Report: Obama to nominate Kagan to Supreme Court

[Balta1701]

CNN cites unnamed sources in saying the President has chosen Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace Justice Stevens on the Supreme Court.

 

As I said when Justice Stevens retired...this announcement may well shift the court to the right as much as the Alito/O'Connor swap did.

[StrangeSox]

She's said some crappy things wrt to civil liberties.

 

Hopey changey.

[BigSqwert]

*thumbs down*

[Balta1701]

Here's the Media Matters objectively pro-Kagan post

 

Here's the case against her from the left

 

 

[Texsox]

As I said with Bush. The President should be allowed, should be expected even, to nominate someone from within their political spectrum. The confirmation should come down to matters of character.

[Soxy]

Meh.

[BigSqwert]

Greenwald via twitter:

The good thing about the Kagan crapshoot is that if it doesn't work out, it can be fixed in 30 or 40 years.

[Balta1701]

As I said with Bush. The President should be allowed, should be expected even, to nominate someone from within their political spectrum. The confirmation should come down to matters of character.

Doesn't mean the people who elected that President can't be disappointed.

[BigSqwert]

Andrew Sullivan:

 

A person who will back executive power comes after two of the most radical pro-executive Justices (Alito and Roberts) in recent history. The onward march of the dictatorial presidency - in a time of constant threats from abroad - continues.

[bmags]

These pro-executive branch tendencies I've always thought were overstated. This is the s*** greenwald lives for and can blind himself. I like scotusblog, here is them addressing it:

http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/05/9750-words-on-elena-kagan/

Some have criticized Elena Kagan for supposedly favoring a strong view of executive power. They equate her views with support for the Bush Administration’s policies related to the “war on terror.” Generally speaking, these critics very significantly misunderstand what Kagan has written.

 

Kagan’s only significant discussion of the issue of executive power comes in her article Presidential Administration, published in 2001 in the Harvard Law Review. The article has nothing to do with the questions of executive power that are implicated by the Bush policies – for example, power in times of war and in foreign affairs. It is instead concerned with the President’s power in the administrative context – i.e., the President’s ability to control executive branch and independent agencies. That kind of power is concerned with, for example, who controls the vast collection of federal agencies as they respond to the Gulf oil spill and the economic crisis.

 

Nor does the article assert that the President has “power” over the other branches of government in the constitutional sense – i.e., a power that cannot be overridden. To the contrary, Kagan “accept Congress’ broad power to insulate administrative activity from the President.” (2251). She instead makes the descriptive claim “that Congress has left more power in Presidential hands than generally is recognized.” (Id.)

 

There is no link between Kagan’s views on the value of Congress permitting strong Executive control of administrative agencies for purposes of achieving progressive goals and the claim that the Bush Administration had the constitutionally conferred power to engage in policies like the NSA wiretapping program and indefinite detention in the war on terror. They have literally nothing to do with each other.

[bmags]

per the orren hatch exchange:

 

The point is easily illustrated by a similar exchange with Dawn Johnsen, whom liberals celebrate as an ideal nominee, but who withdrew from consideration to head the Office of Legal Counsel after having been blocked. Johnsen notably had been exceptionally critical of the Bush Administration’s policies in the war on terror. In written questions subsequent to her confirmation hearing, Senator Hatch asked Johnsen whether she agreed with Kagan’s answer that Kagan agreed with Holder. She responded: “Yes, I do agree with Dean Kagan’s statement that under traditional military law, enemy combatants may be detained for the duration of the conflict. That is what the Supreme Court said as well in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004). . . . As indicated above, I do not believe that release or criminal prosecution are the only possible dispositions for detainees.” No one believes that Johnsen was embracing the Bush Administration’s policies, and no one should think that was true of Kagan either.

[CrimsonWeltall]

I'm sorry but this is too funny...

