I’m not usually given to making such dramatic suggestions but I think it’s warranted in this case.

Bart Didden wanted to put a CVS pharmacy on his property in Port Chester, N.Y. He even obtained approvals from the local planning board.

But because a portion of the CVS site was in a blighted redevelopment zone, Mr. Didden was told that planning board approval wasn’t enough. He’d have to reach an understanding with a private company that had been selected by Port Chester officials to control all construction inside the renewal zone.

The developer, Gregg Wasser of G&S Port Chester, told Didden he’d have to pay $800,000 or give G&S a 50 percent stake in the CVS business. If Didden refused, Mr. Wasser said, he would have Port Chester condemn and seize his property and instead of a CVS he’d put a Walgreen’s drugstore on the site.

Let’s hope that the Supremes get it right this time. Let’s hope that they don’t have 5 liberal idiots rule like they did in Kelo v. New London. I’d doubt that the Founding Fathers would’ve thought that the taking of land for a developer’s profit is a legitimate use of eminent domain laws.

This also speaks volumes about the impact a liberal ‘make-it-up-as-you-go’ jurist can have on people.

Technorati Tags: SCOTUS, Eminent Domain, Senate Judiciary Committee], Constitution

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Baptist Press online is reporting that Long Beach is involved in more eminent domain abuse. Here’s the key parts of the article:

City leaders in Long Beach, Calif., have classified the Filipino Baptist Fellowship’s building as a blighted area and are forcing the congregation out in order to make way for condominiums.

When Kelo was announced last summer, I predicted that it was only a matter of time until eminent domain was used to take churches. One of the things cited in the Kelo opinion is this gem: “The city has carefully formulated a development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including, but not limited to, new jobs and increased tax revenue.”

That’s absurd. That definition puts every church at the mercy of city planners.

John Eastman, director of The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence who is defending the church, said the case, the first involving a Baptist church, may play a key role in reversing the high court’s eminent domain decision. “In my view, the Supreme Court made a terrible mistake in Kelo, and I think they know that and they’re going to be looking for a way to extricate [themselves] from that case,” Eastman told Baptist Press. “It seems to me that the best challenge to the principle of that case is a church case, where there is no economic output, so any economic development could then be utilized to take out the church under the Kelo theory. “That’s preposterous, so I think getting a church case up there in very short order may get them to rethink Kelo,” Eastman said.

Eastman is also a ConLaw professor at Chapman College and a regular visitor on the Hugh Hewitt show. Eastman’s analyses of various court rulings have been precise, coherent and hard to argue against. I suspect that Eastman is right on the money with his analysis that “getting a church case up there in very short order may get them to rethink Kelo…” I think the Roberts Court would love to correct this mistake.

Cross-post at LetFreedomRing