Evicting David Souter
LABASH, MATT
Evicting David Souter If the justice is so fond of eminent domain, say protesters, let's seize his ancestral property and develop a charming bed and breakfast on it BY MATT LABASH Weare, New...
...The Kelo decision might well be the most important in the history of eminent domain, a term that can cause instant drowsiness among the easily bored...
...He's getting his ducks in a row...
...When I ask him what he's looking for in a candidate, he says, "They need to have a pulse, and support the project...
...Polls show up to 93 percent reject eminent domain for private economic gain...
...While naysayers claim that seizing Justice Souter's house won't stop eminent domain abuse, that's almost beside the point...
...He was beaten by the likes of Angelyne, a model with no last name who wanted to paint the statehouse hot pink, and Kelly Kimball, a business executive who ran as a member of the ButtMonkey Beer party...
...I haven't been in an office environment where I'm going around high-five-ing everyone in a cubicle...
...It's silly...
...If eminent domain proceedings were ever initiated against the house, forget the pretense of economic development...
...The town could probably seize it on grounds of blight...
...Physically he resembles a less creepy Ralph Reed: He looks like a 36-year-old altar boy whose mom made him scrub up and dress for dinner...
...You travel through forests of pine and maple, past a go-kart track, until you get to an unpaved road called Cilley Hill which is missing its street sign, perhaps in a deliberate attempt to throw off pesky reporters...
...But if the hotel opens, they'd better have room service, since the nearest Dunkin' Donuts is about a half an hour away...
...One board member, Heleen Kurk, told me that this entire campaign is misguided...
...If Clements was a man whose causes had not yet found full employment for his talents, that all changed on June 23, 2005, the day the U.S...
...A privacy-fetishist, Souter has, over the years, earned a reputation as a parsimonious Yankee hermit...
...Green Jeans-like outfit...
...He settles his tab at Staples for a couple grand's worth of materials, including several hundred copies of the 58-page Kelo decision, which he'll distribute door-to-door in Weare...
...The townspeople were forbidden to use them, even though the trees stood on their property...
...But two months later, Clements traveled to New Hampshire from California, visiting Justice Souter's house, or "the future site," as he likes to call it...
...I'm too much of a loner...
...The whole thing would seem to be a decoy house, where locals might send reporters to have a good laugh, except that Souter's thoroughly rusted mailbox, whose post tilts at a near 60 degree angle, bears his bleached-out name...
...Vigilantes operate outside the law, and it's illegal to kill the executioner...
...She says that, as adamantly as she opposes Clements and company, she'd feel obliged to carry out the will of the people if they overwhelmingly voted "Yes" on the article, which she doesn't think they'll do...
...I have to verify everything myself," he says...
...I'd be nailed...
...From an early age, Clements was always looking to start new ventures...
...I don't think I'd make it in the corporate world, playing office politics," he says...
...I should've subcontracted with some Jehovah's Witnesses," he laments...
...McCoy property disputes he frequently has to mediate...
...Fottler has known Souter since they were kids—they used to collect stamps together...
...Let's start a dialogue," I implore, "it'd be good for the documentary...
...He just seems to be an old bach...
...While many Americans can't even identify their congressman, a surprisingly high number of Weare residents have heard of the Kelo decision...
...It's a dog chasing its tail...
...In junior high, he took over his older brother's disc jockey business...
...Some homeowners not only declined to sell, but also sued...
...A child of the '80s, he spun Flock of Seagulls and Duran Duran at school dances, though "it didn't make me popular...
...There are only about 8,500 residents, even though the population recently ballooned with the influx of Massachusetts tax refugees, or "Massholes" in local-speak...
...Even when he ran for governor, he says, he didn't get in much campaigning because he had to spend so much time filling out paperwork...
...Instead of a Gideon Bible in each room, Clements plans to stock a copy of the book that a Library of Congress poll said is the second most influential of all time, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged...
...Why," he asks, "should the law be beyond its own reach...
...The chimney masonry is crumbling...
...It turns out election rules forbid it...
...It's the kind of hypocrisy barbecue that makes media types lick their chops, whatever their political persuasion...
...Then they "slapped them on the ass and sent them down the road, with people lining the streets jeering...
...But national outrage might very well be muted, since for every victim of eminent domain abuse, there are often two beneficiaries: the local municipality and the private business on the receiving end of the wealth they've redistributed...
