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SANFORD – Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester, Jr., who's been on the bench 15 years and has a great deal of experience with high-profile murder cases, on Wednesday was assigned the George Zimmerman murder case. It was originally given to Circuit Judge Jessica Recksiedler, but she recused herself Wednesday after Zimmerman's attorney asked her to step aside because of a possible conflict of interest: Her husband is the law partner of Mark NeJame, who's been hired to comment on the case for CNN.

Complete title: Judicial Watch Asks Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to Directly Address Obamacare Recusal Controversy (Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch, the nation’s largest government watchdog group, today sent a letter asking Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to address the facts surrounding her tenure as Solicitor General and the enactment and subsequent legal defense of the PPACA (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), as well as to provide an articulation of her reasoning behind any decision regarding recusal. Emails previously obtained by Judicial Watch suggest that, during Justice Kagan’s tenure as Solicitor General, the Office of the Solicitor General had...

Until now, those who say Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan shouldn’t recuse herself from the upcoming ObmaCare case, even though federal code clearly requires her to do so, have argued that even though she was President Obama’s Solicitor General, she was kept hermetically sealed away from anything pertaining to ObamaCare. This was supposedly done even though the Supreme Court seat she would later occupy wasn’t vacant yet – a forward-looking move designed to keep her viable for both the Court seat, and the ObamaCare thumbs-up desperately needed by the President in a few weeks. That excuse always seemed preposterous. Solicitor...

Has anyone taken the demands for the recusals of Supreme Court justices on the ObamaCare case seriously? As I’ve written previously, they’re not offered seriously, but as a way of shaping the post-decision political battlefield, efforts that have begun on both sides of the issue. Chief Justice John Roberts told both sides to back off in his annual report to the federal judiciary: The chief justice’s comments came in his annual report on the state of the federal judiciary. In it, he made what amounted to a vigorous defense of Justices Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan, who are facing calls...

In early 2010, then-solicitor general of the United States, Elena Kagan wrote an email to Laurence Tribe cheering for the passage of Obamacare. ...Kagan sent [an email] to Harvard Law Prof. Larry Tribe, who was then working at the Justice Department. This email was sent on March 21, 2010, the day the health-care bill would pass the House. "In an email entitled, 'fingers and toes crossed today!', ... Ms. Kagan happily says to Professor Tribe, 'I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing." The Judicial Crisis Network describes the case for Kagan's recusal in no uncertain terms. ...For the...

The call for Congress to hold hearings on the need for Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself from the ObamaCare case now on the docket of the Supreme Court has exploded.  The number of organizations signing on to a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith has more than tripled in just 48 hours since our original blog post calling for her to stand aside.  Following is a link to the final draft of the letter signed by the leaders of 85 citizens organizations and related other articles and documents. Leader's to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith Judicial Action Group's...

Top Republican senators said late Friday the Justice Department has been stonewalling their request for more information on Supreme CourtJustice Elena Kagan, and said her previous work as solicitor general “may satisfy both requirements for recusal” from the upcoming health-care case. The senators, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are demanding Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. comply with requests for more documents about Justice Kagan’s role in planning the administration’s defense, and said unless he provides the information it could undermine confidence in the court’s eventual ruling on the case. “President Obama chose to nominate a member of his...

The Supreme Court’s announcement Monday that it will hear challenges to President Obama’s health care law have put the spotlight on Justice Elena Kagan, who worked in the administration while the law was being written and, conservatives argue, helped craft its legal defense. “Before the Supreme Court case is heard we need to know if Justice Elena Kagan helped the Obama Administration prepare its defense for Obamacare when she was solicitor general. The Justice Department must answer serious questions about whether Justice Kagan has an inherent conflict of interest which would demand that she recuse herself from the Obamacare case,”...

The Justice Department must disclose all documents relating to any work Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan may have been involved in regarding the formulation of the legal defense for President Barack Obama’s signature health care law so a fair assessment of whether she should step aside from the case can be made, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said. Lee’s comments came in a question and answer session following his speech to the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention. Before ascending to the Supreme Court, Kagan had served as the nation’s solicitor general, responsible for representing the federal government before the Supreme Court....

When former Obama Administration attorney Elena Kagan was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Barack Obama, conservatives warned that the nominee was perhaps the most politically partisan Justice that has ever served on the high court. Kagan had served as Obama's Solicitor-General and was responsible for defending his policies in court cases.But new information has surfaced today that may indicate a stark conflict of interest when it comes Kagan and the Supreme Court's decision on the constitutionality of ObamaCare. As a result of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch and CNSNews in response to the Justice Department's refusal to...

