The nation has many items of news to fixate on them and it seems like Saddam and James Brown have eclipsed the passing of Gerald Ford. I am not sad for Ford, it is the natural order for us to die when we are old. I respectfully note his passing. Historians will debate his legacy, I personally think he made the best of difficult times and was what the country needed after Nixon. Ford saw his role as uniting the country and one negative aspect of that may have been to gravitate towards moderate principles. A result of that is still with us today, John Paul Stevens

The Supreme Court is an essential check to our other branches of government. All too often in the past 40 years it has legislated from the bench. The Supreme court abides first by the Supreme law of the land, The Constitution. Stevens has consistently led the charge of advancing the federal monopoly on power. I will post some more; but for now but suffice it to say that he wrote the majority opinion in Kelo . To find that taking one's property because you can give it to someone who will hand you back more tax revenue is a mockery of the 5th Amendment's takings clause. Without security in their property Americans just will not invest in their future. Why bother if someone will just take it? How exactly is this different from Feudal Europe when the king owned everything? More to come on Kelo. If there was ever a tyranny of the majority, the 5-4 court deciding law in defiance of the Constitution is surely an example.