Thousands of Kelos

An Opinion Journal guest article highlights a new crop of stomach-turning abuses of power by revenue-hungry local governments. Using coercion,

Rather than condemn the property for a private developer and risk a lawsuit, Burien came up with a plan--it would put a road through the property, and the city manager told his staff to "make damn sure" it did. When a subsequent survey revealed that the road would not affect the building itself, but only sideswipe a small corner of the property, the staff developed yet another site plan that put the road directly through the building.

redefinition,

Auburn recently declared much of its beautiful downtown "blighted," and adopted a Community Renewal Plan. One city manager explained that blight "means anything that impairs or arrests sound growth"

and outright corruption,

A developer in the Port Chester, N.Y., demanded that Bart Didden give him either $800,000 or a 50% share in Mr. Didden's property, which was slated to be a CVS pharmacy--or the developer would have the village condemn it. Mr. Didden refused; the next day, the village condemned his property to hand it over to the developer to construct a Walgreens. Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to take the case.

in the onward march from the outdated notion of "government by consent of the governed" to the new old-fashioned way: for-profit government.

As America becomes more populous, more sophisticated, and more governed, we need to bolster the Constitution with a more robust definition of "consent of the governed." Government by voting majorities - which in small communities may represent 10 or 15% of all citizens - is not the same as government by consent of the governed. The U.S. Constitution was not written to give power to the government, but rather to limit the powers of government. It's high time to enforce the spirit of the document by clarifying and bolstering the fences that America's kind guardians have been quietly dismantling for the past two centuries.