Coyote Blog

I don't have any particular comment on the Supreme Court decision in Voisine v. United States, but I have to highlight the headline that was just shared with me on Facebook:

Another Big Win: SCOTUS Just Banned Domestic Abusers From Owning Firearms

Um, pretty sure that is not what happened.

First, convicted domestic abusers generally are already banned from owning firearms.

Second, I am fairly certain that SCOTUS did not ban anything (not surprising since they don't have a Constitutional power to ban anything).  There was some legal uncertainty in the definitions of certain terms in a law (passed by Congress and signed by the President) that restricted gun ownership based on certain crimes.  This dispute over the meaning of these terms bounced back and forth in the courts until the Supreme Court took the case and provided the final word on how the terms should be interpreted by the judicial system.

This decision strikes me as a pretty routine sort of legal result fixing a niche issue in the interpretation of terms of the law.  How niche?  Well apparently Voisine was convicted (multiple times) of "“intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly” hurting his girlfriend.  The facts of the case made it pretty clear that he was beating on her on purpose, but he argued that due to the "or" in the wording of the crime he was convicted of, as far as the law is concerned he might have only been convicted of recklessness which shouldn't be covered under the gun ownership ban.  Really, this silliness should never have reached the Supreme Court, and did (in my interpretation) only because second amendment questions were involved, questions stripped off by SCOTUS.  Freed on any Second Amendment implications, SCOTUS rightly slapped his argument down as stupid and said he was subject to the ban.  Seems sensible to me, and this sort of thing happens literally constantly in the courts -- the only oddball thing in my mind was how this incredibly arcane niche issue made it to the SCOTUS.

Instead, the article is breathless about describing this incredibly niche case as closing a "gaping loophole."  It is written as if it is some seminal event that overturns a horror just one-notch short of concentration camps  -- "This is a win for feminism, equality in the home, and in finally making movements on reigning in this country’s insane, libertarian approach to gun-owning."    And then of course the article bounces around in social media, making everyone who encounters it just a little bit dumber.

There has been a lot written about "chaos" in UK government and financial markets since the Brexit vote, so much so there are supposedly folks who voted for Brexit who want a do-over.

A few thoughts:

• Short term changes in financial asset prices, like bank stock prices or currency futures, are largely irrelevant in the long-term.  The recent supposed "big drop" in US equities markets, for example, took the market all the way back to where it was in... March, barely 3 months ago.  You will see buying in these assets in the coming days and the drop of the last few days will be largely forgotten soon.   Financial markets don't react well to being surprised, but they will get over it.
• I don't see how the UK and the pound are necessarily weaker post-Brexit.  The US is fine.  The Swiss are fine.  Heck, the Swiss have to constantly fight to keep their currency lower.
• Unlike other EU nations, the majority of UK trade is with non-UK nations.  While trade with the EU will likely be on worse terms in the future (though the Swiss and Norwegians have pretty good deals), UK will be unshackled from the EU bureaucracy in negotiating new deals with the rest of the world.  If the US President had any vision whatsoever, he would already have offered the UK a free trade deal, rather than being petty and saying the UK goes to the back of the line for exiting a transnational body the US would never join itself.
• Much of the "chaos" in British government can be traced 100% to the anti-Brexit folks.  The Anti-Brexit folks very explicitly refused to craft any Brexit contingency plans, using threats of post-Brexit chaos to try to up the pressure against the Brexit vote.  President Obama did the exact same thing with Obamacare, refusing to create contingency plans if the SCOTUS overturned key parts of the ACA, hoping to ratchet up pressure against that outcome.  Had their been at least the outlines of a plan, they would be checking down it right now.  Things I would do as PM on the trade front:  1.  Demand the Swiss deal from the EU for Britain.  2.  Approach major trading partners with offers of free trade deals.  A British commonwealth free trade zone is a great idea.

No matter what the SCOTUS decision on health care, the Internet is going to go apeshit tomorrow.

I don't have any particularly intelligent analysis of the SCOTUS's upholding the constitutionality of a partial birth abortion ban, so I won't offer any.

However, I have a question for women's groups.  Groups like NOW support the federal government's constitutional right to ban breast implants,and in fact call for such a ban on the NOW web site.  Simultaneously, they oppose the federal government's constitutional right to ban partial birth abortions.

