"Several with Mass. ties thought to be on short list" by Matt Viser, Globe Staff | April 10, 2010
WASHINGTON —Elena Kagan, a former dean of Harvard Law School and the current solicitor general.
Related: Obama's Deans
She has not served as an appellate judge — all nine of the current justices had previously served on such courts — but that is not considered a drawback, analysts said. The Supreme Court has historically featured a diverse mix of academics, politicians, and attorneys....
Several of Obama’s Cabinet members — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, and the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano — could be on a short list as well, analysts say, and none of them has served on an appellate bench. Kagan is among several possible candidates with ties to Harvard Law School and Massachusetts....
Okay, I suspected the Globe would be shilling for her.
Kagan is the first woman to serve as solicitor general, the advocate who represents the government before the Supreme Court. She was also the first female dean of Harvard Law School and a clerk for the late justice Thurgood Marshall....
Any competition?
Merrick B. Garland, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who oversaw the investigation of the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City and the successful prosecution of Timothy McVeigh, is considered a moderate jurist....
Oh, great, another cover-up justice.
Bury another government false flag, why don't you?
Guess who is disappointed the most, liberals?
I take absolutely NO GLEE in saying that for YOUR ISSUES are MY ISSUES!!
Now WAKE UP to 9/11, will ya'?
"As potential pick for court, Kagan gets fire from left" by Michael Kranish and Alan Wirzbicki, Globe Staff And Globe Correspondent | April 15, 2010
WASHINGTON — Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the former Harvard Law School dean who is a leading candidate on President Obama’s list of possible Supreme Court nominees, is facing opposition from some pockets of the political left because of her past statements on executive power and detentions, as well as her warm welcome by some conservatives.
Hey, "LEFT," I am WITH YOU on this one!
Kagan enjoys broad support from a range of scholars and legal specialists. But some academics and activists are raising concerns that, if confirmed to replace Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, she would be inclined to compromise with conservatives and pull the Supreme Court further to the right.
Didn't I type something about tacking right, readers?
With Obama sorting through about 10 potential nominees — including Kagan’s friend, the current Harvard Law School dean, Martha Minow — it is too early to gauge how Kagan’s chances of getting picked are being affected.
Wow, it is up to that many?
But the complaints have grown loud enough that the White House, while declining to comment publicly, has begun providing background information to reporters in a bid to bolster her against charges from the left.
Then she must be the pick, huh?
So how does it feel to be stabbed in the back by Obama yet again, liberals?
I'm surprised you are still breathing; he has plunged it in several times now; nuclear power, oil drilling, health care, the wars.....
Kagan, who has never been a judge, lacks a trail of courthouse decisions, which activists of all stripes say makes it difficult to fully gauge her views. A chief complaint from liberals stems from her statement during her 2009 confirmation hearing to be solicitor general, during which she agreed with a Republican senator, Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina, who said the government could hold suspected terrorists indefinitely without trial.
Related:
"The rulings in the Hatim case and the 31 others may be a harbinger of trouble for the Obama administration, which is considering plans to indefinitely detain dozens of Guantanamo Bay prisoners without civilian or military trials....
A Justice Department-led task force has concluded that... about 50 who are considered too dangerous to be freed but cannot face trial because the evidence is too weak to hold up in court....
--more--"
That's change? She is defending that?And we are lecturing people around the world?
Fighting such detentions has been a major cause of many legal scholars, rights groups, and Democrats.
In other words, ALL the GOOD PEOPLE of America that OPPOSE this tyranny built upon lies!
She also is paying the price for positions taken by the Obama Justice Department, which has continued to defend Bush administration legal positions on warrantless wiretapping, detainees, and government secrecy.
Again, the change we all wanted, sigh, sob.
“They’re upholding all these reprehensible Bush antiterrorism policies that have been condemned by every human rights and civil liberties organization in the country,’’ said Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois. “There has been no retreat by Kagan. She could have backed off on all these Bush positions and she refused.’’
No, we do NOT WANT HER as a JUSTICE, thank you!
Kagan’s 2009 confirmation, however, mostly illustrated how she is difficult to pigeonhole ideologically.
A Democratic senator, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, marveled during hearings that Kagan had “managed to get a standing ovation from the Federalist Society at Harvard,’’ referring to a conservative group that believes in strict interpretation of the Constitution.
