Nature boy for property rights.WITh HIS SQUARE jaw, his colorless demeanor, and a grooming style straight out of a 1940s Boy Scout Handbook, the long-running comic strip comic strip, combination of cartoon with a story line, laid out in a series of pictorial panels across a page and concerning a continuous character or set of characters, whose thoughts and dialogues are indicated by means of "balloons" containing written speech. hero Mark Trail (official spokes-character for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Noun 1. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - an agency in the Department of Commerce that maps the oceans and conserves their living resources; predicts changes to the earth's environment; provides weather reports and forecasts floods and hurricanes and ) isn't someone you'd expect to find rebelling against government authority. Indeed, the fictive fic·tive adj. 1. Of, relating to, or able to engage in imaginative invention. 2. Of, relating to, or being fiction; fictional. 3. Not genuine; sham. nature journalist spends much of his time literally punching out poachers and other despoilers of the nation's forests and wetlands, and turning them over to state and local game wardens. Yet here he is getting ready to deliver his trademark right hook to eminent domain eminent domain, the right of a government to force the owner of private property sell it if it is needed for a public use. The right is based on the doctrine that a sovereign state has dominion over all lands and buildings within its borders, which has its origins in abuse in the strip's mythical "Lost Forest," where local developers are trying to use the government to seize ecologically valuable land in order to build a road. Mark Trail writer and artist Jack Elrod says the storyline was inspired by several high-profile property battles, among them a plan to seize land on the site of the Civil War Battle of Lovejoy Station, near Elrod's hometown of Atlanta. Mark Trail, which appears in 175 papers, is hardly a trendsetter trend·set·ter n. One that initiates or popularizes a trend: "The Golden State, ever the trendsetter, reformed its property tax" New York. even in the funny pages. But in this case it's an indicator of how property condemnation captured the nation's attention and provoked a serious backlash after the U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo v. City of New London Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)[1], was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another to further economic development. decision. As that unfortunate ruling marks its first grim birthday this month, it's worth remembering, with Mark Trail, that the government's unlimited condemnation authority goes against nature. |
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