Irrelevant front page news

I did not miss tonight’s debate, and I saw Rick Perry and Mitt Romney fly at each other like fighting cocks. Perry accused Romney of hiring illegals, and Romney denied it, because (so he says) he never hires anyone directly. I see both of their points, but the Nevada audience obviously recognizes that it’s tough to know who you hire when you hire a contractor. It was an entertaining scrap.

But — I am sorry that the moderator never saw fit to ask any of the candidates about an issue on the front page of today’s WSJ. The federal government is confiscating legal businesses without due process of law.

TEWKSBURY, Mass.—The $57-a-night Motel Caswell, magnet for hard-luck cases, police patrol cars and the occasional drug deal, is the unlikely prize in a high-stakes tug-of-war between conservative legal activists and the government.

The motel’s owner, spurred by a recent Supreme Court decision, is trying to convince a federal court that the Constitution bars the U.S. Department of Justice from seizing his property, where guests have been found guilty of drug offenses. The owner, Russell Caswell, isn’t accused of any wrongdoing. But he stands to lose his business nonetheless under a law that calls for the forfeiture of properties linked to crimes.

Mr. Caswell’s federal court case challenges the U.S. government’s ballooning asset-forfeiture system that in more than 15,000 cases last year confiscated cash, cars, boats and real estate valued at $2.5 billion. While many asset forfeitures are tied to convictions, the federal government can seize properties stained by crime even if owners face no charges.

“People shouldn’t lose their property if they haven’t been convicted of any crime,” said Scott Bullock, a lawyer for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm in Arlington, Va., that has joined in the motel’s defense. “Mr. Caswell hasn’t even been accused.”

Civil rights groups, libertarians and attorneys defending against seizures say the government is overstepping its bounds in a practice that has swelled in the past decade to encompass some 400 federal statutes, covering crimes from drug trafficking to racketeering to halibut poaching.

Sigh.

Nothing new about it. This issue is so old in this blog that I could scream. I am glad to see it on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, though, and I think it is disgraceful that the candidates were not asked what they think.

What, if any, are the limits of the federal government’s power?

You’d almost think CNN didn’t care.