Obama Nominates Elena Kagan to be Next Supreme Court Justice

[Lunar]

Self loathing liberals.

She's a solid progressive on social issues. That's all that matters really. She'll be a solid liberal on the court.

I'd have preferred Wood but lets not pretend that their voting records would be substantially different.

Kagan is deferential to executive power.  Wood isn't.

Kagan has a remarkably blank record.  With Wood, we know what we're getting.

[Lunar]

Wow - just read through a couple of appellate briefs that she's put forth as Solicitor General.

They suck.

Yeah, and the Supreme Court has already treated some of her opinions presented to the Supreme Court with contempt. 

[Lunar]

Congratulations Obama!

Yeah, when has rewarding a loyal White House staffer to the Supreme Court ever gone awry?

[Lunar]

only because she doesn't speak it

And the White House denies it.

[Lunar]

Self loathing liberals.

She's a solid progressive on social issues. That's all that matters really. She'll be a solid liberal on the court.

I'd have preferred Wood but lets not pretend that their voting records would be substantially different.

Kagan is deferential to executive power.  Wood isn't.

Kagan has a remarkably blank record.  With Wood, we know what we're getting.

Oh, my.  The President wants a Court that's deferential to executive power!  Who would've thought it?  

Oh, I completely understand why Obama picked her.  But why does everyone else have to roll over?  President Bush wanted to appoint a political hack and conservatives fought that nomination.

I also find it funny, as Glenn Greenwald notes, that Democrats are afraid of appointing someone as liberal as Bush's nominees were conservative, as if they are afraid of their own interpretations of the law.

[Lunar]

She's got solid liberal credentials,

Indeed.  Please Elaborate. 

[Lunar]

Indeed.  Please Elaborate. 

She's worked for liberal candidates in the past, clerked for Thurgood Marshall, and opposes Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

You mean Liz Holtzman back when she was in college?  (She's 50 now.)

70% of America opposes Don't Ask Don't Tell.  And despite the fact that she called it "morally repugnant," [paraphrasing] she dropped her school's formal opposition to it when federal funding was threatened.  

And I'm not sure if who you clerked for decades ago is proof about your own record.  We know she isn't going to be a flop on the level of Souter, but plenty of people who know her personally believe that she'll be more like a Kennedy than a Stevens.

[Lunar]

I don't think Obama would risk nominating a blank state if he wasn't sure she would be a solidly liberal justice.

Why not?  Why do you have blind faith in him?  Doesn't Obama have his own individual, political concerns?  And Obama CERTAINLY isn't interested in anyone who is so liberal they might restrict his unlimited wartime powers of detention and assassination of U.S. citizens.

[Lunar]

She's a solid progressive socially. More so than the President. That's all the matters.

What are her views that make the left so skeptical? She's a proponent of executive power? She brought in some conservative faculty at Harvard? Please.

1) She's a blank slate.

2) Do we need a #2?

3) She's IN CHARGE of arguing cases in front of the Supreme Court right now, and she's not done a very good job AT ALL of convincing Kennedy.  Why would she do better tomorrow?

[Lunar]

Supreme Court Watchers Wonder: How Conservative Is Kagan?

The National Law Journal


WE DON'T KNOW

[Lunar]

1) She's pro-choice and as strong on gay rights as the mainstream democratic party.

2) She has a long association with the democratic party dating back 15 years.

3) She's a nailed-on lezzer.

Yeah, I'm sure she's a closet conservative.

1 & 3 are the same thing.  But you're taking a myopic view on the role of the Supreme Court on just the stupid list of GOP litmus test issues, when, in reality, the Supreme Court has so many decisions relating to financial regulation and executive power that I'm left unsatisfied.

On 2, yeah, she really hated alfonse d’amato and worked in Democratic administrations, hardly proof that she shares the progressive viewpoint on Constitutional interpretation of the law.

The fact that she could be Dean of the Harvard Law School and have almost NOTHING published, is odd.  I mean, she has like two law review articles and a few book reviews and that's her entire body of published work.  I mean, Cass Sunstein, for all his faults, has what, over 20 books published?  

Also, the lesbian stuff is almost entirely rumors, some of it of suspicious origins (the sort that engulf 100% of single political women over 40).  

In reality, the reason why Kagan is so frustrating is that we know almost nothing about her while we know so much about judges with a legitimate judicial history of convincing conservative and moderate judges to support their viewpoint.

I really hate the argument that we should have blind faith in Obama on this.  Obama has shortsighted political interests that rely on having the most uncontroversial hearing possible.  And, of course, "controversy," in regards to Supreme Court hearings, is entirely fought on conservative talking points.  Kagan's a blank slate whom the Senate has already approved as S.G., Obama knows he has an easy confirmation coming along and chose the path of least resistance.  That doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

[Lunar]

Okay, she looks like Jon Lovitz in a dress, but let's wait and see what the confirmation process uncovers.

It'll uncover nothing.  If she spent the last 20 years making sure she didn't have a paper trail, she's not going to slip up during some confirmation hearing (and she's already been through a confirmation hearing for s.g.).  