...Clements is making a documentary about this whole endeavor, but his cameraman had his flight delayed, throwing Clements's schedule out of whack...
...None of the roads seem to be plowed, and I ask Meany if Weare's run out of money...
...Passing this stink bomb back to the states was an "abdication of our responsibility," a "refusal to enforce properly the Federal Constitution...
...He never ceases to disappoint me...
...Winnie operates a small doll shop on her property, which is closed when I drop by...
...Knowing this, more than 20 townsmen blackened their faces, broke into his room, and beat him bloody with pine switches...
...Instead, he left behind a Lost Liberty T-shirt and a copy of Atlas Shrugged...
...Such legislation is great for New Hampshire, but what about the rest of the country...
...After getting picked up by the likes of the Drudge Report, his sleepy little website went from 180 hits to 370,000 visitors...
...They're being hosted by his local accomplices, an ad-hoc group of concerned citizens who wish to stop eminent-domain abuse...
...He supports the Free State Project, New Hampshire libertarians' summons for 20,000 libertarians to move to their state...
...The hotel will also house a small museum that commemorates our trampled freedoms...
...CPNR web director Joshua Solomon, a local software engineer, is running for one of the two open seats...
...Fottler too is quite fond of Souter, who he says stops by semiregularly, though not to talk shop...
...But there was a whiff of the born-loser libertarian about him...
...They also invite people to the next day's rally, pass out literature touting Joshua Solomon's candidacy, and unload the paper brick that is the Kelo decision—a little light weekend reading for the townsfolk...
...On the back of the card are talking points, which include: "Give me a TV show...
...Even if you get lucky and win, he says, "you're not going to be able to do anything, or everything's going to be undone when you're through...
...But his willingness innervates Clements...
...That's objectivism...
...Whether trying to start a food-delivery business or matching up venture capital and entrepreneurs, he's always struck by just how difficult it is to operate...
...As one might have guessed, it's the most influential to Clements...
...Logan Darrow Clements, as he saw it, was on the side of the angels and the overwhelming majority of the American people...
...They quickly gathered the necessary 25 signatures to land their proposal on the March ballot in the form of a nonbinding resolution called a "warrant article...
...Though "eminent domain" sounds like a badly named subdivision, it is not as euphemistic as it seems...
...The hermit business is unfair, since he reportedly has plenty of friends...
...Nobody, that is, except Souter's fulminating neighbor across the street, who starts bellowing, over and over again, "That's private property...
...I mention to Meany that he just essentially made Clements's point...
...When I tell him I thought Souter's house was abandoned, he says, "You're tellin' me...
...The enduring theme of most of his ventures, both prospective and realized, is frustration with government regulation...
...Like all objectivists, he profoundly distrusts government, which has a "monopoly on the initiation of force," so he'd only seek public office reluctantly...
...Dessert might include Rocky Road to Serfdom Ice Cream, or perhaps a nice plate of Petit Forfeitures...
...He's skeptical of the whole hotel project— he's never seen a new B&B in the area last longer than two years...
...He was flooded with suggestions for names of dishes that he could serve in the hotel's Just Deserts Caf...
...At door after door, bed-headed men in Patriots sweatshirts and women in Tigger pajamas greet us...
...When his dad told him of clients seeking tech subsidies from the government, Clements bristled...
...Clements likens himself to firefighters who, to combat a raging blaze in the forest, will sometimes set small fires in its path to starve the original fire of fuel before it can become an all-consuming wildfire, thus "fighting fire with fire...
...Whichever point in the circle you interrupt the dog, you still have the same dog...
...But increasingly, people are asked to fork over their land to private interests, from chain restaurants to condo towers to yacht clubs, that local governments know will bring in higher tax revenues...
...He stressed that states are perfectly free to place tighter restrictions on their own takings powers...
...In order to get Weare to initiate eminent domain proceedings against Souter, the insurgents must persuade three selectmen to vote for it...
...Clements and the CPNR have a multipronged strategy...
...He pulls a card out of his wallet that he uses to refresh himself "in case I'm on Fox News...
...Sure, government makes it look easy, but it's no small task stealing a person's house...
...When I suggest that this approach was rather un-Michael Mooreish of him, he responds, "I'm not really the stalking type...
...The town is run by five selectmen, two of whose terms end in March...
