Dean Does It AGAIN

Just as liberals wait to see if they kind find President Bush in a verbal blooper, we conservatives enjoy waiting Howard Dean to say something else idiotic.

In his latest effort to attack President Bush, Dean has gone after Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.

He stated ""The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is 'okay' to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is."

This was in reference to an awful Supreme Court ruling in the case of Kelo v. The City of New London.

As Dean indicated, this horrible decision does state that the government can take your property for pretty much any reason it deems fit. Up until now the rule of eminent domain only applied to case where they took the land for a government purpose, such as a road or police station.

But now they can do it if they think someone else can use the property to generate more taxes.

So I agree with Dean that the ruling is bad.

But one small problem with his right wing analogy. Generally speaking most observers divide the court into three groups

The conservative group is Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas.

The swing group is Kennedy and O'Connor.

The liberal group is Ginsberg, Souter, Stevens and Breyer.

So if Dean was right, the conservatives supported the ruling, the liberals opposed it and the swing voters swung.... right ??

Well not exactly....

The three most conservative members of the court, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas all DISSENTED in the case. That is they disagreed with the decision. They were joined by swing voter O'Connor.

The majority in this decision consisted of the courts four liberals (Ginsberg, Souter, Stevens and Breyer). They were joined by swing vote Justice Kennedy.

So basically the swing votes, as might be expected, split 50/50, the LIBERALS voted to allow the government to take land and the CONSERVATIVES voted against it.

So once again, Dean doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good story.