My question is:  How can you reconcile these two views?  Aren't these two procedures similar enough (both are elective medical procedures that are invasive of a woman's body) to be Constitutionally identical?  I understand that from a social conservative's point of view that the abortion procedure might warrant more legal attention if you believe there is a second life (ie the fetus) involved here.  But how do you justify that the feds should have more power to regulate and ban boob jobs than they have to ban one type of abortion?  And please, don't justify it because you think abortion is serious but breast implants are frivolous  Those are legislative and political arguments about what should and should not be done with the fed's power, not Constitutional arguments about what that power actually is.

The women's groups' application of their "its our body" and "pro-choice" positions have always struck me as incredibly selective.  It's a woman's choice to weigh the risks and benefits of an abortion, but apparently it's the government's choice to weight the risks and benefits of breast implants.  I wrote more about this selective libertarianism when I made a plea for applying the privacy and choice logic of abortion supporters to all aspects of government regulation.  I criticized NOW for another instance of selective libertarianism associated with government and women's bodies when NOW supported having the government limit a woman's choice to use Vioxx to relieve pain.

For several years, I have been wondering why punitive damage awards like this one, that punish a company for various misdeeds, don't create a double jeapardy situation where defendents must pay over and over for the same "crime" (since the next individual suing also gets punitive damages).

Here's the problem:  A jury in Texas already hit Merck with $259
million in punitive damages*.  This number was based on a lot of
testimony about Merck's sales and profits from Vioxx, so it was
presumably aimed at punishing Merck for "errors" in their whole Vioxx
program.  So if that is the case, how can Merck end up facing a jury
again coming up with a separate punitive damage award for the same
"crime"?  Sure, it makes sense that Merck can owe actual damages to
individual claimants in trial after trial.  But how can they owe
punitive damages for the whole Vioxx program over and over again?
Aren't they being punished over and over for the same misdeed,
violating their Constitutional protection against double jeopardy?

In the recent Supreme Court decision involving a judgment against Philip Morris, the SCOTUS didn't really take this issue on, but did take on a related issue, arguing that punitive damage awards that take into account damages against more than just the defendant violate due process, since these other damages were not tried on the facts in that case.

Today, in a decision involving an astonishing $79.5 million punitive
damage award to the widow of an Oregon man who died of lung cancer
after smoking Marlboros for 42 years, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
that a jury in a civil case may not punish a defendant for harm to
people who are not parties to the case. To do so, the five-justice
majority said,
violates the defendant's right to due process because he cannot defend
against hypothetical damage claims by people who are not involved in
the lawsuit. Furthermore, the Court said, "to permit punishment for
injuring a nonparty victim would add a near standardless dimension to
the punitive damages equation." Although this makes sense to me, the
Court's proposed solution"”that juries may consider harm to nonparties
in judging the "reprehensibility" of a defendant's conduct but not to
"punish a defendant directly" for that harm"”seems untenable.

For those who, like me, have trouble decoding why certain SCOTUS justices make the rulings that they do, Richard Epstein propounds an interesting theory in the WSJ ($) today.  He says that you can't relay on traditional conservative or liberal monikers to predict when a justice will back an expansion of government and when she/he will rule to reign it in.

In principle, it would nice if both sides of the
ideological spectrum displayed a sound and consistent position on
statutory construction. Unfortunately, each bloc is opportunistic. The
litmus test for this erratic behavior boils down to a factor not found
in any statute: trust.

The court's two wings share one trait: They defer only
to the government officials they trust. Otherwise, they read a statute
carefully to rein in the authority of officials they don't trust. The
two factions don't differ in their philosophy of language, or in their
on-again, off-again adherence to the rule of law. Rather, the court's
liberal wing profoundly distrusts this president, but has great
confidence in the domestic administrative agencies that regulate
matters such as the environment. The conservative wing of the court
flips over. It willingly defers to the president on national security
issues while looking askance at expansionist tendencies of the
administrative agencies.

This feels as right as any theory I have read of late.  And I certainly can get behind this:

Our Constitution starts out with a presumption of distrust of all
government actors, which is why it drew a sharp line between the
legislative and executive branches. We can argue until the cows come
home whether national security or environmental protection presents the
greater threat of executive or administrative misuse. But that ranking
really doesn't matter, because there is no reason why the Supreme Court
has to defer to overaggressive public officials in either context.
Justice Stevens rightly chastised the president for flouting the rule
of law in Hamdan. But he was tone deaf on the easier question
of statutory construction when blessing the Corps' extravagant reading
of the statute in Rapanos.