On Sunday, March 21, 2010, the day the House of Representatives passed President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan and famed Supreme Court litigator and Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe, who was then serving in the Justice Department, had an email exchange in which they discussed the pending health-care vote, according to documents the Department of Justice released late Wednesday to the Media Research Center, CNSNews.com's parent organization, and to Judicial Watch.

Complete title: New Documents Show Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s Comments on Obamacare Legislation While Serving as Solicitor General Kagan: “I hear they have the votes!! Simply amazing.” Washington, DC -- November 10, 2011 Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained three new documents that provide additional information about Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan and the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) while she served as solicitor general. Justice Kagan has said she was not actively involved in the Department of Justice (DOJ) discussions regarding Obamacare. Moreover, the...

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - An expert on judicial issues says U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from the multistate challenge to President Barack Obama's health care reform. In a "white paper" released Wednesday, Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network argues that Kagan, as solicitor general, was directly involved in the defense of the new federal health care law and that she should therefore dismiss herself from any consideration of its legality before the nation's high court. Severino is chief counsel and policy director for the Judicial Crisis Network, a Washington-based group committed to upholding the Constitution...

(CNSNews.com) - U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, a Clinton appointee, has ruled that the Justice Department does not need to release emails Solicitor General Elena Kagan sent from her DOJ email account to people in the White House—in which she discussed her recusal decisions as solicitor general—because the emails were “used for a purely personal objective.” CNSNews.com and Judicial Watch were seeking public release of the emails through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The “purely personal objective” cited by the judge was Kagan’s goal of being confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. At issue is whether...

(CNSNews.com) - House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is withholding judgment on whether Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from judging lawsuits that were filed against the health-care law that President Barack Obama signed while Kagan was serving as the Obama administration's solicitor general and was charged with defending the administration’s position in federal court disputes.Smith sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on July 6 asking that Holder provide “relevant documents and witness interviews in order to properly understand U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s involvement in health care legislation or litigation while serving as United...

  Just 12 days after 49 congressmen requested an official inquiry into Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s (left) involvement with the Patient Protection and Affordable Act (PPACA, aka ObamaCare) during her tenure as U.S. Solicitor General, the House Judiciary Committee has complied. Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) sent a July 6 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking for “relevant documents and witness interviews in order to properly understand” Kagan’s role with regard to the legislation itself and related litigation.Perhaps the committee will have better luck in wresting those documents from the Justice Department’s clutches than private organizations have...

Forty-nine Republican members of Congress on Thursday asked the HouseJudiciary Committee to “promptly investigate” Supreme CourtJustice Elena Kagan’s role in preparing a legal defense for President Obama’s health care law, saying her prior work in the Obama administration should disqualify her from considering any challenge to the law before the high court. In a letter to Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, and the committee’s ranking Democrat, John Conyers Jr., of Michigan, the GOP lawmakers said that “contradictory to her 2010 confirmation testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee,” recently released Justice Department documents show that Justice Kagan “actively participated with...

(CNSNews.com) - On Wednesday, Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal did what his job called for: He traveled to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, located in Cincinnati, Ohio, and defended President Barack Obama’s health-care-reform law against a challenge that had been filed by the Thomas More Law Center.The challenge claims Obamacare's individual mandate is unconstitutional.Back on May 10, Katyal also argued for the administration in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Va., against challenges to the constitutionality of the health-care law. There the suit had been brought by the state of Virginia...

Complete title: Did Kagan Tell Deputy She Assigned to Health-Care Case Administration Should Win It? DOJ Won’t Say (CNSNews.com) - To an ordinary American it might seem like an obvious question with an obvious answer. When Solicitor General Elena Kagan--whose job was to defend the administration’s position in federal court cases--assigned her top deputy to handle the anticipated legal challenges to the health-care bill that President Barack Obama was pushing through Congress in 2010 did she indicate to that deputy that the administration should defeat those challenges? Common sense might say: Of course. But if the common sense answer were...

WASHINGTON – On Dec. 30, 2010, the day after Hollister v. Soetoro, challenging the constitutional eligibility of President Barack Obama, was docketed for the Jan. 14, 2011 conference of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), retired USAF Col. Gregory Hollister’s Attorney John Hemenway filed a motion for justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, both appointed by Obama, to recuse themselves.