...To that end, Clements and the CPNR have resolved to influence the board, to put it mildly...
...We slide up ice-covered driveways...
...and, "That idiot...
...He missed the cutoff for residency...
...While this might sound like a perfectly acceptable tactic to an urban planner in Leningrad, circa 1925, Americans tend to look less kindly on it...
...The night before the first event, Clements frantically buzzes around the store, complaining about Murphy, of Murphy's Law fame...
...It's just for show...
...We just leave them like that to give you guys practice," he says...
...He wears a Code Enforcement Officer badge on his belt, which brings an air of authority to the Hatfield vs...
...They'd gang up on me...
...They are against the ploy in practice because they agree with the principle...
...Fottler doesn't support Clements's plan, since he too is a private property absolutist (meaning neither does he support the Kelo decision...
...The difference, apparently, is that the selectmen are moral absolutists, believing government should never abuse eminent domain, whereas Clements believes government should abuse it just this once, to advance his scheme and promote his larger purpose...
...I'm good at being unpopular...
...But others, like Clements, think that misses the big picture...
...He's mild mannered and laughs easily, often at his own jokes...
...By contrast, Clements is operating inside the law, illustrating its absurdity by using the law against itself...
...It derives from the Latin dominium eminens, meaning "supreme lordship," giving its victims an unsubtle hint as to how they'll fare if eminent domain is used against them...
...Around the bend lives Lorry Fottler, who's out pruning blueberry bushes in a Mr...
...An Ayn Rand devotee, he heads an objectivist discussion group back home in Los Angeles...
...A bad athlete in a school that rewarded hockey prowess, Clements says he wasn't taunted so much as ignored...
...Bosh, said Sandra Day O'Connor in a blistering dissent that was joined by Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and William Rehnquist...
...He stated that the court's decision was one that yielded "results that I consider unwise," explaining that "the law compelled a result I would have opposed if I were a legislator...
...For the most part, the unmarried 66-year-old justice has lived in this house since he was 11, long sharing it with his widowed mother, now departed...
...Supreme Court, too, ended up deferring to the city in a contentious 5-4 split, determining that New London was on the up-and-up about its development project being for "public use," as required by the Constitution...
...Looking for investors, he's already cut a few introductory shorts, such as one in which a monkey throws darts at the stocks charts, picking investments with a higher yield than you'd get from Social Security...
...As a lifelong entrepreneur, Clements isn't a big fan of the government...
...An unapologetic capitalist in proud Randian fashion, Clements started selling "Lost Liberty" items on his website, everything from throw pillows to camisoles...
...But that's a hard sell...
...They're like, 'Oh, so and so's trying to take over the party!' Who cares...
...He doesn't support it, since he regards Souter as a friend...
...But eminent domain loopholes should be closed in the legislature, as her state-representative husband, Neal Kurk (a Clements detractor who Clements calls "Neal Jerk"), is trying to do...
...It would be over in a day...
...The selectmen thus far have expressed unanimous distaste for Clements's project, but that in itself is an interesting plot twist, what Clements calls an "ironic pretzel...
...If the project ever goes forward, the final hurdle will be the town's building inspector, Chip Meany...
...As Bill Pierce, a Boeing employee who traveled all the way from Seattle for the rally, says, "That's like saying the federal government's pumping out poison water, but oh, if you don't want it, you can filter it out at your locality...
...When it didn't, he was not only devastated, but moved to action...
...Once, I go with Clements and Rick Dowlearn, his entertaining sidekick/cameraman who's worked most recently on the Discovery Channel's MythBusters...
...It was also the day that Clements, in response to that decision, resolved to swipe the house of Supreme Court Justice Matt Labash is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard...
...If he succeeds in getting the town of Weare, New Hampshire, where Souter's house is located, to marshal eminent domain against Souter, Clements will raise funds to build his Lost Liberty Hotel on Souter's land...
...He has great affection for Souter, who he says is like a member of the family...
...The sale hadn't made him rich, but it had kept him solvent while he'd learned the video-production trade, taxed his credit cards, and started a new production company, Freestar Media...
...Ever the objectivist, Clements believes that reality should be taken as it is and not as you want it to be, so he is given to making painfully candid admissions...
...But they ignored the injunction, and helped themselves...
...If you don't like a court decision, you don't go around personally punishing judges...
...Over my week in New Hampshire, I visit the Souter homestead twice...
