Obama Is Said to Select Kagan as Justice

[orion5]

Originally Posted by rdret1

IMHO, how can you be a Supreme Court Justice without ever having been a judge?

I've read she is orally persuasive and studied the constitution in school.

C'mon people, can't we lower the bar for this one? She'll only be on the SCOTUS for 40 years or so....how much damage can one lil 'ole academic intellect do?

LMAO.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by rdret1

IMHO, how can you be a Supreme Court Justice without ever having been a judge?

The same question crossed many peoples' minds during Harriet Miers's short-lived nomination.

FWIW, previous justices who had no experience as judges before joining the court are listed here <<LINK>>.

[Dozer523]

Originally Posted by Pete

So what do you call a person who feels strongly about an issue but will put it aside to advance? Other than a politician.

To advance or to do their job? How about A Professional? I'll willing to bet that there are many here who have done something that goes against personal strong feelings and yet it falls in the category of "Mission First". sometimes we just do our jobs.

Originally Posted by steel71

Just another nail in the Constitution's coffin. We now have 6 Catholics and 3 Jews that make up the Supreme Court. Zero protestants, who happen to make up the majority population in this country.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...id=zKceHIsEuqM

No Extreme Unction for you! Opps, never mind. We'll just leave you out of all the secret ritual stuff. Ever wonder why we kneel at odd times in the middle of mass,? So Protestants are easy to identify. we have ways of dealing with folks that are where they have no business. . .

Seriously, do you actually think that's of any importance? Right up there with hair style IMHO. Of course, there is that nominated by the current president hurdle. . .

[SF-TX]

This article was posted a year ago in The Weekly Standard.

Elena Kagan, Radical?
BY Michael Goldfarb
May 6, 2009 11:06 AM

Earlier this week, President Obama called Republican Senator Orrin Hatch to discuss the vacancy on the Court left by Justice Souter. According to Hatch's office, the president "assured Hatch...that he would appoint a pragmatist, not a radical, to this important position." Among the names considered at the top of President Obama's short-list is that of Elena Kagan, the recently confirmed solicitor general and former dean of the Harvard Law School. Yesterday THE WEEKLY STANDARD obtained a copy of Elena Kagan's senior thesis, written almost thirty years ago while an undergraduate at Princeton. The title of the thesis: "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933"

Obviously, one imagines that Kagan's views have evolved significantly over the last three decades, but given Obama's stated aversion to radicalism, it's certainly worth noting the radical roots of the nation's top lawyer. In her acknowledgments, Kagan writes:

"Sean Wilentz painstakingly read each page of this thesis - occasionally two or three times. His comments and suggestions were invaluable; his encouragement was both needed and appreciated. Finally, I would like to thank my brother Marc, whose involvement in radical causes led me to explore the history of American radicalism in the hope of clarifying my own political ideas."

What were Kagan's own ideas?

"In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories than of socialism's greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation's established parties?"(pp. 127)

"Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP exhausted itself forever and further reduced labor radicalism in New York to the position of marginality and insignificance from which it has never recovered. The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one's fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope." (pp. 129-130)

Her political sympathies (at the time) seem quite clear -- and radical.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblog...an_radical.asp

[SF-TX]

From the World Socialist Web Site:

...Kagan was raised in a liberal Democratic family in Manhattan. Her father was a housing and tenants’ rights lawyer, her mother a public schoolteacher, as are her two brothers. She was steeped in the social-democratic politics of the New York Jewish trade union milieu, not only through her family connections, but as a student, writing a 153-page senior thesis at Princeton on the politics of the Socialist Party in New York City, 1900-1933. She later won a fellowship to study at Oxford, where her chosen field of study was “the history of British and European trade unionism.”

Her thesis advisor, history professor Sean Wilentz, interviewed by the Daily Princetonian after Kagan’s nomination was announced, defended his former student against suggestions that the topic of her thesis revealed well-hidden left-wing views. “Elena Kagan is about the furthest thing from a socialist. Period. And always had been. Period,” Wilentz declared.

While she served as a law clerk for two prominent liberals, appeals court judge Abner Mikva and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Kagan’s liberalism is rooted in identity politics, primarily feminism and gay rights, and has no connection with the mass struggles of earlier years. She shares that political background with Obama himself, who is two years younger, and worked side by side with her in the early 1990s at the University of Chicago Law School...

...Kagan described the inability of gays to serve openly in the military as a “monstrous injustice,” a term which apparently does not apply to such barbarities as the indefinite detention of prisoners without trial or judicial proceeding of any kind, in US facilities like Guantánamo Bay, assassinations ordered by the US president, or the systematic illegal wiretapping of US citizens.

In her confirmation hearing as Solicitor General, Kagan embraced the Bush administration perspective of a global war on terror, in which the entire planet should be considered, from a legal standpoint, part of the battlefield in which the rules of war and military justice could be applied. She later defended the “state secrets privilege,” a legal doctrine that effectively bars suits against illegal government surveillance, and opposed granting habeas corpus rights to prisoners at US facilities in Afghanistan.

On economic policy, like the liberals she will join on the court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonya Sotomayor, Kagan has a distinctly pro-corporate and pro-business record, having served as a paid member of an advisory panel for Goldman Sachs from 2005 to 2008.

Link

[Utah Bob]

Originally Posted by orion5

I've read she is orally persuasive..

