Sell... or else...

Can true negotiations really take place when one party has in their hip pocket the power to force the result they want?

...efforts to buy property for a national Flight 93 memorial have bogged down in federal red tape and a protracted land dispute, angering family members and risking plans to hold a dedication ceremony on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The delays have prompted an advocacy group, Families of Flight 93, to ask President Bush to personally intervene during his final weeks in office to allow the federal government to seize the land needed for the memorial and to allocate part of the money for the project.

I hadn't been following this dispute, but it doesn't really matter if (as the paper seems to allege and the landowner denies) the current landowner wants an outrageous sum of money in order to sell. The fact it's a company only makes it easier for Uncle Sam to stir public opinion against them. What if the land in question was a family holding for generations? Just because terrorists crashed a plane on it means they would have to sell their inheritance to the Feds?

We've lost the distinction between public and private in this country. Uncle Sam and his Mini-Me clones at the State and local level gobble up whatever they like, on the pretext of "public usage," and the individual citizen or family is powerless to stop them.

The Constitution was supposed to secure us against such abuses. No wonder our self-appointed rulers wish to ignore it. That so many Americans only encourage them to do so in emotionally charged instances like this merely shows what time it is.

Oh, and by the way... the proposed memorial itself isn't exactly without controversy. And folks want to seize land to build it?