...Similarly, Clements aims to abuse eminent domain in order to stop the abuse of eminent domain...
...In the majority's hands, "public use" was now a "virtual nullity...
...Supreme Court issued its Kelo v. City of New London, Conn...
...She's against them confiscating Souter's property, but if they do, and a hotel is erected, "I'll be the first one there...
...If we get enough money, we'll go after the other four...
...The whole thing is pretty much for show," he says...
...A typical meal might start with the Chicken Seizure Salad and Revenge Soup (served cold...
...Suffering from a cold on the long drive up from the Boston airport, he got lost repeatedly...
...Jeremy even still cuts his grass, or what's left of it, which he's done since he was a kid...
...Christ, the poor guy...
...Actually, a New Hampshire libertarian group has made noises about going after Stephen Breyer's vacation home in Plainfield...
...But he says he'll support it if it's the town's will...
...A zippy evening for the group might entail a field trip to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center or sitting through a presentation on The Force Minimization Theory of Ethical Taxation...
...It carried over into his adult life and fired his entrepreneurial spirit...
...They hear about property rights and selectman races and also hear from Ron Bianco, America's foremost eminent domain song parodist, who treats the crowd to repurposed Dylan covers such as "Knockin' on Souter's Door...
...We have ours...
...But I don't have the money for a year-abroad program at my educational institute...
...As an objectivist, Clements is committed to Rand's notion of rational self-interest, self-reliance, and pretty much anything beginning with the prefix "self...
...But even if Clements overcame these obstacles, Meany would still deny him, because first he'd have to go to the five wise men of the zoning board to get "special exception" approval for the project...
...For an entrée, there'd be the Bader-Ginz Burger with Half-Baked Potato or the Eminent Lo Mein...
...When porn star and fellow candidate Mary Carey sat in his lap on the Jay Leno show, photos of it "ended up in Japanese newspapers," he says...
...He speaks from experience, of course, having suffered the indignities of running for office in the California gubernatorial election...
...You get everything directly from the source—it's part of our epistemology...
...When eminent domain is employed, one often hears that it's necessary for "the public good...
...It's the ultimate buyer's market...
...Eminent domain's dictionary definition is "the right of a government to appropriate private property for public use, usually with compensation to the owner...
...Even so, he says of the George Bush appointee, "Of course, he's been the laughingstock of the Republican party because he's certainly not been conservative...
...Nothing in his opinion, however, revealed his wishy-washiness as plainly as a speech he later gave to the Clark County Bar Association in Las Vegas...
...But still, he finds their addiction to electoral politics to be an exercise in wheel-spinning...
...He's pretty bad about asking for directions...
...New way to fight government...
...Consequently, wrote O'Connor, "the specter of condemnation hangs over all property...
...As Dana Berliner writes in her book Public Power, Private Gain, "blight" these days can include "too-small side yards, 'diverse ownership' (different people own properties next to each other), 'inadequate planning,' and lack of a two-car attached garage...
...Here, a new Dunkin' Donuts qualifies as an economic boom...
...In fact, if Clements does get Souter's house, Fottler says the justice has an open invitation to crash in his barn...
...When court's not in session in Washington, this is where he still lives...
...Seven months after his opening shot, it is mid-January, and I'm standing with Clements in a strip-mall Staples in New Hampshire...
...It is clear now that not only is he not joking about his project, but he's as serious as an objectivist discussion group batting around "egoist reasons to have children" or the extent to which "volition" is involved "in concept formation...
...Because when you take one man's land, you take everybody's...
...Throughout the country, cities now continually seize properties for every reason from economic development to elimination of "blight...
...As Keith Lacasse, an architect and former hockey goalie who is also running for selectman, tells it, the townsmen then put the sheriff and his deputies on their horses and cut off the horses' ears and manes to devalue the animals...
...We're doing a home-schooling program...
...It would pain him, however, to do so...
...Nobody is home...
...If David Souter's 200-year-old home, inherited from his late mother who inherited it from her parents, can be seized for cockamamie reasons under the guise of economic development, so can anybody's...
...decision...
...I hit from afar, sort of like a cruise missile...
...I think a statement definitely needs to be made [about eminent domain abuse], though the wrong statement's being made," says Meany...
...Meany is against the Souter taking, too, just as he's against all eminent-domain takings for private gain...
