Posted on 05/14/2010 5:08:57 PM PDT by TitansAFC
A prominent Republican lawyer whose failed judicial nomination during the Bush Administration became a cause célèbre for conservatives, Miguel Estrada, is urging the Senate to confirm President Barack Obama's newest nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan.
In a letter Friday, Estrada touted Kagan’s qualifications, calling her views “firmly center-left” and “well within the mainstream of current legal thought.”
“Elena possesses a formidable intellect, an exemplary temperament and a rare ability to disagree with others without being disagreeable,” Estrada wrote to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). “If such a person, who has demonstrated great intellect, high accomplishments and an upright life, is not easily confirmable, I fear we will have reached a point where no capable person will readily accept a nomination for judicial service.”
“One could readily identify members of the current Senate majority, including several who serve on the Judiciary Committee, who, when the previously assessed the judicial nominees of the other party earnestly articulated many of the same objections that doubtless will be raised against Elena (such as a lack of judicial experience, a perceived absence of a ‘paper trail,’ or whether the nominee’s views truly are in the legal mainstream,” Estrada wrote. “I respectfully submit that it brings no credit to our government, and risks affirmative harm to our courts, when our elected representatives simply swap talking points…only to revert to their former arguments as soon as electoral fortunes turn.”
After about a decade as a prosecutor and lawyer in the Solicitor General’s office, Estrada was nominated in 2001 to the D.C. Circuit by President George W. Bush. Democrats held up Estrada’s confirmation, complaining about his lack of judicial experience and demanding records the administration declined to disclose. When Republicans took control of the Senate in 2003, Democrats mounted a filibuster against Estrada. Republicans insisted the move was aimed at blocking a GOP-appointed Latino from joining a court often seen as a possible stepping stone to the Supreme Court.
Estrada gave up the fight in 2003, but conservative lawyers still regard the episode with bitterness.
Let me be the first to exclaim, WTF???
Traitors.
Have they not heard of the arguments she made in the Citizens United case? That alone should keep her off any bench.
liberals are always “intelligent”
and republicans “stupid”.
/s
This is why conservatives always lose.
This is why conservatives always lose.
Well, I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t let him on the Court of Appeal. He’d be on the Supreme Court, and would have “grown” during his time there, just as he has “grown” to believe that an anti-Constitutional socialist authoritarian can be a good justice.
Maybe we dodged the bullet.
She might be a kooky, leftwing extremist but she’s a “smart” kooky, leftwing extremist and that’s all that is important during the Era of the Barry O Regime.
I second WTF?
Is Estrada fishing for a job at Harvard?
Or maybe he was not as conservative as we were told, and the Democrats voted him down merely because Bush nominated him. Maybe a sneak amnesty vote?
I always thought that Bush was EXTREMELY WEAK in the selection of people. Primary reason for his failures.
no kidding. makes me want to scream!!!!
Formidable intellect? She was an academic lawyer and hardly published anything before moving into administration. Formidable intellects who have academic posts publish and think administrative work is boring beyond measure.
This appointment is based on social class: she’s a professional manager (academic version) just like Obama (non-profit NGO version) and his buddies who float in and out of government and Goldman Sachs (financial version), and his pals at SEIU (union-organizing version). This is the Western version of Djilas’s “New Class” in action.
They are the enemy of freedom, of capitalism, and yes, of the ordinary working man as well.
Quite frankly, as an honest academician, I oppose the appointment or election of anyone who ever served willingly in any academic post titled “dean”, “provost”, “president”, or “chancellor” to any high position in government. (I’ll make an exception for Ike whose stint as president of Columbia University was a result of a mistake.)
Why certainly.
She is not in favor of the second amendment
Not in favor of the first amendment.
Presented a faulty argument as Solicitor General in the Citizens United case before the USSC.
Estrada seems as dense as Holder. Uninformed in the extreme.
OMG. Estrada was being groomed by Bush at one point for SCOTUS. This means that we might have had Estrada over Alito. Would Estrada evolved into another Souter?
Estrada can’t be a real originalist if he could accept and is indeed promoting an 0bama loving Leftist like that butterball Kagan. We cannot afford this obsequious collegiality when so much is at stake.
This tells me nothing about Kagan and volumes about Estrada!!!
:(
Proves these people don’t care one wit about the American people. It’s all about them and what riches they can acquire for themselves.
We learn more about the Bush Agenda every day and it stinks!
I guess he really was an affirmative action pick by Bush
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