Far too much news recently
First off, I'd like to say thanks to anyone who signed a petition to give the Corporation for Public Broadcasting its funding back. It sounds like, for the most part, the House listened to us on this one.
The big news for today is that the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, decided that cities are allowed to take people's property whenever they want, as long as it can be claimed to be for economic progress. Naturally, people must be given just compensation for the property, as mandated by the 5th Amendment. However, I personally think this was an awful ruling. As Justice O'Connor dissented, "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random... The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
In other news, some going back several days since I'm behind, the Republicans are still pushing Social Security, even though the general public seems to be quite against it. The UN is still not allowed to investigate the potential abuses at Guantanamo Bay. Rumsfeld is now advocating simply not ever having an exit strategy for Iraq, because it tells the terrorists how long they need to wait before we give up. Syria is still assassinating Lebanese people who oppose them, even though they claim to be out of the country. Speaking of which, the anti-Syrians got an overwhelming mandate in the recent election, so I suspect that some sort of ethnic (?) cleansing/guerilla war will ensue soon. The Lebanese are technologically decades behind the Syrians, so this should be interesting, though bloody.
OK... that seems like it's about it for at least the moment. There certainly is a lot of news this week!
The big news for today is that the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, decided that cities are allowed to take people's property whenever they want, as long as it can be claimed to be for economic progress. Naturally, people must be given just compensation for the property, as mandated by the 5th Amendment. However, I personally think this was an awful ruling. As Justice O'Connor dissented, "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random... The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
In other news, some going back several days since I'm behind, the Republicans are still pushing Social Security, even though the general public seems to be quite against it. The UN is still not allowed to investigate the potential abuses at Guantanamo Bay. Rumsfeld is now advocating simply not ever having an exit strategy for Iraq, because it tells the terrorists how long they need to wait before we give up. Syria is still assassinating Lebanese people who oppose them, even though they claim to be out of the country. Speaking of which, the anti-Syrians got an overwhelming mandate in the recent election, so I suspect that some sort of ethnic (?) cleansing/guerilla war will ensue soon. The Lebanese are technologically decades behind the Syrians, so this should be interesting, though bloody.
OK... that seems like it's about it for at least the moment. There certainly is a lot of news this week!