Susette Kelo's house in New London, Connecticut

Glenn Reynolds found the video, so we are not going to swipe it. Click over to watch, but suffice it to say that the Kelo decision is easily the most despicable misreading of the Constitution in modern times, effectively undercutting the bedrock principle of American private property enshrined in the 5th Amendment. In my view, it was an impeachable offense for the five liberal Justices to vote in direct contradiction of the plain language of the Constitution and find that individual rights are secondary to those that the government decides you are entitled to have.

So while it is heartening that the backlash against Kelo is so broad and deep, all of that work, money, and pain would have been entirely unnecessary if the Supreme Court had just followed the law. The video shows the collateral damage wrought by an activist Court.

There will come a time, maybe sooner than we think, when the impeachment of Supreme Court Justices is no longer a rare occurrence. It will happen when a liberal majority on the Court starts ruling against the rest of our individual Constitutional rights and in favor of the government. As a result, Constitutionalists will win seats in Congress (as they will this year) and the people will clamor for Justices to be stripped of their positions. And so it will go.

The prognostication, pro and con, about a possible Chris Christie 2012 candidacy is popping all over the place.

Glenn Reynolds says we could do worse (and probably will). Conservative American likes Christie’s blunt, direct talk. Winning attributes of a presidential candidate depend keenly on those of his (or her . . .) predecessor. Blunt, direct talk may not fly in every quadrennial contest, but in 2012, after four very long years of professorial obfuscation and liberal double-speak, the freshness of classic American plain talk might be just what the doctor ordered.

Fellow Virginia blogger Garrett Watson at On The Right thinks Christie has been a “perfect” conservative since taking office. He certainly has been fiscally conservative and entirely unafraid to take on the fully engorged, foaming-at-the-mouth New Jersey unions. Again, a budget-cutter who shreds special interests over breakfast might be a more appealing candidate in 2012 than say a pure SoCon like Mike Huckabee.

Today Jim Geraghty and Philip Klein weighed in on the issue. Geraghty started it off with this heavily-caveated little nugget.

But right now, the idea of Chris Christie running for president or appearing on the 2012 presidential ticket just stopped being unthinkable, crazy, and implausible.

Klein says 2012 is way too soon.

So at the minimum, Christie is going to have to show that he can sustain this kind of performance. Even more important, he has to be able show that his actions produced tangible and objectively demonstrable positive results — balanced budgets, improvements in education, a better economy (at least relative to neighboring states).

I just wonder why neither of them bothers to mention that Americans elected a community organizer as president when everybody on our side, and everybody on Hillary’s side, said it was way too soon.

But Christie isn’t a kid with no record. He is a Republican executive of a large liberal state. He served for 7 years as the United States Attorney for New Jersey, a high-level executive position as the chief federal law enforcement official in the state. Just the U.S. Attorney job alone gave him more executive experience than President Obama has had in his entire career. Now, as governor, he is tackling an entrenched liberal bureaucracy in a state with the highest taxes in the nation, and getting results.

We will obviously have to watch to see how he fares, but he’s doing great right out of the gate, and there is every indication he is man who sticks to his principles, even if it costs him his job . . . or gets him a better one.

UPDATE: Instalanche! Thanks for the link Glenn.

Did you know that people in political parties fight amongst themselves? Shocking, but true. When it comes to the Tea Party, Amy Gardner says that intramural competition means the Party is falling apart.

The polls hadn’t even closed Tuesday when “tea party” activists in Nevada started sniping at one another over whether Sharron Angle, the soon-to-be Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, was the best candidate to bring down Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid.

In Virginia, tea partiers vented on blogs and to reporters about the movement’s inability to coalesce around a single, strong candidate in two House races, resulting in the nomination of establishment candidates instead.

The national tea party movement has never had a central organization or single leader; in fact, it has boasted the opposite. But Tuesday’s primary results provided fresh evidence of the amorphous network’s struggle to convert activist anger and energy into winning results. Frustrated and lacking agreement on what to do next, self-identified tea party leaders say the movement may be in danger of breaking apart before it ever really comes together.

