Posted on 05/10/2010 4:55:33 AM PDT by tlb
As Clinton's deputy domestic policy advisor, Kagan helped formulate the Democratic equivalent of what became, in the subsequent George Bush years, the assertion of unitary executive power. There's zero evidence that Kagan would do anything to redress the right-wing tilt of the Supreme Court and plenty that she might exacerbate it. In her confirmation hearings as solicitor general, she entranced the right with her proclamations in favour of the 'War on Terror'.
Kagan is the worst possibility thus far to surface, but the other potential nominees are scarcely inspiring. There’s the mainstream liberal Diane Wood, who sits on the Federal Appeals Court in Chicago, and Merrick Garland, a neo-liberal Clinton appointee in the mold of Justice Steven Breyer, corporate America's judicial representative on the court. (Stevens, by contrast, began his legal career as an anti-trust lawyer.) Garland, another Chicagoan, is now on the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia.
These are the three front-runners. The left has put up no preferred nominee, expressing concerns that the Republicans might filibuster. So, why not provoke just such a filibuster with a decent candidate? This appointment, remember, is Obama's last chance to vindicate the hopes of the left that our African-American president is, at least, as liberal as Gerald Ford and would leave as enduring a legacy as Stevens.
Come November, the Democrats will lose control of the House and Obama’s legislative powers will be extinguished, unless he goes into full Clintonian triangulation. It is now, and only now, that Obama can actually install a nominee with the ability to defend and advance progressive interpretations of the Constitution over the next 40 years.
Who could the left put up, as an assertion of what a truly progressive justice might look like? How about Steven Bright, of the Southern Center for Human Rights, the country’s leading anti-Death Penalty litigator from Kentucky? Or, David Cole, professor of law at Georgetown? Or, Pamela Carlan, at Stanford, a former counsel for the NAACP and openly gay?
There's one name that has been nervously circulated among progressive circles, that of Elizabeth Warren, currently head of the Congressional Oversight Panel on the banking bailout. Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School, is as close as we can now get to Stevens's economic populism and has been eloquent on the topic of corporate skullduggery and on the pro-bank tilt of the bailout.
She would, actually, be a shrewd choice for Obama, because it would turn the Supreme Court confirmation hearings into a debate on economic justice, consumer protection and regulation of Wall Street, where Warren’s Republican opponents would be forced to take the side of the rich, at a moment when the rich are not popular with a large number of Americans. Don't hold your breath.
This author would REALLY like Hugo Chavez as the new SCJ. Nah. Probably too far to the Right.
“There’s zero evidence that Kagan would do anything to redress the right-wing tilt of the Supreme Court”
Don’t worry Alex, she’s a Lezbo Jew, she’ll do just fine (in your sick mind).
I do think that we’ll see a lot of these pieces, to try to make her look “moderate”.
I agree. I believe this is rope-a-dope
Bush-lite? Hmmm? What’s that? Bush was pretty much a social-liberal if you leave his abortion views out. So what would a ‘lighter’ version of a Bush-appointee look like from our perspective?
“I do think that we’ll see a lot of these pieces, to try to make her look “moderate”.”
Yeah, the msm doing their jobs, selling the dem socialist agenda.
Yes. They will complain to cover for her and her Marxism. What disgusting people are in control of our larger Media.
Bush was not a social liberal. That is just not true.
yes, the minute she is sworn in, true colors will be revealed.
No Child Left Behind? National Drug Subsidy (Medicare Part C)? What do you call those?
While I doubt seriously Kagan will be anything other than a LIB, it would be nice to see the trend (ie. republican nominated justices being liberal) reversed for a change.
How can a sitting judge be a judge when she/he is not a judge? Our country is going to sink into the wretch of history if this is allowed to stand/sit. We must fight this and also my kid laughed at the man with the ear rings and pearls. I was ashamed that is who he picked. What a loser of the highest degree!
It is O’s Harriet Meyers moment
I know that it almost never happens to the left. But, maybe, just maybe, Kagan will turn out to be 0bama’s Souter.
This is huge crock. The white-house orchestrated campaign has begun to sell Kagan as a centrist as with Breyer, Ginsburg, before her. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sure, she believes in a strong executive branch - this was written during the Clinton administration. With Obama in office, do you think she would see any limits on executive power?
Deep inside Cockburn is salivating at the thought of Kagan joining the bench.
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