We all should be thankful for the heroics of the passengers of Flight 93 on September 11. They prevented the hijackers from crashing another plane into another target–the Capitol or White House. Understandably the families want a memorial honoring the passengers.
But now they are urging President George W. Bush to just grab the property. Reports the New York Times:
Frustrated by years of negotiations over a parcel of land deemed critical for the proposed Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., a group representing the victims’ families has asked President Bush to issue an executive order allowing the Interior Department simply to take it.
The formal request was made in a three-page letter delivered to the president’s office in December.
“With less than two months left in your term,” the letter said in part, “we are writing to ask that one of your final acts in office be to guarantee that the memorial to the heroes of Flight 93 — men and women whose heroism you have invoked so powerfully and eloquently over the years — moves forward as you intended.”
Carlton Carroll, a White House spokesman, said the president’s office was considering the request. The families are hoping that the first phase of the memorial will be ready for the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The leader of the families’ group, Gordon W. Felt, whose older brother, Edward, was one of the 40 passengers and crew members who died on United Flight 93, said Mr. Bush’s help had been sought because “we just thought it would be prudent of us to remind the president that we’re still here and we’re trying to get this project done.”
The executive order would allow the government to take immediate possession of a 273-acre property that includes most of the area where the plane crashed and broke up. It is this area, sacred ground to many, that is considered most crucial to the building of the memorial, some 60 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
Under such a “quick take” action, a court would decide later the fair value of the land. Ordinarily, land does not change hands in an eminent domain proceeding until a value is set by a court. But that process could take years, and Joanne Hanley, superintendent of the memorial, said that if its first phase was to open in 2011, as the families hope, construction must begin by this fall.
It’s worth remembering that the owners of the land where the plane crashed were innocent victims too, though the harm they suffered obviously was much less. The property belongs to them, and the Constitution protects property ownership. Indeed, that protection is one of the fundamental tenets of American liberty.
Although the process of negotiation has been slow, it is succeeding: the park service owns about 1300 of the 1700 acres that it wants for the memorial. When the memorial measure was passed in 2002 Congress explicitly forbade use of eminent domain–a fancy name for government theft in far too many cases. That was changed by an obscure amendment in a large spending bill in 2007 (no one has fessed up to being responsible), but that still doesn’t make it right.
The passengers on Flight 93 represented the best of America. We should honor them by respecting the liberties they ultimately were defending. President Bush (and Barack Obama, after he takes office) should give the families a respectful no to their demand that Uncle Sam simply seize the land.
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It's a shame that the relatives have come to this demand. Theft is what it is. Eminent Domain is horrible and should be illegal. Government sponsored theft however is rampant today in the US. Very sad.
Israel is occupying Palestinian lands, and instead of conforming to the security council's resolution and retreat from Palestinian occupied lands, it brings settlers, women and children, and build settlements on the occupied lands to impose new reality defying the international law. Hamas is rocketing Israelis occupying the occupied lands, which is a legitimate resistance according to the international law. Israel, instead of stopping building settlements in occupied lands, and retreating from the occupied lands, they make a massacre to erase Gaza from the map. After all this, Hamas is considered terrorists! and Israel is defending itself. Hamas is hiding among civilians and Israel is protecting its citizens! What kind of logic is this? Hamas is not hiding among anybody, hamas are the natives, they belong to Gaza, its their land, they are the dwellers, the owners, if they leave Gaza, where do they go? well I know if settlers leave Gaza where will they go, they will be conforming to UN resolution. So who is hiding among civilians here? who is occupying the other? is it Palestinians who are occupying Israel or Israel is occupying Palestine? Is there any justice in this world?
Levni says “we don’t have any problems with Palestinians our problem is with hamasâ€, in other words, “we want to occupy Palestinian lands and siege Palestinians, if they accept then we don’t have any problem with them, we only have problems with those who refuse to be occupied or to be in siegeâ€
I hope you are enjoying the inevitable bloodshed of children.
If this coward operation weakens hamas it is going to weaken them in favour of al-qaeda.
Let me explain more, among the alleged “terrorist†groups, Hamas and Hizbollah are considered moderate, or even retreating, because they are concerned with national liberation, that is: liberating only my country from the occupier. As Nassrallah said: freeing Palestine is the Palestinian business, we support them with moral solidarity, but we are Lebanese, freeing Lebanese territories is our only business.
That is what is called national liberation movement.