Yeah, somehow, if you actually believe in the founding documents of government and the rule of law you are a kook. Such is life in 21st-century AmeriKa!
But during the same proceeding, Kagan declared that the greatest lawyer of the 20th century was the late Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, a liberal for whom she clerked....
Big whoop, she had kind words for Thurgood.
What, you liberals not salved by that?
Ultimately, three Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee backed her, and a fourth praised her without voting on the Senate floor. Graham, meanwhile, said earlier this week that he was pleased with the way Kagan responded last year to his questions about detaining enemy combatants. “I like her,’’ he said, while acknowledging that praise coming from him might alarm Democrats.
I'm no Democrat, and I don't.
To some in the White House, the positive response from across the aisle is potential reason to pick Kagan for the high court: It might avoid a protracted fight in a congressional election year.
And they are leaking info to reporters to bolster her bid; she's going to be the one.
Other supporters say she would judge cases fairly and without an overlay of ideology.
“She is not an in-your-face ideologue, not at all. That’s not her style,’’ said Charles Fried, a Harvard Law School professor who served as solicitor general in the Reagan administration. Judicial activists on the left “may want it, but we have quite enough of that all around the country.’’
Yes, you can get beaten around like a punching bag, lefty; however, when it is time for your shot -- STOP RIGHT THERE!!!
Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative Committee for Justice and a Harvard Law graduate, said Kagan “doesn’t seem to hate conservatives the way that some liberals do.’’
:-)
And here I am; I don't hate anyone except looting liars and war criminals.
But what might prove more troublesome, he said, is that activists across the political spectrum are not sure where she stands. As soon as Stevens announced his retirement last week and Kagan emerged as a leading candidate, a number of online publications wasted no time in publishing critical pieces. Salon.com published “The case against Elena Kagan,’’ which conservative National Review Online gleefully trumpeted in a piece called “The Left versus Elena Kagan.’’
White House officials characterized the attacks as unfair and uninformed.
At Harvard, Kagan won praise from conservatives by hiring several new, right-leaning faculty members to a school known as a liberal bastion, including Jack Goldsmith, an international law expert who was a lawyer in the administration of George W. Bush; Adrian Vermeule, a former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia; and John Manning, onetime clerk for conservative Robert Bork, the failed Supreme Court nominee.
National Review, a conservative opinion magazine, reported that she hosted a “delightful’’ dinner for Scalia in 2006 to celebrate his 20th year on the Supreme Court — in contrast to Yale, where dean Harold Koh, also a rumored potential Obama Supreme Court pick, was said to have given the staunchly conservative justice an icier reception....
Her role in an ideological controversy over military recruitment at the law school generated criticism from both the right and the left. After a 2004 appeals court in Philadelphia struck down a federal rule requiring law schools to permit access to military recruiters, Kagan banned them from Harvard Law’s career office. But in 2005, as the government was appealing that decision and was threatening Harvard with the loss of $400 million in federal funds because of Kagan’s stance, she reversed her decision.
Great, we have a potential justice who can be pressured.
“I regret making this exception to our antidiscrimination policy,’’ she wrote to students at the time, according to the Harvard Crimson. Some liberals have accused her of giving in to the government on a matter of principle; conservatives have faulted her for fighting the policy in the first place.
That sure is the way I see it; will NO ONE in LEADERSHIP stand up against the WAR MACHINE?
As solicitor general, which is one of the top positions in the Justice Department, Kagan has also drawn fire generally for the Obama administration’s policies on controversial subjects that carried over from the Bush era, including warrantless wiretapping, Afghan detainee policies, and rules about secret evidence.
Look, no one is more disappointed than I am on all those issues.
Hard to believe we were all so happy to see Bush leave when we never really rid ourselves of him at all.
Kagan has not been required to argue or publicly formulate policies herself on all of those hot-button issues, but that has not stopped critics from attempting to link her to the Obama administration’s positions.
She defended them in court!
Others are also raising legitimate concerns and issues about Kagan that are absent from the MSM, and are also seeing their share of unfair criticism -- which I find standard when one sets foot too closely to the truth -- from someone who could not have been a longtime reader.
Yeah, the comments have been turned off; I don't have enough time in the day now.
The whole purpose of the blog is to give you, the world, a look at what I receive for "news" every morning. Thank you for coming.