...On another occasion, I walk about the neighborhood myself, in hopes of having more civilized encounters with Souter's neighbors...
...That's what we're doing...
...His numerous critics suggest that he's engaging in vigilantism, and that this is tantamount to protesting capital punishment by killing the guy who throws the switch on the electric chair...
...Clements ignores him at first, then screws up enough vitriol to counter, "Oh yeah, teach him about private property...
...In Atlas Shrugged, the creative class ceases to create, withholding the benefits of what it most values, in order to protest statist interference...
...I ask him to remind me which justices were "for" and "against...
...Just kidding on the last one, he says...
...Others aren't so conflicted...
...Unbidden, Fottler seeks to correct any misconceptions about Souter: "He's not gay...
...Various windows are cracked, and the shades drawn over them are yellowed, with constellations of worn-through pinholes...
...As Gary Hopper—a former state delegate, Weare resident, and chair of the CPNR—says, it's the kind of ballot where "you sit down in the morning, start reading it, take a nap around noontime, then get back up and finish...
...In practice, a "public purpose" is anything that land-grabbing cities and the private developers they're in bed with want...
...He doesn't make much money you know...
...Before the American Revolution, King George III had dibs on the town's tall white pines, which he used for sailing masts for his Royal Navy...
...In other words, they, like Clements, tend to look unfavorably on the Supreme Court's Kelo decision, and disapprove of using eminent domain to promote private economic gain even if the local authorities stand to reap tax rewards...
...Through Freestar, he hoped to launch a syndicated show highlighting government authoritarianism and dimwittedness by becoming "an objectivist Michael Moore...
...I'd be the first one off the island in Survivor...
...With scads of media in tow, he didn't even bother knocking on Souter's door, perhaps not wishing to seem rude, since he harbors no ill will toward Souter personally...
...That must be from an old dictionary, since "public use," after decades of constitutional erosion, has been transformed into "public purpose...
...The bad guys, along with Souter and Stevens, are Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer...
...In a way, that's why he's in New Hampshire now...
...They figured he was still out there reading by the wood stove...
...Hardly known as a strict-con-structionist hysteric, O'Connor maintained that the majority had effectively gutted the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which states, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation...
...Clements would like to know what greater public good there is than shining a light on eminent-domain abuse by targeting the people who permit it...
...Outside the hall afterwards, Clements is in a close huddle with a United Airlines pilot who's come from New York, and who says he'd be willing to move up here immediately and run for selectman if it'll make the difference...
...The U.S...
...This was like spitting in the eye of James Madison, who took his private property seriously when he wrote, "That alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own...
...His current plans call for the original house to be left standing as the site for the Just Deserts Caf...
...The second prong of Operation Steal Souter's House is to neutralize the board of selectmen by infiltrating it...
...And that was just over pine trees...
...If it is, Clements says, he's keeping the lawsuit option open...
...When the sheriff came to exact the king's toll, he holed up at a local inn...
...I ask to see it, saying I'm genuinely interested, but Winnie's been burned by reporters before...
...And David Souter's our first student...
...It was a plan so beautifully ruthless, so poetically retributive, that it practically begged to be formalized in a press release, which he quickly drew up...
...Of Souter, a man who doesn't typically arouse great passions, they say things like, "Get him...
...The houses in Weare are so widely spaced that we don't reach many of them...
...Even if they swept the election, they'd still hold only two of the five selectman positions, one vote shy of declaring open season on Souter...
...I go out with Clements and his cameraman...
...Can you imagine if those guys were around today...
...That's assuming the article isn't gutted at an upcoming deliberative session that will finalize the ballot language...
...Before he does, however, he mentions many other hurdles that Clements will have to clear...
...Clements smiles when they say this, turning to me and explaining, "He has his opinions...
...An old '60s radical and Vietnam vet who at least appreciates the artfulness of the stunt, Meany nevertheless adds, "It's a convoluted form of logic...
...Souter comes over for the occasional New Year's party, at which he never raises much of a ruckus (Souter's not a wear-the-lampshade type of guy...
...This sort of goodwill is precisely what gets destroyed when civil society frays as entire neighborhoods are wiped out by eminent domain, one of the reasons that Winnie Ilsley, who lives down the street from Fottler, doesn't support Kelo either...
...The red barn-like garage door is rotting from the ground up...
...Who wouldn't like a few more Starbuckses in town...