While al-qaeda members believe in international liberation, that is to say: we are not going to be able to free our territories unless we destroy the imperialist system. We belong to the world and we have to liberate the world from such a system. (you know they are closer to Bush’s pattern of thinking – democratizing the world or freeing the world)
So when Israel commits such a massacre for babies and children and women, and the “civilized†world find excuses for Israel, and blame the victim instead of blaming the aggressor, the new generation will grow to believe that it is really not a problem of Israeli occupation, it is a problem of international imperialist system which backs Israel. By now, I know some youth who started to say: it seems that bin Laden was right, our battle is not on our lands, we are not allowed to free our lands because of the accomplice of the world.
Again, when people are occupied what usually they do? What did French do when they were occupied by the Nazi? What did George Washington do when he was leading the independence war? What did Churchill do when he was facing Germany? What usually people do to liberate their occupied lands?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkZ-gCPbRYM&feat...
enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HQO0774lx4&feat...
look at the Israeli mercy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgeqrs5ePLU
THE UNITES STATES – BESIDES THE VETO – INCREASED ITS AID TO ISRAEL
I don’t think you work hard to spend your taxes on this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgeqrs5ePLU
The Flight 93 families are divided on this. In particular, the Burnett family has supported the Svonavec's against the memorial Project's thuggish behavior. Mr. Burnett has also protested the memorial design. He does not want the Park Service planting a giant Islamic shaped crescent atop his son's grave.
Video of Mr. Burnett's plea for help in stopping this atrocity here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4z1QN6m_QI
Eminent Domain is theft…. Taxation is theft…. Military Conscription is slavery… blah, blah, blah. Oh, I almost forgot, printing money is conterfiting!
Citizens of a country have a duty to (within reason) support the common good and the collective goals of the country. The constitution provides for procedural justice and fair compensation to insure that such duties are reasonable.
Libertarians have gone nowhere in convincing their fellow citizens that X or Y or Z is “theft” or “tyrany”. Time to grow up, kids!
Eminent domain seizures are an unconstitutional abuse of government power. In the case at hand, in which the government wants to seize private land simply to build a memorial, the use of eminent domain is completely unreasonable. There is no “collective goal” or “common good” so important that it requires private property to be used without the owner's permission.
The Constitution does allow for eminent domain seizures, but only in extremely limited circumstances in which a compelling government interest can't be fulfilled unless property is seized. If the landowner is unwilling to sell at the price offered, why can't the memorial for Flight 93 Victims go someplace else? There's no shortage of land in this country, and while some might like to see the memorial located at the site of the plane crash, that is hardly a justification for the abrogation of private property rights.
Here are some quotes from “find law”:
“The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has been held to require that when a state or local governmental body, or a private body exercising delegated power, takes private property it must provide just compensation and take only for a public purpose. Applicable principles are discussed under the Fifth Amendment. “
The only limitations are “just compensation” and “public use”. Under the Fifth Amendment, find law continues:
''The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says 'nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.' This is a tacit recognition of a preexisting power to take private property for public use, rather than a grant of new power.'' Eminent domain ''appertains to every independent government. It requires no constitutional recognition; it is an attribute of sovereignty.”
“Explicit in the just compensation clause is the requirement that the taking of private property be for a public use; the Court has long accepted the principle that one is deprived of his property in violation of this guarantee if a State takes the property for any reason other than a public use…. How ever, in a 1946 case involving federal eminent domain power, the Court cast considerable doubt upon the power of courts to review the issue of public use. ''We think that it is the function of Congress to decide what type of taking is for a public use and that the agency authorized to do the taking may do so to the full extent of its statutory authority.''
So there is nothing in the Constitution about “a compelling government interest” at all. A memorial to national heroes is obviously a “public use.” In fact, public use is such a wide open concept that building a shopping mall in order to economically develop an area is considered a reasonable public use and eminent domain is legally justified.
So where did you study constitutional law? Or are you just making this up?
Until you can tell me exactly what makes government employees and elected representatives fundamentally superior to the rest of us, I am going to assume you're a moron.
Leftist government worship is so powerful it might as well be a religion. =/
Economic development through use of eminent domain has been legally justified as a public purpose, not a public use. The most famous recent case dealing with this was Kelo v. New London, which has sparked an enormous backlash because it made the two terms(public use and public purpose) legally equivalent.
And yet the case was decided in favor of the government, yes?
I admit to being ignorant of the legal distinction between public use and public purpose, and the role it plays in law, but it seems to have turned out to be a distinction without a difference in the case of eminent domain. So, absent a legislative remedy, or legislative restraint, the situation is probably pretty much as I described it.
And, of course, a monument to national heroes is definitely a example of public use, so their doesn't seem to be any relevance the issue at hand.
Cori, you've become an egalitarian!
I agree, government employees and elected representatives are not fundamentally superior to the rest of us. Neither are corporate CEO's, or UofC Economics professors, or anyone else who has developed their talents and abilities to some particular job, applied themselves to it, and won recognition and authority based on their efforts.
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