I basically called George Will a shithead—or at least a periwighead, which is pretty much the same thing—a couple of days ago. Well, that was then, this is now. Now is George hitting one out of the park, labeling incoming attorney general Jeff Sessions a shithead for his championing of “civil forfeiture”, aka “stealing”—when the government takes something you own because it thinks (that is, it claims) that the object, be it cash, a car, a house—was involved in a crime.
Merry Christmas, George! How’s that contempt for simpleminded majoritarianism working out for you?
Afterwords
Radley Balko, who’s been exposing the horrors of civil forfeiture a lot longer than George, has a nice take on the practice here, although even Radley somehow can’t admit that it was Ronald Reagan who was the godfather, so to speak, of modern-day civil forfeiture, thanks to the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. Wikipedia fills us in here. Sarah Stillman gives a New Yorkerish take on the many evils of the practice here. The Supreme Court, supposedly the guardian of our liberties, has never raised a finger against civil forfeiture. In a 1996 case, Justice John Paul Stevens cast the single dissenting vote in a case involving a man who lost his house because weed.
