The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

Outrageous...

Any American who loves this country should be outraged at this story. The OpinionJournal.com reports on the plight of one John Rapanos , a 68 year old Michigan farmer, on trial for daring to fill a drainage ditch on his property with sand. Read that again, on HIS PROPERTY.

I grew up in NW Ohio, and we have tons of these drainage ditches. They are put in place to allow farm fields, the fields that we depend on to grow the crops we eat, to drain properly. They are NOT wetlands any more so than a footprint in the mud full of rainwater is a wetland. The judge in this case has thus far refused to sentence Mr. Rapanos. Here is what he said...

At his original sentencing hearing in 1998, the same Judge Zatkoff highlighted the absurdity of the situation when he pointed to a drug dealer he'd sentenced that day in the same courtroom. "Here we have a person," Judge Zatkoff said, "who commits crimes of selling dope and the government asks me to put him in prison for 10 months. And then we have an American citizen, who buys land, pays for it with his own money, and he moves some sand from one end to the other and [the] government wants me to give him 63 months in prison. Now, if that isn't our system gone crazy, I don't know what is. And I am not going to do it. I don't believe he got a fair trial."

Finally a judge with some common sense. 63 months in prison for filling in a ditch? Where are the advocates of Mumia crying out about the injustice here? Of course Rapanos is a white farmer, maybe even a Republican, so he should go to jail while a black cop-killer should be freed because he is the victim of racism.

The socialist extremes of the environmental movement have the same goals as the rest of the loony Left worldwide, seizing private property and the means of production. The socialist/communist movement hasn't gone away, just changed it's face. No longer the party of the worker, now it is the party of the radical environmental/animal rights/ "peace" movement. The face has changed but the doctrine has not. This is confiscatory seziure of our land. While the name on the deed (and the payment of mortagages and taxes) may still be ours, the truth is that by taking away the use of our property they have seized it in all but name.

How much more of this do we take? Unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats passing judgement from afar and the common American gets the shaft.