Kagan Supreme Court Nomination Thread - Page 2

I don't like preventing military recruiters onto your campus. The military did not create DADT...the federal government did. The military does what it is ordered to do...civilian control of the military and all that. Why should they get punished for Congress having no balls?

And though DADT is discriminatory, I believe institutions of higher learning should give a little dispensation to the military. Good lawyers for the troops and civic duty and so forth. I wouldn't call it bad or wrong, though. Just vindictive.

That said, Harvard did that before Elena Kagan (as did a lot of other law schools), so I would not hold her accountable for that. And even if I did, I wouldn't vote against her on it.

And the Constitution is still a living document. It requires the same votes to amend it as it has for some time.

Harvard's a private university. They have every right to say who can and can't come on to their campus.

Nowhere did I say they didn't have a right. Nor did I claim they were wrong. I believe institutions of higher learning should recognize the value of interaction with the military...especially in light of public service, something Harvard holds dear. Diversity is a two-way street.

Eh, expect a summer of political theater, followed by a humdrum confirmation.

Gotta raise those funds, folks. Republicans will do it by painting Kagan as slightly to the left of Stalin, and Democrats will do it by hyperventilating over the fact that Republicans are painting Kagan as slightly to the left of Stalin.

Man, there really are few shining examples other than a Supreme Court nomination/confirmation that highlight just how utterly fucked our country/political system is.

"Best in the world?" Arguable, I guess. But it just goes to show you how "best" or "not bad" can also mean "totally batshit insane."

There's a difference between "interactions with the military" and allowing recruiters to hector students. I'm fairly sure she would have been against allowing crack dealers to sell their products on campus as well.

Of course, ironically, kids attending Harvard Law are probably less in need of this kind of protection than poor kids in lousy neighbourhoods.

The military recruiters simply occupy a provided location and students sign up to see them. They hardly go badger random students. They aren't recruiting grunts at Harvard, but rather lawyers and doctors. Although back in the day, Roosevelt recruited some of his Rough Riders from Harvard.

As you point out, recruiters do things differently "on the streets".

I'm struggling with the drug dealer analogy, Prankster.

I doubt press gangs have wandered the streets of Boston in at least a century.

I do wonder why with all the judges available, why the need for a SC justice with no experience whatsoever in deciding cases? Why not just get Alec Baldwin?

It's not like she's some country bumpkin they picked up from the jub band jamboroo! She has, outside of the Supreme Court, probably the most prestigious job in the entire legal field. She got it by publishing extensively on topics relevant to Supreme Court practice. In reality, she's thought more about Supreme Court Jurisprudence than any sitting judge. Moreover, as solicitor general, she spent a great deal of time contemplating and advocating for issues that go to the Supreme Court. She's very, very qualified. The only difference is that her previous opinions didn't have force of law, they appeared elsewhere.

My biggest problem is that she's Harvard-bred. The Court needs more outside-the-Ivy League mentality.


There's absolutely no intellectual diversity on this Court whatsoever. Plus, she'd be the third New York City-raised Justice on the Bench. Diverse my ass.

Errr... have you ever walked around New York City?

Sure, that's not the point.


Why not grab another "flyover stater" like Stevens?

Why is it that 8 of our justices either come from New York State, New Jersey, or California?

We got 1 justice, Thomas, that's from Georgia. And I know how all of you feel about good ole Clarence.

Does birthplace really matter that much to you? Kagan was born in New York, but has also lived in Illinois, Mass. and DC. Scalia worked in flyover Ohio. Ginsburg taught at Tulane.

I come closer to agreeing with you about the educational background and I'd like to see it addressed. But that should be addressed in the selection process, not the confirmation.

If there is someone out there better point to him or her.

It's borderline ludicrous to eliminate the most qualified person because they also went to an Ivy league school or grew up in the Northeast.

Birthplace obviously does matter since we were bombarded with it during Sotomayor's confirmation.

It's not nearly as important as educational background, that I will admit, but if liberals wish to use it in a positive light during confirmation processes, it's only fair to bring up birthplace and where the Justice was raised in a negative light as well.

Why can't we say the same for race or gender?

As for other choices, Sidney Thomas or Diane Wood?

Huh? This isn't an affirmative action debate, this is the Supreme Court of the United States.

Look at The LD's point's above, she is more than qualified, moreso, to the naked eye, than anyone else.

I still think Judge Wood would've been a better pick.

I've got nothing of substance to add, but I gotta say she bears a striking resemblance to David Mitchell of Peep Show fame.

Oh, even though this was a page ago, but fuck you PK. Who really cares if she's a little chubby?

I honestly can't believe that people are trying to make a comparison to Harriet Miers with a straight face.

I agree. Kagan is extremely qualified, possibly more qualified than anyone else.

My biggest issue with the pick is that it just reinforces the idea that those who are in power are just intellectual and cultural elites. While the Ivy League might consist of the best law schools in the country, it does not mean that they are the only great law schools either.

For once, I'd like to see a very smart and capable jurist who graduated from a Tier 2 or 3 law school get picked.

