The Obama SCOTUS Nominee: Elena Kagan

What an unbelievable act of cronyism:

President Obama nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court on Monday, choosing a candidate with no judicial experience but a reputation as a consensus-builder to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

Let the examination begin.

Senators pledged to scrutinize Solicitor General Elena Kagan in the weeks ahead after President Obama on Monday nominated her to the Supreme Court, choosing a candidate with no judicial experience but a reputation as a consensus-builder to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

Jack M at Ace of Spades HQ has it down pat after imagining a nominee like Kagan being appointed by a theoretic future President Demint:

…a crony appointment of a wholly unqualified nominee based primarily on the facts that: the nominee shares a high profile view on a single issue that is “politically correct” in the Administration’s eyes; that appeals to a specific voting block in the President’s base; and that provides a major fundraiser with the “understood” assurances that their legal interests will have someone keeping an eye on them.

The Kagan selection is “Crony Capitalism” extended to the Federal Bench. It is emblematic of everything that is wrong with the “Chicago Brand” of politics.

In its own way, is it even worse and more cynical than the selections of Sonia Sotomayor (who was confirmed) and of Harriet Myers (who wasn’t). While I disagreed with both of their nominations, I never imagined their selections to be inherently corrupt in their inception.

I can’t say the same about this pick.

Which is why I believe that the GOP has to aggressively fight this nominee. Even if that means Kagan is replaced by a more aggressively liberal choice.

Because this pick is Barack Obama thumbing his nose at the entire system. It’s about rewarding campaign contributors and targeted subsets of supporters.

Ed Meese:

First and foremost, any nominee to a lifetime appointment to the United States Supreme Court must demonstrate a thorough fidelity to apply the Constitution as it was written, rather than as they would like to re-write it. Given Solicitor General Kagan’s complete lack of judicial experience, and, for that matter, very limited litigation experience, Senators must not be rushed in their deliberative process. Because they have no prior judicial opinions to look to, Senators must conduct a more searching inquiry to determine if Kagan will decide cases based upon what is required by the Constitution as it is actually written, or whether she will rule based upon her own policy preferences.

Though Ms. Kagan has not written extensively on the role of a judge, the little she has written is troubling. In a law review article, she expressed agreement with the idea that the Court primarily exists to look out for the “despised and disadvantaged.” The problem with this view—which sounds remarkably similar to President Obama’s frequent appeals to judges ruling on grounds other than law–is that it allows judges to favor whichever particular client they view as “despised and disadvantaged.” The judiciary is not to favor any one particular group, but to secure justice equally for all through impartial application of the Constitution and laws. Senators should vigorously question Ms. Kagan about such statements to determine whether she is truly committed to the rule of law. Nothing less should be expected from anyone appointed to a life-tenured position as one of the final arbiters of justice in our country.

She’s a stealth nominee with virtually no decisions in her background. How can anyone really know how she will rule in matters? We don’t, and can’t.

But as Mr. Meese demonstrated, the few inklings we do have of her background suggest a far left radical that has no business on the court….especially since he has NO experience as a judge.

In her own words:

It is an embarrassment that the President and Senate do not always insist, as a threshold requirement, that a nominee’s previous accomplishments evidence an ability not merely to handle but to master the “craft” aspects of being a judge. In this respect President Clinton’s appointments stand as models. No one can say of his nominees, as no one ought to be able to say of any, that they lack the training, skills, and aptitude to do the work of a judge at the highest level.

Think she has mastered the craft of being a judge?

Hypocrite

More troubling….from a thesis she wrote at Princeton:

“To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933.”

“In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties?…

“Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP [Socialist Party] exhausted itself forever and further reduced labor radicalism in New York to the position of marginality and insignificance from which it has never recovered. The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one’s fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope.”

We now know her political sympathies….and cannot be shocked that the man who wants to Socialize this country has nominated someone with a Socialist bent.

UPDATE

Aaron Klein in his new book, The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists:

Manchurian” author Klein investigated Kagen’s academic writings, in which she argued, “Presidential control of administration, in critical respects, expanded dramatically during the Clinton years, making the regulatory activity of the executive branch agencies more and more an extension of the president’s own policy and political agenda.”

Kagan, writing in the Harvard Law Review in 2001, argued that an increased presidential role in regulation “both satisfies legal requirements and promotes the values of administrative accountability and effectiveness.”

Kagan’s views on presidential control of regulation seem to echo those of controversial regulatory “czar” Cass Sunstein, who, Klein’s book exposes, went so far as to argue the interpretation of federal law should be made not by judges but by the beliefs and commitments of the U.S. president and those around him.

Curt

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