[Lunar]

Probably not a hard-core Roe v. Wader either, not that this AP article says thaaaat much

[Lunar]

http://www.theagitator.com/2010/05/10/she-is-certainly-a-fan-of-presidential-power

"She’s a cerebral academic who fits Washington’s definition of a centrist: She’s likely defer to government on both civil liberties and regulatory and commerce issues. And though libertarians allegedly share ground with Republicans on fiscal and regulatory issues and with Democrats on civil liberties issues, neither party cares enough about those particular issues to put up a fight for them. Which is whyKagan sailed through her first confirmation hearings, and is widely predicted to sail through the hearings for her nomination to the Supreme Court."

[Lunar]

After doing some brief readings on her, I've decided that I'll be find with her on the Supreme Court. I couldn't really ask for anything better from Obama, policy-wise. I look foward to what she will do in the court. I also like the fact that she at least encouraged Clinton to ban late-term abortions. She could be a lot worse...

If you like her, relative to who Obama COULD pick, you're going to love his next pick (Garland).

[Lunar]

It's widely speculated that, with a more conservative Senate in 2010, Obama is saving the painless nomination of Garland should a vacancy occur before 2012. 

[Lunar]

Wait... Obama nominated a conservative to replace a liberal in the Sureme court ?!?

WHAT... THE... F-CK ?

She's hardly a conservative.

No one denies that.  I certainly wouldn't believe Harriet Miers was a liberal either.

I think even Kagan's critics generally acknowledge that she'll be somewhere to the left of Kennedy on average.

But is that good enough, or do we expect a record of being able to convince people like Kennedy to support their views, a record of proof on important issues regarding executive power, or a record of proof for anything at all whatsoever?  Or do we all just blindly agree with whatever Obama tells us to?

[Lunar]

After doing some brief readings on her, I've decided that I'll be find with her on the Supreme Court. I couldn't really ask for anything better from Obama, policy-wise. I look foward to what she will do in the court. I also like the fact that she at least encouraged Clinton to ban late-term abortions. She could be a lot worse...

If you like her, relative to who Obama COULD pick, you're going to love his next pick (Garland).

What makes you think Garland will be his next pick? (I have heard good things about Garland, though)

The GOP will hold more seats in the next Senate, so Obama wants someone more moderate next time.

Yeah, but Senate Dems could very well still end up with as many, or more, seats as Bush ever had to work with.  Bush still got far more conservative judges through than Sotomayor or even Kagan are liberal with 59-60 Democratic seats.

It's pretty amazing, actually.

[Lunar]

Please, Lunar, start a movement to get Obama to kill the Kagan appointment.  We Republicans would like nothing more than so-called "progressives" fighting so-called "progressives" over whether Obama's Supreme Court nominee is so-called "progressive" enough, creating a wedge among "progressives" and ensuring lower Democratic turnout in the mid-terms. 

No use.  I'm pretty much resigned to whining about it here.

Progressives don't have the guts to stand up to our president over this sort of thing, we're not like conservatives.

[Lunar]

Could someone make a list of Kagan's right wing tendencies, at least when it comes to jurisprudence?  I mean, she does not have that much of a paper trail, and some stuff of not much import perhaps to the contrary, so I would be interested as to the source of all of this "progressive" angst. Thanks!

I've linked to a lot of it, but if you cycle through Greenwald's blog on Salon, I think he captures 80% of the angst. 

[Lunar]

aye, a google search for "greenwald" results that as the difficult to find #1 result.

His initial,  pre-Kagan selection essay is here:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/13/kagan

[Lunar]

The articles today make it seem like it's going to be an uphill battle.......we'll see.

From Mike Allen to my email inbox today:

Good Tuesday morning. PLAYBOOK FORECAST: Elena Kagan will be confirmed with 65 votes -- 3 fewer than Justice Sotomayor, and 4 more than Kagan got for solicitor general last year. Here's the math, from someone smarter than us (we welcome your quibbles/rebuttals): For solicitor general, Kagan got 61 ayes and 31 nays. Safe to assume if you were one of the 31 Republicans voting nay then, you can't vote aye this time? Probably. Of the 61 ayes, seven were Republicans: Collins, Snowe, Gregg, Hatch, Kyl, Lugar and Coburn. After conservatives flexed their muscles in Utah last weekend (the Bennett effect), it's hard to see Coburn, Hatch or Kyl voting for her this time. So that would theoretically put her at 58. But Specter voted no, and could now be expected to vote yes. So that's 59. Four Democrats missed the vote. Of these, Boxer, Klobuchar, and Murray would be yes votes. So that's 62. The fourth missing Democrat was Kennedy. His successor, Brown, might be gettable. (Is the Massachusetts senator really going to vote against the Harvard Law dean?) So that'd be 63. And Franken was not seated yet last time, but would be a yes now. So 64. Three Republicans did not vote: Cochran, Ensign and Graham. Of these, Graham is gettable, but it would be tough to envision either of the other two Republicans voting for her. So that puts her at 65. That's with every Democrat (including Ben Nelson) voting yes, as well as the two Maine-iacs, Scott Brown, Judd Gregg, Lugar and Graham. Roll call on Kagan for solicitor general