Taking Property Without Compensation

Investor's Business Daily suggests that the plan to wipe out the health insurance industry might face some constitutional problems:

Under the Fifth Amendment, if the government takes property, the holder is entitled to due process and compensation. Usually, this concept of eminent domain applies to real estate seized for a public purpose.

What if the seizure is not of real property, but a business? The broad concept is still the same: If the government takes your property, you are entitled to your day in court and adjudicated compensation.

What if the government uses its cash to muscle into your territory and forces you to surrender customers by underpricing you for the sake of the "uninsured"?

Further, what if the government passes such stringent regulations that only a few large insurers already in bed with the government can survive?

The current House medical insurance bill and the purported Blue Dog compromise constructively take property without due process of law and compensation. Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the insurers "immoral" and "villains" and contends "they are doing everything they can to stop a public option."

Why is someone a villain if he doesn't agree to being robbed?

Of course, if Obama can get enough liberal judges on the courts he won't have to worry about constitutional challenges. The constitution is just an annoyance to those people, not the blueprint for how our nation is to be governed.