Let's see who can guess who voted for the Kelo decision:
Kennedy? Souter? O'Connor? Thomas? Scalia? Rehnquist? Ginsberg? Stephens? Breyer?
Oh come on, this one is easy.
Here's a hint - if they get good press, they voted for it. If they've been the subjects of repeated smear campaigns (Thomas, Scalia), they voted against it. If they were submitted immediately after someone was sodomized by a vicious smear campaign (Kennedy, after the first "borking"), they voted for it. If they were appointed by Democrat Bill Clinton (Ginsberg, Breyer), they voted for it.
How to account for Stephens and Souter? Both were appointed by Republicans, as were all four dissenters (Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor and Rehnquist). But Stephens and Souter were appointed by moderate Republicans facing hostile Dems controlling both houses of Congress. Stephens was appointed by Gerald Ford after the Dems finally succeeded in screwing their old nemesis Richard Nixon - there's no way anyone but a liberal was getting past a Senate loaded with Dems. Souter was appointed by George Bush 41, not so long after the unconscionable nastiness of the Dems' attacks on Robert Bork.
Can we draw any conclusions? (Try and stop me....) How about this?...If you want defensible decisions from the Supreme Court, wrt property rights at least, let a Republican President do the appointing, with a Republican Congress to approve.
And let them come up for a vote.
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