That conjures up a mental image that is unpleasant at best.

[afchic]

Originally Posted by steel71

Just another nail in the Constitution's coffin. We now have 6 Catholics and 3 Jews that make up the Supreme Court. Zero protestants, who happen to make up the majority population in this country.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...id=zKceHIsEuqM

So why is 6 catholics and 3 jews another nail in the coffin? I would think that some of her liberal leanings, rather than her religous affiliation would be what bothers most people.

[Bordercop]

The link: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...irca_2005.html

Kagan on Obama circa 2005
Greg Halvorson

By now, anyone with a working knowledge of narcissism recognizes the pathological condition of the president. Even liberals concede that the man who sends thrills up Chris Mathews' leg is self-absorbed.

It therefore makes sense that Elena Kagan, his Solicitor General, is the SCOTUS nominee. In 2005, at a Harvard luncheon, Ms. Kagan waxed eloquent on Obama. She'd had the "privilege" of attending the DNC National Convention the year before and had experienced rapture:

He opened his mouth, said a few words, and the place was mesmerized. You could hear a pin drop. In part, that is because of all the rock star qualities he has: the eloquence, the magnetism, the great looks, the brilliance. When he opens his mouth, you know what you're getting.

Kagan went on to call Obama a "hero," concluding that he is "truly one of the great public servants of our time," and gives many "hope" in the future of our country.

Wow. To label a man who voted "present" in the Illinois assembly and was a do-nothing Senator "great" is remarkable. If Obama is "great," may I ask, What is bad? True, when he opens his mouth, we know what we're getting, but based on the above, we know what we're getting when Kagan opens hers. A kool aid progressive who defines "hero" oddly, who believes rock stars "eloquent," and who's dipped her toe in the pool of Narcissus to admire Obama admiring himself.

[Dozer523]

Originally Posted by afchic

So why is 6 catholics and 3 jews another nail in the coffin? I would think that some of her liberal leanings, rather than her religous affiliation would be what bothers most people.

Don't sweat it I've got Steel71.
Lit the candles, burned the incense and filled out the mass card. He should start feeling a little ill right . . . about . . . now. If his palms aren't bleeding before dinner, I'll choke him out with my rosary beads.

I went to a Jesuit school
Society of Jesus, the Green Berets of Catholicism!

[18DWife]

Originally Posted by Utah Bob

That conjures up a mental image that is unpleasant at best.

Super gross but very funny

[Paslode]

Originally Posted by Dozer523

Seriously, do you actually think that's of any importance? Right up there with hair style IMHO.

The hair....Just trying to lighten up the conversation on the freakish nightmare and parade of ghouls that has (from my perspective) been non-ending since November 2008.


I might mention that about a month ago Justice Thomas apparently confirmed the idea of someone on the court that came without a judicial or legal background was possible.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., actually raised the question first amid a discussion on racial diversity in the judiciary.

"I'm still waiting for the [court decision] on whether or not a Puerto Rican can run for president of the United States," said Serrano, who was born in the island territory. "That's another issue."

Yet after Serrano questioned him on whether or not the land's highest court would be well-served by a justice who had never been a judge, Thomas not only answered in the affirmative, but also hinted that Serrano would be better off seeking a seat in the Supreme Court than a chair in the Oval Office.

"I'm glad to hear that you don't think there has to be a judge on the Court," said Serrano, "because I'm not a judge; I've never been a judge."

"And you don't have to be born in the United States," said Thomas, referring to the Constitution, which requires the president to be a natural-born citizen but has no such clause for a Supreme Court justice, "so you never have to answer that question."

"Oh really?" asked Serrano. "So you haven't answered the one about whether I can serve as president, but you answer this one?"

"We're evading that one," answered Thomas, referring to questions of presidential eligibility and prompting laughter in the chamber. "We're giving you another option."

[afchic]

Originally Posted by Dozer523

Don't sweat it I've got Steel71.
Lit the candles, burned the incense and filled out the mass card. He should start feeling a little ill right . . . about . . . now. If his palms aren't bleeding before dinner, I'll choke him out with my rosary beads.

I went to a Jesuit school
Society of Jesus, the Green Berets of Catholicism!

Well you know how those of us that are in the Cult of Catholicism are.... I'm just sayin"

[AngelsSix]

Originally Posted by steel71

Just another nail in the Constitution's coffin. We now have 6 Catholics and 3 Jews that make up the Supreme Court. Zero protestants, who happen to make up the majority population in this country.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...id=zKceHIsEuqM

What does the political affiliation of the Justices have to do with anything?

What has a person's religious affiliation got to do with how they view the law?

Christians make up the majority population of this country, BTW, Protestants are considered a subgroup of Christianity.

[Paslode]

Originally Posted by AngelsSix

What has a person's religious affiliation got to do with how they view the law?

At this point it makes little to no difference, but if we get one that follows the Religion of Peace you might change your view.

[rdret1]

Originally Posted by AngelsSix

What does the political affiliation of the Justices have to do with anything? .

With the large number of activist judges in our district and appeals courts, there have been several decisions in recent years which were obviously politically motivated vs. strictly based on an honest interpretation of the law. For examples you only have to look at issues such as gay marriage, legalization of marijuana, the Guantanamo detainees issue, etc.

By the wording of her thesis, I would tend to think she would fit right in with the current political trend toward socialistic values.