Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be charged with or convicted of a crime to lose homes, cars, cash or other property.

Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but civil forfeiture turns that principle on its head. With civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.

If the Democrats are going to pass that steaming pile of Health Care interference, then I’m leaving the country.

Actually, I had a vacation scheduled for next week anyway. I’ll be back.

I have little doubt that this “reform” will inhibit innovation in so many areas related to health care (oh, and liberty) enough to make the actual costs many times higher than the benefits. Some people were saying that not passing it would cause many extra deaths, but I’m pretty confident that passing it will.

Maybe, some day, it will be repealed (or never even passed). But, that doesn’t seem to be the way to bet.

I was going to write a post responding to the widespread complaints (largely against the Senate filibuster) that the government is broken, because a majority party can’t always get what it wants.

Fortunately, Will Wilkinson already wrote it.

Key excerpt:

From this perspective, the fact that a party decidedly but temporarily in the minority is able to defeat a measure that would have profound, long-term effects on the basic structure of the United States’ institutions is very good evidence that the system works!

What scares me is what will happen after some Republican gains, and the proposals get more “moderate”, and government starts “working.”