I'll let Jon Stewart take this one:

I mean, if there are two equally qualified candidates and one graduated from Harvard Law and the other got their law degree from the University of Florida, we're supposed to think it's bad that they went with the one from Harvard?

That's all fine and dandy for an individual wanting to become President. I can understand Stewart's thought there. But with the Court, I have a big problem with just selecting those people from one or two schools almost exclusively.

I don't think we should think it bad if one goes to Harvard, but at the same time, Harvard and Yale make up 8/9ths of the Court's makeup once Kagan is sworn in.

I don't understand why anyone should be okay with this at all.

I'm not sure what quantifiable difference it would make to the court to see someone from a second-tier school get sworn in. Harvard and Yale aren't single-minded bodies - there are no ideological ties that bind their graduates. Would it be nice to see some variety? Sure, why not. Is it necessary? Not particularly.

Outside of the freedom of speech work that The LD and Lessig have brought up, she's had a multiple decade long career where she has managed to avoided making her personal views on anything known. Even Lessig and her other friends admit they have no actual knowledge of where she falls on these issues and basically ask us to take it on faith that she's a good progressive because they personally like her. That's pretty much the exact same case that Bush made for Harriet Miers. The Republican base, rightly, rejected that case. I don't know why the Democratic base should suddenly be expected to be less critical than the mouthbreathers now that Obama is in office. Frankly, that kind of thinking smacks of a cult-like level of blind faith in the President.

Meanwhile, everything we do know about Kagan points to her being the same kind of corporatist, executive power-loving, triangulating Republican Lite pathetic excuse for a Democrat that Rahm Emanuel and the Clintons unquestionably are and President Obama is building a solid case for being. That is, she's not a centrist, she's center-right by today's standards, which makes her a member of the extreme right by sane standards. Replacing Stevens with her is moving the Court to the right. If the Democratic base shouldn't stand up to Obama to keep him from shifting the highest court in the land even further to the right than it is now, when should it ever question him?

Your rhetoric is getting ridiculous.

I think he's faking it. Either that, or in the midst of some kind of breakdown. Because, really, it's pathetic in a funny way.

Reagan managed to shift the Overton window wildly to the right and it has been drifting rightward ever since, that's just a fact. Nixon, by today's standards, is a progressive. Think about that.

The same Nixon who privately advocated abortions in the case of mixed-race couples?

What the fuck, man.

Gotta agree with this.

Nixon signed Title IX and X, both he and Reagan were more progressive on the death penalty than Obama is, he used the power a Democratic congress gave him to actually challenge the power of management in the workplace, and--as you point out--he was in favor of Roe v. Wade. By today's standards, Nixon is way out to the "left."

Yeah, you're right, thinking critically about the philosophical underpinning of the politics of the day while placing it in the context of ideological trends of the last few decades is hilariously pathetic. Some people think that's called being "politically engaged." Sad fucks, they are.

Politically engaged: The act of decrying a nominee for being a blank slate and simultaneously ascribing worst-case attributes to her.

Where I come from, we call that concern trolling.

But then you also say that by today's standards Obama is centre-right. Baffling.

That's misconstruing my position. She's a blank slate on most issues. On the issues we do have some indication of where she stands--largely from her previous confirmation hearings and political advice she offered to President Clinton--she's demonstrated she has worst-case tendencies more often than she doesn't. That's what I've been saying the whole time. It's a qualitatively different position from the one you present.

The Democratic Party today, as a whole, is center-right by pre-Reagan standards. That's the Clinton legacy, the DLCers/modern day Al Smiths finally managed to take over the party AND get elected. Obama openly places himself in the middle of their positions and the Republican Party's positions, which is on the insane fringe of the right-wing by anybody's standards. Calling him center-right is being charitable.

The Democratic party hasn't been remotely leftist since Lyndon Johnson, and today's Republican party would be considered an unelectable, fringe right-wing party in pretty much any other advanced democracy. What Cuchulain is saying is fairly accurate. We're still in the Reagan reactionary era in American politics, but hopefully we'll have another progressive movement a'la the early 20th century fairly soon.

Yeah, when you reflect on the fact that the Party of Lincoln is currently headed by people who revere Jefferson Davis and the Party of Jefferson is headed by people who are the intellectual heirs of Alexander Hamilton, it's depressing as fuck. Hopefully, the base will get organized and demand we stop being just another faction of the big business party one of these days.

Most of us fail to realize that the Republican base gets what it wants from its establishment because they're not afraid to be assholes. Imagine what a party of, for, and by actually smart people could do if its rank and file weren't afraid to be assholes from time to time.

Well, the fact that they're the number 1 and number 2 law schools in the country should allow this to make sense to you.

It stands to reason that the majority of the finest lawyers come out of those two schools.

Time Magazine apparently agrees with Pomp...

I've never really thought about this before so it's all interesting to me.

Ah, my issue was that you seemed to be saying that Obama was centre-right by TODAY'S standards. I agree with the above assessment.

I just can't look at adding another minority female to the Court as a bad thing.