 

Kagan as the Albino from The Princess Bride

http://img.skitch.com/20100510-durm3d71w4f...rkawsy2wdpa.png

[Balta1701]

In an academic article she will no doubt most regret, Kagan laid out what conservatives are already calling the “Kagan standard,” insisting that senators should question Supreme Court nominees closely.

Funny.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Funny.

She said "When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce, and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public."

 

Most of the time the confirmation process is used by the opposition for political grandstanding and trying to score points with their constituency for re-election. It has nothing to do with actually determining if they will vote for the person... they already know how they will vote!

[lostfan]

She said "When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce, and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public."

 

Most of the time the confirmation process is used by the opposition for political grandstanding and trying to score points with their constituency for re-election. It has nothing to do with actually determining if they will vote for the person... they already know how they will vote!

exactly. Also same reason people like for nominees to be judges the last couple of decades. That way it makes it really easy for someone to support/attack a nominee's specific positions since the Supreme Court is so nakedly partisan anymore. Debating over "qualifications" is really just a fig leaf/smokescreen for political views.

 

I didn't bother reading any liberal bloggers today - they've gotten pretty lazy on this lately and they start acting like the conservatives they criticize all the time because they just start repeating something they heard another blogger say at face value (i.e. Greenwald) and circulate that, and base their support on certain candidates based on how far to the left they're perceived to be. That's really not the point of the Supreme Court at all.

[Balta1701]

A guide to how the debate may go.

Overall, since Sunday, there have been 16,360 stories on Google News ith the exact phrase "Elena Kagan. Here is how often the following possible memes on Kagan were found in news stories that contained her name:

 

* Liberal: 2,633

 

* experience: 2,434

 

* lesbian OR gay OR homosexual: 1,088

 

* qualified: 731 (both positive and negative)

 

* Military recruit (not exact phrase): 543

 

* elitist: 532

 

* moderate OR centrist: 473

 

* "ordinary Americans" OR "ordinary people": 462

 

* unknown OR "blank slate" OR unclear: 285

 

* safe: 264

 

* smart OR intelligent: 238

 

* Goldman Sachs: 142

 

* Harriet Miers: 90

 

The good news for the White House is that no single meme is very dominant. Even "liberal," the most common term I could find, fails to appear in even 20% of articles on Kagan. As such, my main speculation from these numbers is that there really is no narrative developing on Kagan at all.

 

The less positive news for the White House is that even though there is no dominant narrative, two of the two most common mini-narratives appear to be over her lack of experience as a judge, and that she might be a lesbian. With positive memes, such her intelligence, not receiving much play, this nomination process could end up taking an unexpected direction.

 

Might this fight end up being, somehow, over whether or not Kagan is a homosexual, whether or not that is OK, and whether or not she hid this from the public? At this stage, that seems entirely possible to me.

[HuskyCaucasian]

#3 wont be mentioned in the hearings, but there will be emails flying around the conservative community. I'll let you know what I get.

Edited May 11, 2010 by Athomeboy_2000

[Balta1701]

I don't know if the conclusions are right...but the idea of Nate Silver calculating a "Value Over Replacement Judge" (VORJ) is staggeringly beautiful.

[mr_genius]

* Harriet Miers: 90

 

haha

[kapkomet]

I had a friend email me this picture from rushlimbaugh.com:

 

 

LMAO.

[Soxy]

I don't know if the conclusions are right...but the idea of Nate Silver calculating a "Value Over Replacement Judge" (VORJ) is staggeringly beautiful.

That was cool.

 

Also, I have the biggest nerd crush ever on Nate Silver.

[HuskyCaucasian]

I had a friend email me this picture from rushlimbaugh.com:

 

 

LMAO.

Obama looks good in a pearl necklace.

[KipWellsFan]

Obama looks good in a pearl necklace.

 

 

Ewwww....

[kapkomet]

Obama looks good in a pearl necklace.

 

 

That's wrong.

[bmags]

Obama looks good in a pearl necklace.

 

please tell me you know what you said