From Reason Online:
You can count on your constitutional due process rights if you are a thief, a rapist, or a murderer. But if you’re accused of committing a crime against the environment, you may as well tear up the Constitution and bury it in a landfill”or better yet, send it for recycling.
That, at least, is the message of the legal tactics that the government has employed in its two-decade-long crusade against John Rapanos, a Michigan developer. Rapanos’ crime? He shifted sand from one part of his property to another without a wetland permit, a felony under the Clean Water Act.
Rapanos’ legal saga, which has had more twists and turns than a snail darter in heat, came closer to its dénouement earlier this month when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal in the civil case against him. (The Supreme Court declined to hear the companion criminal case two years ago.) If Rapanos loses, he faces a whopping $10 million in fines, $3 million in environmental mitigation fees and forfeiture of 80 acres of his property…
This is a very scary article, and I couldn’t help but think of the Kelo case while reading it. It isn’t a case of seizing property here so much as taking it to the next level where government gets control of your property. It would be one thing if Mr. Rapanos was filling in the wetlands on his property without replacing them elsewhere (I don’t know if it is required in Michigan or not, but here in Minnesota unless you’re a farmer you have to replace it in a two to one ratio). Here, however, he wasn’t touching the wetlands. He also did his best to try to comply with the government by allowing them on to inspect the property. However, as the old saying goes, give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Just as disturbing is the thought that if you’re not guilty you don’t need to protect yourself from the government. Hmmm. When was the last time you heard a law enforcement officer brag about how he found a questionable person innocent of a crime and how relieved they were they didn’t get the wrong person?
there rumors that some residents in WASHINGTON D.C. may lose their property so they can build a new baseball stadium i tell you LOUR GERIG must be spinning in his grave outragoius:mad: