With recent revelations about the application of civil asset forfeiture - the IRS seizing bank accounts without the bother of filing any sort of charges, and various "law enforcement" agencies engaging in outright highway robbery - the question is finally being asked in public:
Has civil asset forfeiture gone too far?
Why, yes. Yes, it has.
It had gone too far back in the 1980s, when Ed Meese was promoting it.
And it's gone even beyond the dreadful Meese Doctrine (paraphrased from memory*):
From the moment a crime is committed on a property, that property belongs to the government.
The logical implication being that, if you're the victim of a burglary - a crime being committed on your property - the government is thereby entitled to take anything the burglars left, including your home and land.
And the business about the Fifth Amendment not applying, because it's the property and not the owner that stands accused? Nonsense:
nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law
The effect is to take the property away from its owner, thereby depriving the owner of it. The fiction that the thing is somehow guilty alters this not in the least.
If the property has an owner, or at least someone who'll say "Hey! That's mine! Where ya goin' with it?" as opposed to "Duuuuh, I got no idear how that got there! I never seen it before!", then due process most assuredly must apply.
* Seared! Seared, I tell ya!
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