Happy Birthday to the greatestn nation on earth.  I spend a lot of time criticizing our leaders and their policies, but there is no place else I would live.  The US Constitution is still, over two-hundred years after its creation, the greatest single document ever written.  Many other countries since have written constitutions and spilled tons of ink pontificating on theories of government, but none have had similar success in protecting individual rights while creating an environment where every individual can focus their productive energies in whatever direction they choose with generally minimal interference.

A while back I wrote about how wealth was created, and I pointed out that the great leaps we have made in human well-being over the last two hundred or so years stem from two effects:

Sure, our leaders, our military, and sometimes the nation as a whole screws up.  I and others are quick to point these screw-ups out and sometimes we find ourselves wallowing in them.  But at the end of the day, unlike in the majority of countries in the world, these screw-ups are treated as such, talked about and debated, and dealt with rather than treated as the norm. 

Take the US military in an occupying role in Iraq.  Out of 100,000 or so people, you are going to have some criminals who commit criminal acts, even in the military.  The US army, unlike nearly every occupying army in history, generally treats its soldiers' crimes as crimes, and not as the inherent right of victors to rape and pillage.  US soldiers who have committed crimes in Iraq will generally go to jail, while worse malefactors in most armies, even the holier-than-thou UN peacekeepers who seem to be engaging in rape and white slavery around the world, generally go unpunished.  For all the crap the US military takes around the world, I bet you that if you took an honest vote on the question of "Which world army would you choose to occupy your country if you lost a war" most people would answer the US.  If for no other reason because, despite all the charges of imperialism, our armies eventually leave rather than remain on as lingering masters.

So tomorrow, I will start dealing out more crap to our leaders, to the administration, to Congress, to the SCOTUS, and most especially to most every bureaucrat who thinks they can better manage my business or my property.  But today I will step back and see the forest rather than the trees, and observe I am dang lucky to be an American.

For further thoughts, I refer you to .  They tend to celebrate first the "right to vote", when in fact many people get to vote but few enjoy the freedoms we do.  The greatness of our country is in our protection of individual liberties and the rule of law.  And the great insight our country was founded with is that rights flow from the very fact of our humanity -- they are not granted to us by kings or Congress.  This last is perhaps most important, as I wrote:

At the end of the day, our freedoms in this country will only last so
long as we as a nation continue to hold to the principle that our
rights as individuals are our own, and the government's job is to
protect them, not to ration them.  Without this common belief, all the
other institutions we have discussed, from voting to the rule of law to
the Constitution, can be subverted in time

Now I am off to see Buckingham Palace.  If I see the Queen, would it be in bad taste to wish her a happy Fourth of July?

Julian Sanchez revisits Smith vs. Maryland, the Supreme Court case currently used to justify letting the government take about any data they want on your life without a warrant.  Sanchez questions the logic of the case, particularly in light of sweeping technology changes since the early 70's:

Part of the problem here is that since the late '70s, we've gone a long way
toward a world in which a huge amount of our most private information is held by
third parties. A huge chunk of my e-mails from the last couple years are stored
on some server owned by Google, where ad-generating software sifts through my
private communications looking for keywords that will allow the company to
display personally-tailored advertisements for me. Now, maybe I'm naive to have
any expectation of privacy in the e-mails sitting on that server, but I do
pretty much expect that nobody at Google is actually looking through my
correspondence and passing it around to their friends. And I at least
didn't expect until recently that some government program would be
sifting through those e-mails to see whether I used the word "jihad" some
suspicious number of times in letters to people in Saudi Arabia.

I had similar concerns about Smith v. Marlyand here.  One of my arguments was:

This exact same logic [used in this case] seemingly applies to any piece of data submitted
to any private third party unless the data is specifically protected
(e.g. medical records).  Sorry, but this is wrong.  I should be able to
have commercial transactions with third parties without the expectation
that the government can take the records for its own use without any
kind of a warrant....

The implication is that by giving a company data for use in a
transaction, we are giving them an unwritten license to do whatever
they want with the data.  Do you believe you are granting this?  Is it
true that you "entertain no expectation of privacy" in such
transactions?  If you agree with this ability, then I assume you also
agree that the government should be able to see all your:

• Credit card bills
• Records of who you have emailed
• Records of which Internet sites you have visited
• Records of what searches you made in search engines

I also pointed out that since many people spend a lot of money to keep information private (e.g. anonymous surfing software), the market has demonstrated clearly that people, unlike the SCOTUS asserted,  do have an expectation of privacy with such data.

