Yep, we should!
It is time to take religious institutions off the public dole and remove all their tax exemptions. You should not need any more justification than this but in addition there is no good reason why your and my taxes should be higher just so these folks don’t have to pay their fair share.
And if this means removing tax exemptions from non-profits so be it.
Via Pandagon and Norbizness.
bush will not appoint someone who will vote to overturn Roe V Wade.
“Why not?” you ask. Jack Balkin has this answer:
Bush must decide if he wants to overturn Roe or preserve the Republicans as the majority party. With Roe gone, the pro-choice movement will be energized and Republican politicians will have to state on the record whether they want to criminalize abortion. Women, libertarians, and moderates may bolt the party, destroying Bush’s winning coalition. Republicans may dislike Roe, but they may dislike losing elections even more.
On the other hand Balkin argues that the real plan is likely much more damaging to Roe supporters.
Precedent, precedent, precedent. Apparently because the idea that thieves and governments can point a gun and take whatever they want has been around for centuries makes it right:
You have to accept that government can take property. The power of eminent domain is ancient. What the Constitution requires that “just compensation” be paid to the owners and that the taking be for a “public use.” This case was about what counted as a “public use.”
Slavery is ancient. Human sacrifice is ancient. The idea that women should not have the vote is ancient. None of these practices is considered acceptable today in the United States.
The Constitution is a great document. It was a great step forward in the development of human societies. And, in the context of the Constitution and subsequent jurisprudence Kelo should not surprise anyone. That does not make Kelo just or consistent with the rule of law. Thank goodness that Kelo has generated outrage. There is some hope that we can look toward an even better Constituion in the future. One that clearly focuses on serving and protecting the individuals it should be meant to serve.
In one of the comments to her post Althouse asks:
All you conservatives: why aren’t you interested in federalism today?
and here argues:
If you generally support federalism, that means you like the idea of freeing state and local government to set their own policies in response to local ideas about how things ought to be done. You like decentralized decisionmaking.
I doubt I’d be considered a conservative so my answer may not count. What is broken here is that this is all about government. Where are our rights as individual human beings? Did we establish our governments to legitimize gangs of thieves or to protect the rights of individual human beings? I know which answer I prefer.
Furthermore, decentralized decision making is great but not when it is only governments who can make the decisions and not when a government entity can breach the rights of the very people it is meant to serve. Decentralized use of local knowledge leads to great results when individuals and freely formed associations of individuals exchange goods and services with others free of force and fraud.
I expect we will be seeing many more reports like this one:
Unjust and un-American indeed.
Most children learn the right lesson much better than the 5 who supported theft in Keno and, in fact, better than the founders:
The most important fact in all this childhood drama was simply that I wanted something that was not mine, and without the consent of the owner, nothing I could do would make that thing morally mine, and as long as my parents were my parents, nothing I could do would make it physically mine, either.
A constitution that respects individuals will not contain a takings clause but rather it is clear that it needs to be a blocking clause something along the line of
nor shall private property be taken for public use, without the consent of the owner.
The mafia might object but not an entity intended to protect its citizens.
I read the news today oh, boy!
Even prepared, though, I expect to become nauseous this weekend when I read Kale. It is another case that Micha can use in his paper equating the mafia and government. Lynn Kiesling quotes this from the AP:
As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue. …Yep, it’s all about more revenue. And, as Patri Friedman notes:
Now they