Donald Sterling Is a Vile Racist: But even a horrible human being doesn’t deserve to have his property stripped away.

From Slate via Instapundit:

“A private citizen whose private thoughts were audio-taped (perhaps illegally) has been told he can no longer own his private property because of the thoughts that were revealed on that tape. These thoughts were loathsome to be sure, but didn’t advocate anything illegal and didn’t call for any violent or even literally hurtful actions.”

Though given that, at this point, Sterling doesn’t have much to lose, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him strike back. The ex-Mistress is an obvious target for a lawsuit, since her recording was illegal in California, I believe. And if, as I saw some talking head saying on CNN this morning, the NBA’s charter doesn’t specifically address this kind of thing, he might be able to sue them for civil rights conspiracy: Combining to punish him for free expression. The damages might be large, and the litigation would be extensive and involve a lot of discovery, and a lot of closely held NBA financial information would probably become public.

I’d do it, if I were him, but I was always a Samson-in-the-temple kind of guy. And if I were an 81-year-old billionaire who’d been savaged in public for weeks, I’d probably be more inclined to do so.

I hope Sterling does sue the NBA, let's get ALL the secrets out of all the owners. See if they like those apples.