Just before my body decided to purge itself for a few days, USA Today ran a story that the NSA was doing more than just listening in on overseas calls to suspected terrorists.  It claimed that the NSA was also compiling a database of domestic call records.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone
call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by
AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the
arrangement told USA TODAY.

This bothers me, as much for separation of powers issues that I will describe below as for any  worry about the data being collected.  Conservatives, however, immediately criticized the article, as summarized well here, making a number of points:

1.  Its old news
Shame on conservatives.  This is the same tired line that Clinton used to drive them crazy with.  The theory here is that once a story has run a full news-cycle, it is then too late to report on it or show any further outrage about it.  Once the political boil is lanced, its time to "move on".  Sorry, I don't buy it.

2.  USA Today is exaggerating
The USA Today and those who picked up on the story  are indeed sloppy, perhaps purposefully to make a better story, in blurring the line between collecting phone numbers and eavesdropping.  To date, the evidence is only that phone numbers were collected, which is in fact less intrusive than eavesdropping.  It still pisses me off, for reasons below.

 3.  The IRS already has more data
Yes, and that bothers me too.  Does anyone really doubt that IRS data has been peeked at and used for political purposes?  And I am flabbergasted at how far conservatives have wandered over the last several decades that they hold up the IRS as a model to be emulated.  But here is the key difference that I will get into in a minute:  The IRS is allowed to collect this data by legislative statute passed by Congress.  This statute includes rules for data management and access, with steps for judicial review and criminal penalties for its violation.  The NSA data base has ... none of this.  No legislative authorization.  No process and privacy protections.  No penalties for misuse of data.  No judicial review steps.

4.  Its no big deal, and its good for you
Maybe.  Or maybe not.  The trouble is that we are only getting tiny leaked glimpses into whatever the administration is doing.  The President has created the theory that he can declare war against a vague and in fact impossible to define target, and then take on absolute dictatorial non-reviewable powers to prosecute this war in any way he likes, and that any steps taken in this war can be considered legitimate steps (rather than overstepping his bounds) based on his say-so alone. 

The problem is not the database per se, but the fact that the NSA and this administration feels it can do anything it wants outside the bounds of traditional separation of powers.  If the NSA needs a phone call database, then the President can go to Congress and solicit such an authorization.  A well-crafted piece of legislation would put strict limits on how the data is used, would provide some sort of outside review of its use, and would provide for stiff penalties for its misuse.  This is what I wrote previously:

Here is how we have generally interpreted the 4th amendment:  The
legislative branch sets the ground rules, as followed by the
Administration.  The administrations selection of targets is reviewed
by the Judiciary (warrants) and is also subject to later review at
trial (via the admissibility of evidence).  What we try to avoid is
allowing the same person to set the rules, choose the target, and
perform the surveillance, all in secret and without outside review.
The problems with the NSA wiretapping program is not that it is wrong
per se, but that it may violate this process.  The administration is
claiming the right to choose the target and perform the surveillance
under the own rules and in secret with no possibility of review.   

What really irks me about this is the crass politics going on.  Does anyone doubt that if a Clinton White House had been revealed doing this that Conservatives would have been screaming in outrage?  And liberals are, if anything, even funnier.  These are the folks that trust the government but distrust corporate America.  So why is it that they are upset about a transfer of phone records from evil old AT&T to benevolent old Uncle Sam?  Except, of course, because it is being done by a Republican.

More on eroding separation of powers here and here.

Update: This database may be being used to see who reporters are talking to in order to root out leaks.  Anyone uncomfortable now?  And this is priceless:

Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for
the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.

Duh.  Under Bush Administration guidelines, nothing the administration wants to do is considered illegal.

More: Several sources have used the Supreme Court decision to make the case that collection of the phone records is legal without a warrant.  Here is a key passage:

Petitioner in all probability entertained no actual expectation of
privacy in the phone numbers he dialed, and even if he did, his
expectation was not "legitimate." First, it is doubtful that telephone
users in general have any expectation of privacy regarding the numbers
they dial, since they typically know that they must convey phone
numbers to the telephone company and that the company has facilities
for recording this information and does in fact record it for various
legitimate business purposes. And petitioner did not demonstrate an
expectation of privacy merely by using his home phone rather than some
other phone, since his conduct, although perhaps calculated to keep the
contents of his conversation private, was not calculated to preserve
the privacy of the number he dialed. Second, even if petitioner did
harbor some subjective expectation of privacy, this expectation was not
one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." When
petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the phone
company and "exposed" that information to its equipment in the normal
course of business, he assumed the risk that the company would reveal
the information  to the police,

First, it would be interesting to see if the SCOTUS would agree that this ruling extends to sharing such information with non-law-enforcement branches of the government (NSA is not a law enforcement arm).  Second, it would be interesting to see if the Court came to the same conclusion if the target for the the data sweep was "every citizen in the US" and not just targets of law enforcement investigations.

Third and most importantly, this decision seems to suck.  This exact same logic seemingly applies to any piece of data submitted to any private third party unless the data is specifically protected (e.g. medical records).  Sorry, but this is wrong.  I should be able to have commercial transactions with third parties without the expectation that the government can take the records for its own use without any kind of a warrant. 

Also, the premise that this ruling is based on is provably false, though only by technology instituted after the decision.  There is an entire industry of phone company services and 3rd party technologies aimed right at this area of phone call (and email; and Internet surfing) anonymity and privacy.  With the Internet for example, there is a very, very clear expectation that sharing information with a company for one purpose (e.g. to complete a transaction) does NOT authorize the company to use or share the data for any other purpose.  This use of transaction data and its limits is a CRITICAL and front-of-mind issue for modern communicators.  It is absurd to say, as the justices did, that:

When
petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the phone
company and "exposed" that information to its equipment in the normal
course of business, he assumed the risk that the company would reveal
the information  to the police

The implication is that by giving a company data for use in a transaction, we are giving them an unwritten license to do whatever they want with the data.  Do you believe you are granting this?  Is it true that you "entertain no expectation of privacy" in such transactions?  If you agree with this ability, then I assume you also agree that the government should be able to see all your:

• Credit card bills
• Records of who you have emailed
• Records of which Internet sites you have visited
• Records of what searches you made in search engines

These are all 100% amenable to the logic the Justices used in this decision.

I don't mean that law enforcement shouldn't be able to subpoena these records ever.  But they need to at least go to a judge and say "we want to see Warren's phone records from X to Y date because we suspect him of Z for the following reasons."

I have addressed abortion and the court more seriously here and here, among other places.  Basically my premise has been that I accept a privacy right, and accept a woman's control of her body, but wonder why the Left (which coined these terms and defends them as moral high ground) doesn't believe that this privacy and decision-making control extend to other areas like breast implants, using Vioxx, seat belt use, helmets, use of tanning booths, smoking, fatty food consumption, make wage agreements, pricing products and services, etc. 

But, I must admit, I am having SCOTUS nomination process fatigue, and, as such, Jane Galt aka Megan Mcardle found this wonderful post from Glen Wishard that sums up my current thinking on abortion vis a vis the Supreme Court perfectly:

Make no mistake, then - the Supreme Court is no longer the Supreme
Court of past fame. It is now the National Abortion Tribunal, and its
members are no longer jurists, they are the Keepers of the Abortion
Toggle Switch.

-----0-->0-----

Fig. 1A. Abortion Toggle Switch, closed.
Suction motors will engage.

As we can see from the schematic diagram above, the Abortion Toggle
Switch is currently in the closed (ON) position. The entire purpose of
the so-called Supreme Court, as current wisdom understands that
purpose, is to stare at this switch all day wondering whether they
should play with it or not.

Now this is a sad state for this once-great court to have fallen to,
and makes me wonder if we don't need another court to assume the
neglected responsibilities of the current one. Then the Abortion Toggle
Switch could be moved to some remote corner of the public's attention,
and the various abortion partisans could play their endless game of
Keep Away without buggering up the entire constitutional process.

ROFL

Update 6/23: Property rights lost 5-4.  More on Kelo decision here and here.  The arguments below are still valid, even if the SCOTUS did not agree.

As I have written before, there is a disgusting and increasingly popular trend among city governments to seize private property from one owner and give it to a developer who will build something that will generate more property taxes (e.g. seize house to build a new Home Depot).  This theory of eminent domain is being tested in arguments in front of the Supreme Court around actions of New London, CT to seize private houses and handing them over to a developer so he can build a private marina.  New London argues that it is economically depressed, and it needs to substitute some higher tax paying businesses for lower tax paying homeowners.  Dahlia Lithwick in Slate brings us this telling exchange yesterday between the Court and New London attorney Horton:

Justice Antonin Scalia asks what difference it makes that New London is depressed. What if a city acknowledged that it wasn't doing badly, but just wanted to condemn land to attract new industry? He describes Horton's position as: "You can always take from A and give to B, so long as B is richer." And O'Connor offers this concrete example: What if there's a Motel 6 but the city thinks a Ritz-Carlton will generate more taxes? Is that OK?

