I was reading an article on Yahoo! News about the recent ruling by the Supreme Court on whether or not eminent domain can apply to private projects that a municipality is wanting to encourage. My first outrage is that they ruled that using eminent domain to seize property for non-public use is constitutional. The worse shock though is how the justices ruled.

It turns out I am on the same side as Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, and O’Connor (*shudder*). All of the more liberal justices ruled in favor of the pro-business side. I just really don’t understand. I understand that eminent domain is an important tool for municipalities to use when doing large-scale projects such as roads, schools, and public utilities. There are times that the location of the project is paramount and the ability to get voluntary sales for all affected residents is just unrealistic. But I don’t know why one private owner should be ousted from their property in favor of another private owner.

Considering how unethical republicans are turning out to be in real estate recently, has the left side of the court opened up a new form of gerrymandering where you deem blue areas of a district to be blighted or just a convenient place for economic development by their corporate cronies? ;)