Kagan

[Nobunaga]

One very seriously ugly soon-to-be SCOTUS justisce.

Any thoughts?

[Trephining]

She probably circles the bed three times before laying down.

[InkL0sed]

I'd do her

[Phatscotty]

Activist to tha max.

[rockfist]

I've seen bowel movements that were more attractive than that thing.

[Timminz]

I hear she supports murder, and rape.

[InkL0sed]

Fuckin liberals man

[Nobunaga]

The woman cannot properly pronounce the word, "law".

The woman says, "loa".

[Nobunaga]

Wow

The War on Science [Yuval Levin]

If you haven’t read Shannen Coffin’s piece on Elena Kagan and the partial-birth-abortion debate today, you really should. What he describes, based on newly released Clinton White House memos, is absolutely astonishing.

It seems that the most important statement in the famous position paper of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—a 1996 document that was central to the case of partial-birth-abortion defenders for the subsequent decade and played a major role in a number of court cases and political battles—was drafted not by an impartial committee of physicians, as both ACOG and the pro-abortion lobby claimed for years, but by Elena Kagan, who was then the deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.

Kagan saw ACOG’s original paper, which did not include the claim that partial-birth abortion “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman,” but, on the contrary, said that ACOG “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.” She wrote a memo to two White House colleagues noting that this language would be “a disaster” for the cause of partial-birth abortion, and she then set out to do something about it. In notes released by the White House it now looks as though Kagan herself—a senior Clinton White House staffer with no medical background—proposed the “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman” language, and sent it to ACOG, which then included that language in its final statement.

What’s described in these memos is easily the most serious and flagrant violation of the boundary between scientific expertise and politics I have ever encountered. A White House official formulating a substantive policy position for a supposedly impartial physicians’ group, and a position at odds with what that group’s own policy committee had actually concluded? You have to wonder where all the defenders of science—those intrepid guardians of the freedom of inquiry who throughout the Bush years wailed about the supposed politicization of scientific research and expertise—are now. If the Bush White House (in which I served as a domestic policy staffer) had ever done anything even close to this it would have been declared a monumental scandal, and rightly so.

Apparently scientific integrity only matters as long as it doesn’t somehow infringe on abortion. That, of course, was always the lesson of the stem-cell debate in the Bush years anyhow. But clearly it started earlier. It’s good to know where Kagan’s priorities are. Let’s hope senators are paying attention.

[Phatscotty]

Kagan admitted she was a progressive. They stand against the constitution.

[rockfist]

Progressives not only stand against the constitution they stand against humanity. Read "Anthem" it explains it better than I can.

[jonesthecurl]

Hey you guys should be playing the "Most Conservative" game over in forum games - you'd win hands down with those two.

[Nobunaga]

She just said that the Declaration of Independence means nothing to her. And this is to be a supreme court justice? ... How far we've fallen.

[THORNHEART]

she needs to get it in the ass.

[thegreekdog]

Kagan admitted she was a progressive. They stand against the constitution.

Progressives don't stand against the Constitution... they stand against the parts of the Constitution they don't like, and rather than attempting to amend the Constitution, they choose to rewrite the Constitution (i.e. the parts they don't like) judicially.

[Night Strike]

She just said that the Declaration of Independence means nothing to her. And this is to be a supreme court justice? ... How far we've fallen.

I wonder if she says the same thing about the laws of other nations or the United Nations. For some reason, I highly doubt it.

[Nobunaga]

From George Will (I love that guy).

================

Given Elena Kagan's aversion to "vapid and hollow" confirmation hearings devoid of "legal analysis," beginning Monday she might relish answering these questions:

• It would be naughty to ask you about litigation heading for the Supreme Court concerning this: Does Congress have the right, under its enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce, to punish the inactivity of not purchasing health insurance? So, instead answer this harmless hypothetical: If Congress decides that interstate commerce is substantially affected by the costs of obesity, may Congress require obese people to purchase participation in programs such as Weight Watchers? If not, why not?

• The government having decided that Chrysler's survival is an urgent national necessity, could it decide that "Cash for Clunkers" is too indirect a subsidy and instead mandate that people buy Chrysler products?

• If Congress concludes that ignorance has a substantial impact on interstate commerce, can it constitutionally require students to do three hours of homework nightly? If not, why not?

• Can you name a human endeavor that Congress cannot regulate on the pretense that the endeavor affects interstate commerce? If courts reflexively defer to that congressional pretense, in what sense do we have limited government?

• In Federalist 45, James Madison said: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite." What did the Father of the Constitution not understand about the Constitution? Are you a Madisonian? Does the doctrine of enumerated powers impose any limits on the federal government? Can you cite some things that, because of that doctrine, the federal government has no constitutional power to do?

• Is it constitutional for Arizona to devote state resources to enforcing federal immigration laws?

• Is there anything novel about the Arizona law empowering police officers to act on a "reasonable suspicion" that someone encountered in the performance of the officers' duties might be in the country illegally?

• The Fifth Amendment mandates "just compensation" when government uses its eminent domain power to take private property for "public use." In its 2005 Kelo decision, the court said government can seize property for the "public use" of transferring it to wealthier private interests who will pay more taxes to the government. Do you agree?

