Sotomayor was an insult to all Americans. She is dumb, fat and ugly. Kagan at least is an intellect, although she is also fat and ugly. This appointment is not insulting. That is an improvement for Obama.
I don’t have a problem with her being lesbian, anyone he picks will be a leftie. I do wish though Repubs treat his picks the way he treated Bush’s: with disdain. They give him faR TOO MUCH deference. I see this as a way to take energy away from gay protests against him, and Hillary supporters (who would be impressed with a woman and or a lesbian.
Kagan’s Questionnaire For Nomination As Solicitor General
http://www.10news.com/news/23502959/detail.html
BTTT
As an undergraduate at Princeton, Kagan wrote a senior thesis titled
"To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933."
In the "Acknowledgments" section of her work, she specifically thanked her 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. In the body of the thesis, Kagan wrote:
"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 capitalisms glories than of socialisms 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 nations established parties?...
"Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP [Socialist Party] 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 socialisms decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight ones 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."http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2398
She looks like Dick Morris in drag. An unmarried 50 year old who rallied against the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy while teaching at Harvard. Hmm....
I’m know I shouldn’t, but another ugly woman on the Supreme Court. Are all liberals ugly?
It is Os Harriet Meyers moment
It sure would be nice to see the Republicans show evidence of a backbone here.
Our judges get Borked, and their judges get our begrudging (if even that) confirmation.
The Dems are a war with us, use the nuclear option, and we bring a squirt gun to the (as if it were a) garden party.
Slap this nomination down, and tell the Dems not to even dare trying another one of her ilk.
Hasn’t been a judge... hasn’t tried a case as a lawyer...
Why not hire a burger flipper, a dishwasher, or a paper boy? The woman has virtually no track record. That alone is grounds for denying her access to our most important court for life.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Ed Meese on Elena Kagan [Robert Alt]
Former Attorney General Edwin Meese issued the following statement on the potential nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court:
First and foremost, any nominee to a lifetime appointment to the United States Supreme Court must demonstrate a thorough fidelity to apply the Constitution as it was written, rather than as they would like to re-write it. Given Solicitor General Kagans complete lack of judicial experience, and, for that matter, very limited litigation experience, Senators must not be rushed in their deliberative process. Because they have no prior judicial opinions to look to, Senators must conduct a more searching inquiry to determine if Kagan will decide cases based upon what is required by the Constitution as it is actually written, or whether she will rule based upon her own policy preferences.
Though Ms. Kagan has not written extensively on the role of a judge, the little she has written is troubling. In a law review article, she expressed agreement with the idea that the Court primarily exists to look out for the despised and disadvantaged. The problem with this viewwhich sounds remarkably similar to President Obamas frequent appeals to judges ruling on grounds other than lawis that it allows judges to favor whichever particular client they view as despised and disadvantaged. The judiciary is not to favor any one particular group, but to secure justice equally for all through impartial application of the Constitution and laws. Senators should vigorously question Ms. Kagan about such statements to determine whether she is truly committed to the rule of law. Nothing less should be expected from anyone appointed to a life-tenured position as one of the final arbiters of justice in our country.
Not the NASCAR Justice [Ed Whelan]
In addition to her kicking military recruiters off Harvards campus during wartime and being paid for a comfy position on a Goldman Sachs advisory board, this passage (from this article) nicely captures Elena Kagans remoteness from the lives of most Americans:
Kagan is such a product of New York City that she did not learn to drive until her late 20s. According to her friend John Q. Barrett, a law professor at St. John's University, it is a skill she has not yet mastered.
(My fuller account from early this morning of my initial thoughts on the nomination is here.)
“If you tell her something can’t be done, you’d better be ready to back it up with a brick wall of an obstacle. Otherwise, she will find a way to do it,” Dunham writes
Reviewing 130 years of curricular history
Perhaps the most ambitious item on Kagan’s far-reaching agenda is also the most embryonic. She’s launched a curricular review to re-examine how law is taught - for the first time since HLS Dean Christopher Langdell introduced the current curriculum in the 1870s. Langdell’s vision that first-year students study contracts, torts, property and procedure, and criminal law endures, says Kagan, for better or for worse.
“It really is time to say, ‘Is that really what students should be taking? Are they learning the set of competencies that they need to master in order to go out and be a great lawyer in today’s world? How has the world changed in the last 100 and some years?’” she says. Kagan is confident that the multiyear review will turn up an intensified focus on international and comparative law, something relevant to almost all practicing lawyers today.
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/09.16/03-kagan.html