HOW FAR HAVE PROPERTY RIGHTS BEEN ERODED?

An e-mail correspondent wrote in, responding to my Feb. 16 column, in which
I tried to point out some of the unstated presumptions underlying the
federal government's threats (backed up by a chorus of unquestioning
editorialists) to arrest or fine anyone in Texas or Louisiana who didn't
come across quickly enough in turning over Columbia space shuttle debris:

"Love your columns. But in the 'Government is in Charge' column, I think you
missed something. Having pieces of the space shuttle fall on your land isn't
really the same as someone willfully throwing it there and then complaining
that you kept it. It's more like an auto accident in which the force of the
accident throws one of the cars onto your lawn. You don't get to keep the
car. An insurance company pays you for you damages and the car goes back to
its owner, generally, no?"

I responded:

That's an excellent point, and well worth examining.

It's certainly true that we have been gradually acclimatized to believe our
so-called "property rights" do not extend to preventing police and tow truck
operators and deputies with bloodhounds from trespassing on our land without
seeking our permission for any number of reasons -- gathering data and
evidence being one of many.

What other commonly tolerated exceptions to our so-called "property rights"
can we think of ... besides the biggest one, of course -- the fact that the
government will seize our land if we don't pay it rents in the form of
"property taxes," the same way medieval peasants had to pay rents to the
lord of the castle to keep living in huts that had belonged to their
families for generations?

What if a single mother raising four small children dials 9-1-1 because one
of her children is choking on a piece of candy? The responding EMTs find no
evidence that the children are abused, injured or malnourished, but they do
note (remember, the young mom wasn't expecting company -- and as it turns
out her washing machine had been broken for a week) that the place is dirty
and unkempt.

"Just to be on the safe side," they phone in a report of these conditions to
the county "Child Welfare" agents. Can those county agents follow the
firemen right into your home and seize and take away your children, without
any other "probable cause," court warrant, or due process?

It happened to Alexandera Dykes of Colorado Springs (whose parents live in
Las Vegas) in February of 2000.

What if "narcotics officers" decide to climb a fence marked "no trespassing"
and hike two miles onto private property and seize marijuana found growing
there and charge the property owner with a drug felony, without any kind of
warrant or other probable cause? Would the courts rule that was an
acceptable intrusion on our so-called "private property rights"?

Courts in Kentucky and Tennessee have done just that. In fact, in the case
of retired millionaire Donald Scott of Malibu, Calif., they found
plainclothes police agents did nothing worthy of indictment on Oct. 2, 1992,
when they cut a security chain, ran up the driveway with their slavering
dogs, burst into the Scott household at dawn with drawn guns, terrifying
Mrs. Scott in her kitchen as she made her morning coffee, and shooting Mr.
Scott dead as he awakened and came running down the stairs in answer to her
screams, all because they claimed to have seen "marijuana plants growing
under the trees" while flying over in a helicopter.

Needless to say, the drug cops had submitted no photographs of the marijuana
plants ... because no marijuana plants were ever found. Accompanying the
police were park rangers who had tried unsuccessfully to convince Mr. Scott
to sell them his property so they could annex it to an adjoining park.
That'll show him.

Now, let us examine how the federal government would behave in your
"accident throws a car onto the lawn" example ... with just a few minor
details changed.

In our revised hypothetical case, the driver of a stolen car gets in an
accident which seriously injures several innocent parties, at which point
his car spins out of control, crashes through a fence, and comes to rest on
the front lawn ... of the Red Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. Police,
firemen and tow truck operators show up to remove the car as "evidence," and
to arrest the driver. The guards and an assistant Chinese consul of low
standing tell them, "No way, we think you're all CIA agents who have set up
this incident to get in here and plant listening devices. And furthermore,
we're giving sanctuary to the driver, who is a Chinese national."

Would the D.C. police go, "Tough crap, buddy, we're coming in?" Of course
not. They would refer everything to State Department ... which would work
out a compromise that would probably never see the car returned or the
driver put on trial in this country. This is the way our modern state deals
with other property owners which it considers to be truly "sovereign."

But how much more sovereign should American citizens be -- given that we are
supposedly the bosses of these overpaid government goons -- compared to the
representatives of some blood-stained foreign kleptocracy, who are "only
guests," and "only renting," at that?

Why are American sovereign citizens treated with threats of fines and arrest
should we fail to jump to attention and scour our property for the junk a
careless federal agency has dumped on our land (they could have politely
requested the help of the citizens of Texas and Louisiana, offering to
compensate them for any trouble and inconvenience.) Why was their first
instinct instead to resort to threats of armed force? And why, in contrast,
would they show so much more courtesy, respect and consideration to the
representatives of the bloodthirsty butchers of Tiananmen Square?

Next time: the answer.