• Should proper respect for precedent prevent the court from reversing Kelo? If so, was the court wrong to undo the 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregating the races with "separate but equal" facilities is constitutional?

• In 1963, President John Kennedy said Congress should "make a commitment . . . to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law." Was he right?

• In 1964, Sen. Hubert Humphrey, a principal sponsor of that year's Civil Rights Act, denounced the "nightmarish propaganda" that the law would permit preferential treatment of an individual or group because of race or racial "imbalance" in employment. What happened?

• William Voegeli, contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books, writes: "The astonishingly quick and complete transformation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, from a law requiring all citizens be treated equally to a policy requiring that they be treated unequally, is one of the most audacious bait-and-switch operations in American political history." Discuss.

• In a 2003 case affirming the constitutionality of racial preferences in law school admissions, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said: "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today." If you are a sitting justice in 2028, do you expect to conclude that such preferences can no longer survive constitutional scrutiny because they no longer serve a compelling public interest?

• The president is morose about the court's Citizens United decision holding that the First Amendment, which says Congress shall make "no law" abridging freedom of speech, means no laws abridging a corporation's freedom to speak, including nonprofit advocacy corporations such as the National Rifle Association and the Sierra Club. The court called it "censorship" for government "to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear." Do you agree?

• You have noted that the court often considers legislative motives when deciding First Amendment cases. Should the court consider legislators' motives if, in response to Citizens United, they impose new burdens on corporate speech?

•- When incumbent legislators write laws restricting the quantity, content and timing of speech about legislative campaigns, are not their motives presumptively suspect?

Just wondering.

[InkL0sed]

She just said that the Declaration of Independence means nothing to her. And this is to be a supreme court justice? ... How far we've fallen.

I wonder if she says the same thing about the laws of other nations or the United Nations. For some reason, I highly doubt it.

The Declaration of Independence isn't law. You guys are the ones who keep going on about keeping to the Constitution - now you think she should care about a letter written to the King of England?

[jonesthecurl]

She just said that the Declaration of Independence means nothing to her. And this is to be a supreme court justice? ... How far we've fallen.

I wonder if she says the same thing about the laws of other nations or the United Nations. For some reason, I highly doubt it.

The Declaration of Independence isn't law. You guys are the ones who keep going on about keeping to the Constitution - now you think she should care about a letter written to the King of England?

He died, you know.

[Baron Von PWN]

One very seriously ugly soon-to-be SCOTUS justisce.

Any thoughts?

Clearly supreme court justices should be chosen via beauty contest.

[InkL0sed]

She just said that the Declaration of Independence means nothing to her. And this is to be a supreme court justice? ... How far we've fallen.

I wonder if she says the same thing about the laws of other nations or the United Nations. For some reason, I highly doubt it.

The Declaration of Independence isn't law. You guys are the ones who keep going on about keeping to the Constitution - now you think she should care about a letter written to the King of England?

He died, you know.

You're right. That was insensitive.

[King Doctor]

She just said that the Declaration of Independence means nothing to her. And this is to be a supreme court justice? ... How far we've fallen.

I wonder if she says the same thing about the laws of other nations or the United Nations. For some reason, I highly doubt it.

The Declaration of Independence isn't law. You guys are the ones who keep going on about keeping to the Constitution - now you think she should care about a letter written to the King of England?

Yeah, but I think that we're all aware that this latest moral panic isn't really about finding valid reasons for Kagan not being appointed to the SCOTUS bench, it's just about drumming up another McCarthyesque witch hunt and smearing her as another of these 'evil unpatriotic libero-communist' boogeymen that the Tea-Party is telling us that we should be in a constant state of hysteria about.

[rockfist]

Kagan admitted she was a progressive. They stand against the constitution.

Progressives don't stand against the Constitution... they stand against the parts of the Constitution they don't like, and rather than attempting to amend the Constitution, they choose to rewrite the Constitution (i.e. the parts they don't like) judicially.

When people are successful in doing that we have a thinly veiled system of tyranny. The very idea of the progressive movement is a stain a stain which must be wiped out to save our nation.

[Phatscotty]

She just said that the Declaration of Independence means nothing to her. And this is to be a supreme court justice? ... How far we've fallen.

I wonder if she says the same thing about the laws of other nations or the United Nations. For some reason, I highly doubt it.

The Declaration of Independence isn't law. You guys are the ones who keep going on about keeping to the Constitution - now you think she should care about a letter written to the King of England?

Other than the whole thingy mi-jig about "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"....

OH! the king is dead now? Nevermind

[Phatscotty]

Kagan admitted she was a progressive. They stand against the constitution.

Progressives don't stand against the Constitution... they stand against the parts of the Constitution they don't like, and rather than attempting to amend the Constitution, they choose to rewrite the Constitution (i.e. the parts they don't like) judicially.

Well I will just disagree with you. I would only clarify further that sure the progressives do believe in liberty, Negative Liberty. I stand by my statement. Could you provide an example of where a progressive policy stands with the constitution, as far as individual liberty? I expect you may bring something that progressives have ratified into the constitution, and I will go back to "that was against the constitution" It's a delicate question, I hope you can see roughly what I am asking...