Cato Daily Dispatch for October 26, 2005
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Rosa Parks, 1913-2005Miers Confirmation Doubtful
D.C.'s 'Quick Take' Has Residents Doing a Double-Take
Rosa Parks, 1913-2005
"Rosa Parks, the Alabama seamstress whose simple act of defiance on a segregated Montgomery bus in 1955 stirred the nonviolent protests of the modern civil rights movement and catapulted an unknown minister named Martin Luther King Jr. to international prominence, died Monday of natural causes at her home in Detroit. She was 92," The Los Angeles Times reports.
"Often called the mother of the movement that led to the dismantling of institutionalized segregation in the South, Parks became a symbol of human dignity when she was jailed for refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a white man when she rode home from work on the evening of Dec. 1, 1955."
In a keynote address delivered to the Cato Institute's "American Renaissance" seminar in Los Angeles entitled "Setbacks Won't Stop Drive for True Civil Rights," Ward Connerly, president of the American Civil Rights Institute, said: "Civil rights conjures up in most minds the 60s. It makes you think of rights for black people. You think of Dr. Martin Luther King; you think of Rosa Parks; you think of all of those horrors of the 60s. And well you should.
"But civil rights in their most pristine form are those unalienable rights that our founders talked about so many years ago that belong to all of us.
"It is important for us to redefine our thinking with regard to that term, 'civil rights,' and to understand that indeed civil rights are individual rights for every citizen. And until we do...our nation is in for a long, long period of very rough sledding."
Miers Confirmation Doubtful
"The drumbeat of doubt from Republican senators over the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers grew louder Tuesday as several lawmakers, including a pivotal conservative on the Judiciary Committee, joined those expressing concerns about her selection," The New York Times reports.
"Emerging from a weekly luncheon of Republican senators in which they discussed the nomination, several lawmakers suggested that as Ms. Miers continued her visits on Capitol Hill, she was not winning over Republican lawmakers."
In "Cronyism," Cato senior fellow, Randy Barnett, writes: "Given her lack of experience, does anyone doubt that Ms. Miers's only qualification to be a Supreme Court justice is her close connection to the president? Would the president have ever picked her if she had not been his lawyer, his close confidante, and his adviser? Of course, Hamilton also thought that the existence of Senate confirmation would deter the nomination of cronies: 'The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other.'"
D.C.'s 'Quick Take' Has Residents Doing a Double-Take
"The District government filed court papers yesterday to seize $84 million worth of property from 16 owners in Southeast, giving them 90 days to leave and make way for a baseball stadium," The Washington Post reports.
"By invoking eminent domain, city officials said last week, they hope to keep construction of the Washington Nationals' ballpark on schedule to open in March 2008. The city exercised its 'quick take' authority, in which it takes immediate control of the titles to the properties."
In "Government-Funded Stadiums Not Worth Price of Admission" Cato senior fellow Doug Bandow writes: "Stadium advocates have been amazingly successful in taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Some wealthy sports moguls, such as Managing General Partner Al Davis of the NFL Oakland Raiders, have turned mulcting taxpayers into an art form. Raymond Keating, chief economist for the Small Business Survival Committee, estimates that government has poured more than $20 billion (in current dollars) into sports ventures in recent decades."
In "An Excess of Power," Cato policy analyst Radley Balko writes: "If the Supreme Court killed off the Ninth Amendment with Raich, Kelo in many ways represents the culmination of its complete disregard for even our explicitly enumerated rights. Go back to Madison's quote above. A government that doesn't respect the title to your land is in all likelihood a government that will in time lose respect for your property in your right to speech, arms, and due process. And indeed in recent years, with help from the Supreme Court, government at all levels has run roughshod over even our explicitly enumerated rights.
"In this sense, Kelo's symbolic significance is probably more damaging than its practical application. By deferring to state and local governments, who may now seize property for virtually any reason at all, the Supreme Court has announced its complete disregard for private property. Which means that America may have finally achieved Madison's dim vision: 'An excess of power' now prevails, and we're now living under a government that neither respects our right to property, nor acknowledges the property we own in our rights."
Kristen A. Kestner, editor, kkestner@cato.org
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