What Amy Gardner doesn’t realize is that the Tea Party doesn’t succeed or fail based upon whether it elects a certain number of candidates to office. Tea Partiers are conservatives. Any conservative who wins is a victory for the Tea Party. Any liberal, moderate, or RINO who loses is a victory for the Tea Party. To the extent that Tea Party voters are more motivated than other voters and turn out on Election Day, they will be the big winners. But we don’t expect the Washington Post to write an accurate story about the Right. After all if intra-party fighting meant that a political party was on its last legs, there would be no such thing as the Democrat Party.

Oh the numbers are bad, unexpectedly (always with the unexpectedly) bad.

Sales at retailers unexpectedly fell in May, raising some questions about how much consumers will be able to continue contributing to an economic recovery.

According to a Census Bureau report released on Friday, retail sales dropped in May for the first time since last fall, driven mostly by a sharp plunge in purchases of building materials.

“What’s going to happen is a reassessment of the underlying momentum of the economy,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics. “If the monthly numbers don’t improve in coming months we can probably expect the third-quarter growth number to look very shaky.”

And the reason for the slump? You guessed it, the Cash-for-Appliances welfare checks ended.

Economists have attributed the decline to a possible winding down of incentives to purchase energy-efficient appliances, like tax rebates. Sales by building material suppliers had surged more than 8 percent in each of the previous two months.

“Basically when the incentive was there, people bought,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight. “When the incentive dries up because funds run out, people pull back again. And frankly the correction in building materials probably has further to go.” . . .

The winding down of incentives to purchase energy-efficient appliances may also partially explain the decline in sales at department stores, which sell goods like air-conditioners and kitchen appliances. Department stores saw purchases fall 1.8 percent in May after falling by the same percent in April.

Big shocker. As we noted just a week ago, when the $8,000 home-buyer giveaway ended, home sales cratered, when Cash-for-Clunkers welfare ended, car sales dropped, and when the temporary Census jobs go away, employment numbers will drop.

Not to beat a dead-horse here, but how many times do we need to explain that the way to spur sustained sales of a product, whether it’s a car, TV, Cuisinart, house, or even a job, is for there to be a genuine demand. Genuine consumer demand arises when people can earn disposable income. Genuine corporate demand for employees arises when companies have money from sustained sales of their products.

Welfare payments to people so they can buy specific products doesn’t change anybody’s underlying economic condition.

If the government wants to assist, it should cut individual and corporate tax rates. And then get the hell out of the way.

The Liberals’ policies are untethered from any viable economic model. Just look at their numbers.

Sure there are all those stories about Harry Reid (who was a boxer, and is tough, and can take a punch . . . etc.) having a war chest of $9.4 million for the November election. But Sharron Angle is proving no slouch at raising money. In the first 24 hours after clinching the GOP nomination, she hit her first goal of $100,000.00. And now, 24 hours after that, she’s up to $325,000.00.

Harry Reid ought not to get too comfortable because his money has proven to be about as valuable as the German Mark in 1923. After all, we don’t just add up the cash and give the seat to the guy with the most money, do we? Way back in October, Reid began running ads to “reintroduce” himself to the people in Nevada, whom he has represented for 4 terms. By the time he burned through $1.5 million, he apparently had failed to make a good first impression because the polls didn’t budge. By March, he was hovering around 40% against all three potential challengers. At that time Sharron Angle was beating him 51-40 in a hypothetical matchup.

Today, as the MSM continues their hammer and tongs assault on Angle on Reid’s behalf, Rasmussen has her beating Reid in a no longer hypothetical matchup 50-39. Hmmm, that 11 point lead looks pretty stable and Reid’s numbers are still in the crapper.

It looks like Reid is getting a liberal government rate of return on his money . . . zero percent. Last time I checked 9.4 times zero is still zero. But hey, some people love throwing $10 million down the toilet. Maybe Harry Reid is one of those guys.