Posted on 07/05/2010 5:08:16 AM PDT by Scanian
On June 30, in her confirmation hearings, Solicitor General Elena Kagan gave a response which gives me pause about her fitness to serve on the Supreme Court. Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, asked her view of the natural right to self-defense. She responded, hesitantly, that she didn't have a view of natural rights, independent of the Constitution. But natural rights, independent of the Constitution, form the very fabric of it. Let me explain.
The US Supreme Court, the court to which Elena Kagan aspires, said in Ex Parte Grossman, 267 US 87, 108 (1925), "The language of the Constitution cannot be interpreted safely except by reference to the common law and British institutions as they were when the instrument was framed and adopted." All of the men who wrote the Constitution, up until the time of the Declaration of Independence, had considered themselves Englishmen. The law by which they were governed was, in addition to the statutes enacted by colonial legislatures, the British common law. Beginning in 1765, William Blackstone published the first volume of his magisterial work, Commentaries on the Laws of England. The fourth and final volume was published in 1769, the same year as the first American edition. This edition includes a list of subscribers who purchased it in advance of its publication. This list includes several attorneys who sat in the Constitutional convention. The Founders were intimately familiar with the common law.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
These many months of obama have confirmed that everyone in and everything about the obama administration range from unfit and unqualified to dangerously so.
On Kagan…
There is little left in our system that mirrors the United States Constitution, the founding charter wherein limits were placed on federal power. Using any manner of rationalization over the decades, we have watched the courts bastardize its original language and often put forward judgments more in favor of political thought at the time rather than what the document clearly includes (does not include).
Whether decisions like Dred Scott or Roe, clearly there have been people who sat on the Supreme Court who were not qualified and rendered bad decisions—decisions that have harmed the foundation idea and ideals of a free America. We now have an individual in the office of the Presidency who has proven he has virtually no regard for our history or Constitution. Obama sees the country as his next step to take specific communities “organized” in the vein of Alinsky toward Marxism, suffering the fixed idea—and consequent policies—liberals have about a large segment of our population in that they cannot compete and perform sufficiently in our economy and so must remain recipients of those who can.
The kind of education he and his fellow Socialists force on children in the public system assures many will remain in the underclass, unable to contribute because of a lack of skills. Affirmative action assures some will be put into positions where they will receive pay but remain very ineffective—in short, in every organization, particularly government offices, the incompetent rise to levels beyond them. Obama’s cabinet and inner circle is a good example—affirmative action for people whose ideas, habits and hatred could not carry anywhere in a competitive marketplace—an honest marketplace. The chaos and poor performance is then blamed on some other factors—depending on what is happening at the time and what the politicians can sell to the masses. We can see it coming and could if tasked, write their scripts before an event—whether it is the spew from Reid, Boxer, Van Hollen, Frank, Pelosi, and many others or any one of the Kennedys that are left. Politicians specialize in misleading sales pitches. We know who fares best in a Socialist system—people such as the aforementioned do very well, not the underclass of the poorly educated.
Now we are subject to Elena Kagan being put forward to sit on our Supreme Court. As bad or worse as Ginsberg and Sotomayer, she is a guaranteed vote against the principles of the Constitution and we had better believe it. Being she has no experience on any bench at any level and given we know her from her memos and actions—from assisting the criminal Clintons to her disdain for the military she proudly displayed at Harvard—what else should we think? Should she even be considered for the court? No. But she has been put forward by a Socialist President whose desire to continue remaking our country into more than just a haven for the collectivists, perverse, murderous humanists, and unqualified. Instead of putting forward a jurist who knows and understands the Constitution—and knows it is a limit on federal power rather then an open invitation for mischief—he of course puts forward a baby darling of the depraved left.
Send her back to Cambridge.
Oops, forgot, no leadership there, move along please.
Hey, W's and Poppy's hand picked Senator, Lamar Alexander (RINO - TN) voted to CONFIRM Sotomayor.
Methinks that Kagan will be in USSC learning school for some time. Who is the swing justice she is suppose to "charm"? Good luck with that.
A refusal to acknowledge natural law or natural rights would seem to imply an atheistic worldview which presupposes no inherant limits on the power of government.
That was the point that had me yelling ‘No way she gets on the bench’.
The refusal to acknowledge natural or unalienable rights goes beyond ‘interpretation’.
Did she or did she not break the law at Harvard outlawing military recruiters? She cannot be her own judge on that matter, and these Senators cannot put someone on the court who willfully violated the law for their own personal politically correct feelings.
That may also exclude Justices Ginzburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. Because that is the essence of the problem - they will shred the Constitution to follow their leftist liberal viewpoint on life in America. We do not want robed kings and queens telling us how to live our lives under new rules that cannot be divined from the present Constitution - and these people have no qualms about usurping that power. If they want something as completely radical to human society as men marrying men then come forward with a Constitutional Amendment that changes the law to allow such a distortion of human relations - do not do it by diktat. Likewise when something as clear and as historical as the Second Amendment is actually questioned, these leftist Kings and Queens vote against it only because it offends their liberal sensibilities. They will never vote for something in the US Constitution that offends them - meaning in their supreme arrogance their precious will is that of the Constitution, and the written words are to be disregarded.
Kagan will be another bad selection of a supremely arrogant liberal who already feels she is an “anointed one” by her actions at Harvard Law - not necessarily above the law - but believing to BE THE LAW because she is so in tune with her own version of the erasable Constitution. This enables her to change the law on the fly when it doesn’t match liberal sensibilities - i.e. military recruiters at Harvard Law.
“A refusal to acknowledge natural law or natural rights would seem to imply an atheistic worldview which presupposes no inherant limits on the power of government.”
As describes the left in general.
We have no rule of law any more.
Either get over it or change it!
(waiting to see if we actually have elections this fall)
She has absolutely NOTHING to qualify her for the position other than the appointment by Obama.
I agree it's the President's right, privilege, to appoint to the court the person, or God forbid in this case the persons, of his or her choice. But that person has to be qualified for the position as a starting point. She does not rise to this level. Period.
She needs to be vigorously opposed and our side needs to make it know exactly why she is being opposed.
I fear it's a lost cause though, especially with that embarrassment from SC being in on the process.
Her shenanigans with the partial-birth abortion memo should be sufficient cause to keep her off the court. Anyone who has fudged official paperwork to strengthen their side of an argument, regardless of the worthiness of the cause, should be shunned at the outset.
I pray for a miracle to spare us from her and a lifetime tenure in a position for which she not even minimally qualified, and in which she can do great long-term harm to our way of life.
Exactly. The Constitution grants no rights - yet it is based on the acknowledgement of pre-existing, natural (or negative) rights.
So for Kagen to declare that she "didn't have a view of natural rights, independent of the Constitution" is to declare that she doesn't acknowledge natural, pre-existing human rights AT ALL.
And, since the only thing governments can grant are privileges, not rights, this means she doesn't acknowledge the very concept of rights - AT ALL.
Except, of course, for the elite. But governments are for the little people, so she doesn't have to acknowledge the elite to them.
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