re: #45 Cato the Elder

I don’t believe there is a power of eminent domain in the nation that could stop the building of a religious institution of any kind without instant First Amendment court injunctions raining down from the judiciary.

In general, the courts tend to defer to state interpretations of eminent domain (see Kelo, for example, the case that gives everyone heartburn), but I think this one would be hard to pull off. One building? With such a controversy surrounding it? When the gubernatorial candidate already declared he would use eminent domain, not because he needed the land, but to prevent a religious community from building a mosque/center? I doubt it could be made to hold up.

From a contest in which people were challenged to turn a well-known prose passage into single-syllable words:

The Man can take your land to make a wide road, or a park, but he has to pay. Not through the nose, just pay.

My favorite entrant, though, did the opening paragraph of “Huckleberry Finn”. This paragraph mentions “the widow” and “Mary” several times. These are rephrased as “her whose mate died” and “her with the same name as her who had no sex but had a son who some say was the son of God”, the whole phrase repeated as many times as Twain uses the name “Mary”.