...When conscience (or rational self-interest) called in 2003, he tried to do just that in the California gubernatorial recall election...
...They often don't have "a common ethical background" behind their grab-bag of grievances, which range from keeping the government out of their bongs to not wanting to wear motorcycle helmets...
...I'd take those five justices on a year-abroad study—to Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba, Canada...
...Several years before, Clements had cashed out of his dot-com and magazine startup, which had attempted to link investors seeking innovative ideas with entrepreneurs looking for capital...
...The porch windows are without screens, and the fractured concrete porch itself is blanketed in drifts of wet leaves...
...It's like a big game of Dungeons & Dragons for them," he says...
...The hardline objectivists used that against me, because it's not the objectivist strategy to run for office...
...While Clements didn't even approach the door during his last visit in August, he does this time, egged on by me...
...Clements had earlier dabbled with a San Diego eminent domain case, toying with the idea of going after a city council member's home...
...Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a RitzCarlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory...
...Historically, the "public use" requirement meant that a local government could order businesses or homeowners to vacate their property for schools, highways, and other genuinely public works...
...But they hope that an incumbent will be converted to the cause—by a commanding "Yes" vote for the warrant article...
...He reasons it's the only way they'll ever win elections...
...Columnist Michael Kinsley put it more snidely: "The court ruled, 5-4, that yuppifi-cation is a valid public purpose...
...Sometimes it's nice to get away from the stresses of the doll business, even if it's just around the corner...
...Weare is a typical New England hamlet, all spires and cemeteries and quaint town-square gazebos...
...He needs 50 clipboards, which Staples has exactly, until one of the clips breaks, leaving him with 49...
...Across the street lives Jeremy Gilman, a 24-year-old Marine veteran who drove a truck in Iraq that took small-arms fire 79 times...
...Chip has a walrus mustache and looks like Wilford Brimley...
...Souter's house is tucked into the middle of nowhere, or "No Weare," as the pun-happy natives would have it...
...Assuming the town would give Clements title to the house, the whole thing still might get tied up in court...
...Justice John Paul Stevens's ambivalent majority opinion in Kelo was laced with caveats...
...If Clements gets past the Tali-board, as he calls the selectmen, Meany says he'll still have to prove the project's economic viability—a shaky proposition, considering the location of Souter's property...
...The Gilman yard is littered with all manner of debris, from rusty equipment, to pick-up trucks with beds full of discarded Mountain Dew cans, to a plastic Santa face down in the mud, looking like it toppled off the rail-less front porch...
...Even supplied with Souter's precise address, MapQuest is little help in finding it...
...Throughout these travails, Clements remains optimistic: "You've got to confuse Murphy, use his strength against him...
...It's hard to tell where the mold ends and the peeling brown paint begins...
...He's unemployed, living in his parents' basement now that the seasonal firewood-cutting business has dried up...
...Once that's done," says Meany, "I'll give him a permit...
...They also hear about the only other thing Weare is famous for—the Pine Tree Riot...
...Absolutely not...
...The next day, a healthy crowd packs the Old Town Hall, despite the AFC championship game being televised simultaneously...
...The latter wished to demolish a working-class neighborhood in order to erect such public necessities as a "small urban village" and a parking lot for Pfizer employees...
...The Kelo case involved a group of homeowners in New London, Connecticut, who held out against the city and its private development corporation...
...Despite proposing crowd-pleasers such as privatization of all public schools, he finished 131st out of 135 candidates...
...The warrant article currently sits in the 48th position on a 50-warrant ballot...
...The way I look at this," says Clements, favoring directness over diplomacy, "Souter is sort of like al Qaeda, and the selectmen are sort of like the Taliban...
...Raised in upstate New York, he's the son of a civil liability attorney, "the type that raises the expense of everything we use...
...The case came before the Supreme Court after Connecticut's State Supreme Court ruled it was the city's prerogative to seize the homes...
...Rumor has it that Souter has legal connections...
...In all, only two people decline to sign his petition, and one of those supports it, he just fears retribution...
...Clements says if they don't swing this election, they'll be back come the next one...
...We may have to remove the Taliban to get al Qaeda...
...The puddled, half-bald lawn looks like Souter's trying to run a bathhouse for bloodworms...
...When the Minutemen hit small portions of the Mexican border in lawn chairs, they didn't actually halt illegal immigration, but they highlighted government ineptitude as never before...
