's a long, involved story, with cliffhangers and villains galore, and I'm sorry to tell you up front, does not have a happy ending, unless you like the idea of the town of Piscataway, New Jersey taking the operating family farm under pretext of saving it from developers.

Now, I have to say, that even if the Halpers were planning to sell to developers, it was their land, and I think they should have the right to dispose of it as they see fit, as long as they weren't breaking any laws. Let the city deny permits to the people who plan to put up condos, or strip malls, if it wants to, and can do it legally, but to take the Halpers' land on the chance they might sell seems disingenuous at best. If the family did decide to sell, why couldn't the city bid on it like other interested buyers? That would assure fair market value for the sale. However, that wasn't how the town went about the business (of course, it never is how towns do these things), and the pretext they used doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

Labash clarifies some of the problems with the town's position. One of the primary problems with the city's claimed desire to save the property from imminent development is that the family had already refused numerous lucrative offers from developers, because they wanted to keep farming their land, and keep farming it they did, right up until they were evicted. Another is that the city had no objection to the numerous other farms sold and developed in the area, just the Halpers'. Yet another difficulty, less to do with the town's motives than its methods, is that the town, as towns are wont to do, offered substantially less than the property's value, giving the Halpers no incentive to cooperate with its scheme to "rescue" the land.

The case went through the court system with many a Perils of Paulinesque twist and turn, including, by Labash's account, some of the famed government corruption for which New Jersey has gained notoriety, even to the point of not-so-veiled death threats. The situation cannot be laid entirely at the door of New Jersey corruption, however, since the battle for property rights took a devastating blow with the much-lamented Kelo decision of 2005, in which the Supreme Court voted 5-4 that eminent domain extended beyond the traditionally accepted standard.

The Court ruled that a community could not only take property (supposedly properly compensated) for such things as schools and roads, as was previously considered acceptable, but that a town could force the transfer of privately held land from one owner to another private owner, if the community would benefit economically from the sale--a much broader interpretation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In other words, if a town will get more tax revenues from having a shopping mall where your house is, it can force you to sell to a private developer. Of course, you need not fear that individuals might be acting out of personal greed. I'm sure bribery and hidden private investments never muddy the political waters. All city councils act in absolute purity. (Okay, sarcastic moment over.) Summing up--the ruling pretty much leaves the limits to government's ability to manipulate property rights in tatters.

The whole legal wrangle with Piscataway and the Halpers started well before the Kelo decision; it's been in the courts for years, but Kelo gives the town much more firm footing from which to make its grab. So, Piscataway has the power to claim eminent domain, and purporting to fear that the Halpers will one day sell their property, the town confiscates it, for far less than the property is worth. The Halpers rack up massive legal bills, and still lose the farm that's been in their family for over eighty years. The town can now do whatever it wants with the land, including sell it to the same developers that they fretted would buy it in the first place. According to Labash, all of the locals he talked to think this outcome is likely. The Halpers, meanwhile, are literally homeless.

The Halpers' story is just one of many Perils being played out across the country. Kelo has made a mess of property rights. Personally, I don't think this decision can stand for the long haul. Interesting thing about it, the decision actually managed to bridge the gap between right and left in American politics. When the decision came down, there was an outcry from the full spectrum of political positions. Many legal scholars think it's bad law, and hopefully the issue will be returning to a Supreme Court that's seen what a mess its decision has wrought (certainly not what the Framers of the Constitution intended), or at least to a Supreme Court that no longer has all five of the same Justices who made the decision confirming that Piscataway had the right to take the Halpers' farm. Haven't some of those Justices earned a nice long retirement? I think many homeowners would happily pay their taxes, knowing that they were helping the people who brought you Kelo not to be on the bench.