To: TimF who wrote (27328 ) 8/29/2006 2:38:35 PM From: JohnM Read Replies (1) | Respond to You're heading too far into abstractions for me, Tim. But let me respond to some of the concrete stuff.I can think of three senses its public in two of them. Its publicly/government owned. Its generally open to the public (not every government facility is), but it is a specific controlled space, not "the commons", it isn't public in that sense. The government being able to regulate something isn't the same as the government directly owning something, and even if it does own something it can control its use through laws and regulations, or through operating as a normal property owner. The government might have some justification to owning the streets but if it tries to control them to the extent that a property owner could reasonably control his own property than it might be imposing a tyranny on the people. The same would not be true for a specific enclosed area of government property.
