Not One More Acre!(Letters) (Letter to the editor)

AuthorKelly, Paul

In "Not One More Acre!" (March) Trey Garrison says the federal land grab "would be on firm legal ground, since national defense is a clear 'public use,' as required by the Fifth Amendment." That's fine, except that under the U.S. Constitution the federal government has no power of eminent domain in the first place. And it would have been damned strange if it did.

Clearly, if the federal government can seize a Rhode Island-size chunk of land in Colorado, there is nothing to stop it from seizing a Rhode Island-size chunk in Rhode Island. A constitution giving the federal government the power of eminent domain would have given the federal government, or a consortium of the large states acting through it, the power to erase the small states off the map. Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts...

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