George Will writes that the Supreme Court may soon have the opportunity to rule on the Fifth Amendment protection of property rights. On the subject of property rights, Five states quite simply:

No person shall be. . .deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Will writes that the Supreme Court will soon have the opportunity to hear a case about government seizures of private property in New London, Connecticut.

That city, like many cities, needs more revenues. To enhance the Pfizer pharmaceutical company's $270 million research facility, it empowered a private entity, the New London Development Corporation, to exercise the power of eminent domain to condemn most of the Fort Trumbull neighborhood along the Thames River. The aim is to make space for upscale condominiums, a luxury hotel and private offices that would yield the city more tax revenues than can be extracted from the neighborhood's middle-class homeowners.

The question is: Does the Constitution empower governments to seize a person's most precious property -- a home, a business -- and give it to more wealthy interests so that the government can reap, in taxes, ancillary benefits of that wealth? Connecticut's court says yes, which turns the Fifth Amendment from a protection of the individual against overbearing government into a license for government to coerce individuals on behalf of society's strongest interests. Henceforth, what home or business will be safe from grasping governments pursuing their own convenience?

I cannot see how anyone who believes in the Constitution and Freedom could argue that the government should be empowered to seize private property from one person to give it to another. But for some reason when it comes to politicians and the Constitution, they read into it what they want it to say.