A clueless New Republic editorial on Kelo

I've subscribed to TNR for most of the last twenty-five years. They are a liberal opinion but not necessarily knee jerk in their views. They have endorsed John Anderson for President, endorsed oil drilling in Anwar just to name a few.

Yesterday I received the most recent issue of TNR. The main feature or editorial was titled Breyer Restraint. Unfortunately you must subscribe to the magazine to view it. I've excerpted the relevant part below.

It's easy to sympathize with those who instinctively question the harsh result in the property rights case, Kelo v. New London. A 5-4 majority allowed the New London City Council to use eminent domain--a government's right to seize property in its jurisdiction so long as it provides just compensation--to take nine homes from their owners in order to develop office buildings to complement a nearby pharmaceutical research facility that the city believes will create jobs. Many citizens, understandably, view this outcome as unfair. Nevertheless, defenders of judicial restraint, particularly liberals, should applaud the Court's refusal to second-guess the economic judgments of city and state legislatures. Had the Court come out the other way, as libertarian supporters of the so-called Constitution in Exile urged it to do, the decision would have unleashed a torrent of judicial activism that might have called into question everything from local zoning ordinances to environmental laws.

The appropriate response to the unfairness inherent in individual cases involving eminent domain is political, not judicial. This week, Senator John Cornyn of Texas introduced the Protection of Homes, Small Businesses, and Private Property Act of 2005, which would prohibit any government--state, local, or federal--that accepts federal funds for a development project from using eminent domain to promote economic growth. A bill like this might help to discourage eminent domain abuse--that is, condemnation of private homes for private profit--without asking judges to second-guess the economic decisions of legislators, a task for which they are notoriously ill-equipped.

Kelo is a sign of judicial restraint? They over rode a clause of the constitution that says public use. How is taking the property of those nine people in New London and giving it to a corporation public use? Only a group of twenty-five-year-olds barely out of Journalism school could call this judicial restraint. That's was the average age of the editors of TNR during the Stephen Glass affair.

And how would have upholding that clause affect zoning laws? Tell me TNR. Zoning a land is saying how it can be used, NOT taking it away from its owners.

And how are judges not better trained than our legislators to make this decision? Aren't you forgetting the influence of money and or corruption in the legislative process to get the results a corporation or group want? TNR's editors live in some dream world, just look at their endorsement of John Kerry last year. Their boss Martin Peretz admitted in a TNR column a week after the 2004 election that a Kerry Presidency would most likely have been bad if not disastorous.

Maybe clueless should be added to the magazine's masthead.