24 June 2005

What Has Happened to America??

Seriously. I'm asking.

First, we invade a country that posed no serious threat to us, and which had nothing to do with 9/11 (and we knew that at the time -- later, we discovered they didn't even have anything to throw at us in the first place!). It is an illegal, immoral war, and our leaders (including the President, who should be impeached) lied to us.

Then we discover that we are torturing and murdering our prisoners in a gulag-like system of secret prisons all over the world -- hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, committing unspeakable atrocities against mostly innocent victims, and killing hundreds of them without trial or any proof of guilt.

Now the Supreme Court has decided that if your local government (or well-connected developer) can think of something to do with your property that makes them more tax revenue, they can force you to sell (for current market value) or be evicted. This decision (which was supported by both "liberals" and "conservatives" on the SCOTUS, btw, though it was opposed beautifully by Sandra Day O'Connor, who really earned her stripes in her dissent) basically rewrites the Fifth Amendment and redlines out the words "for public use." Nobody -- apart from the rich and/or well-connected -- is safe. Private property, as a concept, is dead. We are all renters.

America has well and truly gone mad.

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