...Not for nothing can anti-eminent domain types recite the plaint of George Bernard Shaw, "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul...
...That pleases some, like the CPNR's Hopper, who says, "If legislators do their jobs, they'll stop us from taking Souter's house...
...The project is too important to abandon: "I'd like to show them that without property rights, there is no economic development...
...He just took away your private property on June twenty . . . [the exact date escapes him] . . . the end of June, you idiot...
...Checks of support came pouring into Weare's town office, even though it wasn't accepting them...
...So I thought we'd just do some home-schooling...
...Clements traipses up to the patio, and knocks firmly...
...When asked why he chose Souter over the other four justices, he thinks a bit, then says, "Because his address was the easiest to find on the Internet...
...Souter is reportedly so cheap that a New Hampshire congressman once told the Boston Globe how an irate Souter burst into the state Supreme Court building, waving around an electric bill that had exceeded $30 in one month...
...He only charges seven bucks an hour, staying in Souter's spending range, since he never had the heart to raise the price on him...
...If the government asks you to sell your property at its price and you decline, you can be forcibly removed...
...But that doesn't deter Clements...
...In fact, just as in scores of other states since the Kelo decision, New Hampshire legislators are rushing to their state-house offering all manner of anti-eminent domain legislation and constitutional amendments...
...He's in it to win it, and isn't going anywhere...
...Colleagues who regularly paid $200 "were shocked that he even had an electric bill...
...As someone who'd paid attention for years to eminent domain abuses—going so far as to donate to the Institute for Justice, the country's foremost eminent-domain watchdog—he actually chilled champagne in anticipation of the Kelo decision, assuming it would come down the other way...
...But from the looks of his wreck of a house, the charge of parsimony should stick...
...Atlas Shrugged...
...Those are my two things...
...But they're libertarian," cautions Clements, "so probably nothing will happen...
...Local handicapping on its prospects for success are all over the map...
...Even without all the annoying puns, one could easily conclude it was some kind of joke, though Clements's press release warns, "This is not a prank...
...He's come to the "Live Free or Die" state for a weekend of petition drives and rallies...
...An excellent judge of character, she says, "You're a phony, and I don't mind saying it...
...In his dress shoes, Clements gracefully skates across them like an objectivist Brian Boitano, cautioning us clumsier types to take small steps and to keep our center of gravity over our legs...
...You know what he told us...
...But when the Kelo decision came down, he had a new vision...
...With the exception of one woman, who kindly tells us her husband will shoot us if he finds us filming on their property, Clements gets a warm reception...
...On a Saturday morning, a small but hearty band of activists break into 15 teams, blanketing Weare to get a petition signed in order to demonstrate support for the warrant article...
...Like most Rand disciples, Clements regards libertarians as embryos to objectivists' fully formed human beings: You never know what you'll get when you bite into one...
...Many are well aware of the Liberty Hotel project, even if they don't recognize Clements from his appearances on Hannity & Colmes...
...When the story broke last summer, I too believed it was just a clever stunt, a laugh-along middle finger directed at The Man...
...I go to see him one morning in the middle of a snowstorm...
...If you need an urban legend debunked on short notice, such as The Myth of The Exploding Pants, a phenomenon afflicting New Zealand farmers some years back, Rick's your man...
...The real action, Clements believes, is in "fighting creatively," as he's doing now, turning the government's power against it...
...Clements decided to use the Supreme Court's own ruling, effectively permitting cities to seize homes for private economic gain, to go after the home of one of the Supreme Court's own, David Souter...
...Your party only has like 20 members anyways...
...He said if anybody asks where he lives, tell them it's here...
...David Souter, and put up in its place the Lost Liberty Hotel...
...Evicting David Souter If the justice is so fond of eminent domain, say protesters, let's seize his ancestral property and develop a charming bed and breakfast on it BY MATT LABASH Weare, New Hampshire Logan Darrow Clements doesn't seem like the sort of fellow who'd go around stealing the houses of Supreme Court justices...
...Nonobjec-tivists from across the political spectrum, they call themselves the Committee for the Protection of Natural Rights (hereafter, the CPNR...
...So when Clements's press release went out, it reverberated nationwide...
...Dad, you're taking stolen money," he told him...
Vol. 11 • February 2006 • No. 21