Yes, says Horton.

"So you can always take from A and give to B if B pays more taxes?" asks Scalia.

"If they are significantly more taxes," says Horton

"But that will always happen. Unless it's a firehouse or a school," protests Kennedy.

The Court even gave New London's attorney a bit of a lesson on how free exchange of goods requires consent of both parties:

"We're paying for it!" Horton exclaims, noting that no one is taking anything from these minorities.

"But you're taking it from someone who doesn't want to sell. She doesn't want your money," retorts Scalia.

Professor Bainbridge points out why Mr. Horton's payment will also be inadequate:

First, it fails to take into account the subjective valuations placed on the property by people whose families have lived on the land, in at least one case, for a 100 years. In other words, if the Supreme Court rules for the city, the government will be able to seize land at a price considerably below the reservation price of the owners. Second, unlike the prototypical eminent domain case, in which the land is seized to build, say, a school or road, in this case the city is using eminent domain to seize property that will then be turned over to a private developer. If this new development increases the value of the property, all of that value will be captured by the new owner, rather than the forced sellers. As a result, the city will have made itself richer (through higher taxes), and the developer richer, while leaving the forced sellers poorer in both subjective and objective senses

Read the whole thing, its depressing, all the more so since commentators seem to feel that New London will prevail.  To my eye, Mr Horton and New London look no different than Stalin-era Soviet planners.  The Economist (sub. req'd)agrees:

Put simply, cities cannot take someone's house just because they think they can make better use of it. Otherwise, argues Scott Bullock, Mrs Kelo's lawyer, you end up destroying private property rights altogether. For if the sole yardstick is economic benefit, any house can be replaced at any time by a business or shop (because they usually produce more tax revenues). Moreover, if city governments can seize private property by claiming a public benefit which they themselves determine, where do they stop? If they decide it is in the public interest to encourage locally-owned shops, what would prevent them compulsorily closing megastores, or vice versa? This is central planning.

Plenty more commentary at Professor Bainbridge (here and here), Volokh (here and here), Cafe Hayek,  and the Knowlege Problem.  The Institute for Justice is defending the property owners and is at the forefront of this fight - win or lose, they deserve props for their efforts.

Postscript:  I generally don't like the arguments I see in some blogs that go like "why aren't the ___________ [fill in  with liberal or conservative] blogs addressing such-and-such issue?"  Blogs are intensely personal, and since most of us write them as a hobby, there are always going to be issues that just don't really get us fired up.  For example, though many libertarian bloggers expend numerous electrons on gun rights, the topic is generally a yawner for me so I seldom go there.

With that said, it is interesting to speculate where the "progressives" are on this case.  When you see a story of a city making a virtue of taking from poorer people to give to rich developers, one would expect the left to go nuts.  As reason describes it (here and here and here):

... a growing number of governments are using eminent domain to circumvent the conventional real estate market. Eminent domain forces property owners to sell their property to the city while the city then turns around and sells the property to developers. Private developers can reap significant financial gains through this process. Reason finds these decisions are increasingly driven by local politics, not respect for property rights, and give well-connected property developers significant advantages over homeowners and small businesses.

Little guy vs. big guy -- where is the Left?  Well, the problem is that progressives generally support the erosion of private property rights.  They like cases that reinforce the ability of government and politicians to take, redirect, or otherwise control private property for their own goals.  In this case, I presume that they are willing to sacrifice a few little guys in Connecticut for the larger goal of increasing statism.

UPDATE:  Apparently the New London attorney ended on a note of mystery, according to SCOTUSBlog:

The moment of the day came in Kelo when the city's counsel attempted to close by saying, "I want to leave you with just four words," then his time expired. (Although he did say -- using more words, "I see my time has expired so I won't be able to tell you them.") Justice Kennedy then asked the plaintiff's lawyer on rebuttal, "You don't happen to know what the four words were?" Regrettably, he didn't.

Here is my guess for New London's last four words: "Everything belongs to us".  Of course "All your base are belong to us" would have been better, but that is seven words.