I have previously voiced my opposition on this blog to the nomination of Elena Kagan by Barak Obama to be Supreme Court Justice and her confirmation. I have written both of my U. S. Senators to urge them to oppose her. One of them, Richard Durbin, responded with his reasons for supporting her. He said:
Critics of her nomination have pointed to her lack of experience as a judge as a reason she should not be confirmed. While it is true that all of the current justices were judges prior to being nominated to the Court, many of the best known justices in history had no prior judicial experience, including Justices Rehnquist, Douglas, and Frankfurter. In fact, after Kagan’s nomination was announced, Justice Scalia, one of the Court’s most conservative members, said, “I am happy to see that this latest nominee is not a federal judge and not a judge at all.” Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor also brushed aside this critism.
Some critics also believe that Solicitor General Kagan would be a radical activist as a Supreme Court Justice. Former Bush judicial nominee Miguel Estrada does not agree. In his letter to the committee, Mr. Estrada said Kagan is “extremely qualified” and her rulings would fall “well within the mainstream of current legal thought.” He urged the Senate to “confirm her nomination without delay.”
The Kagan nomination is supported by a wide variety of groups and organizations. Her confirmation hearings are scheduled to begin on June 28th.
Well, as much respect as I have for Miguel Estrada, I do disagree with him that Kagan is extremely qualified and that her rulings would fall well within the mainstream of current legal thought. However, what I really get from his endorsement of Kagan is that he is asking the Senate to treat her fairly in contrast to the way that the Democrats, including Senator Durbin, mistreated him when he was nominated by George W. Bush for a federal judgeship. And I dont read Justice Scalias statement as an endorsement of Kagan so much as an acknowledgement of the fact that the vast majority of federal judges from which Obama might have chosen have proven track records as leftwing activists.
And I think the evidence is pretty clear that Kagan would be a radical activist as a Supreme Court Justice.
First, she is a radical internationalist who believes that international law should trump the United States Constitution. IN an article entitled, Elena Kagan Should Be Rejected on July 2, 2010, Phyllis Schlafly wrote the following:
Barack Obama revealed his goal for the Supreme Court when he complained on Chicago Radio Station WBEZ-FM in 2001 that the Earl Warren Court wasn’t “radical” enough because “it didn’t break free from the essential constraints placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution” in order to allow “redistribution of wealth.” Now that Obama is President, he has the power to nominate Supreme Court justices who will “break free” from the Constitution and join him in “fundamentally transforming” America.
That’s the essence of his choice of Elena Kagan as his second Supreme Court nominee. She never was a judge, and her paper trail is short but it’s long enough to prove that she is a clear and present danger to the Constitution.
When Kagan was dean of the Harvard Law School, she presented a guest speaker who is known as the most activist judge in the world: Judge Aharon Barak, formerly president of the Israeli supreme court. The polar opposite of the U.S. Constitution which states that “all legislative powers” are vested in the elected legislative body, Barak has written that a judge should “make” and “create” law, assume “a role in the legislative process,” and give statutes “new meaning that suits new social needs.”
Barak wrote that a judge “is subject to no authority” except himself, and he “must sometimes depart the confines of his legal system and channel into it fundamental values not yet found in it.” Channel? Does he mean he channels in a trance as Hillary Clinton supposedly channeled discourse with the long deceased Eleanor Roosevelt?
Despite Barak’s weirdo writings, or maybe because of them, Elena Kagan called him “my judicial hero.” Judge Robert Bork, a man careful with his words, says that Kagan’s praise of Judge Barak is “disqualifying in and of itself.”
Bork said that Barak “establishes a world record for judicial hubris.” Bork wrote that Barak embraces a judicial philosophy that “there is no area of Israeli life that the court may not govern.”
During Kagan’s confirmation hearing for Solicitor General, Senator Arlen Specter asked her views on using foreign or international law or decisions to interpret our Constitution and laws. She wrote in reply that she approves using “reasonable foreign law arguments.”
Au contraire. The U.S. Constitution states that our judges “shall be bound” by “the Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof.”
Federal law requires all educational institutions receiving federal funds to present an educational program on the U.S. Constitution on every Constitution Day, September 17. Kagan thumbed her nose at Constitution Day 2007 by hiring a transnationalist on the Harvard faculty, Noah Feldman, and featuring him for two days of speeches.
Transnationalists are lawyers who advocate integrating foreign and international law into the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and laws. In his Harvard Constitution Day address, Feldman urged “use of international legal materials in constitutional decision-making … to help actually decide cases,” and opined that “international tribunals’ rulings must be treated as law.”
Kagan’s hero, Judge Barak, is also a transnationalist. In his book, The Judge in a Democracy, he sharply criticizes the U.S. Supreme Court for failing to cite foreign law, and he praises Canada, Australia and Germany for their “enlightened democratic legal systems.”
Kagan is particularly inappropriate because this anti-military woman would replace the only veteran on the Court, John Paul Stevens. As Harvard Law School dean, Kagan signed a brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn or rewrite the Solomon Amendment, which she called “profoundly wrong.”
That popular federal law denies federal funds to colleges that bar military recruiters from the campus. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected Kagan’s argument, which proves what an extremist she is.
Kagan demonstrated her feminist extremism when she served as the lead White House strategist advising President Bill Clinton to veto the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Ten years later, substantially the same Act was repassed by Congress, signed by President George W. Bush, and upheld by the Supreme Court.
Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman, a Dean Kagan hire, has just published a long New York Times Magazine article in which he worries about how the Supreme Court will rule on lawsuits about Obamacare, Obama’s takeover of big corporations, and the cronyism in Stimulus spending. Feldman hopes the Kagan appointment means “the moment has arrived for progressive constitutional thought” to take over the courts.
The Left is counting on Kagan to play a major role to get the Supreme Court to uphold Obama’s transformation of our exceptional private enterprise system to a socialist economy. The New Republic magazine is salivating at the prospect that Kagan will reassert the discredited doctrine of the “living Constitution.”
The Rasmussen poll reports that 42 percent of American oppose Kagan’s confirmation, and only 35 percent favor her. Are Senators listening?
A far cry from being a constitutionalist who respects the original intent of our Founding Fathers, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan:
Donated to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
Possesses limited judicial experience – she has never decided a single case and, since serving as SG, she has only argued six cases before the Supreme Court.
Excluded military recruiters from Harvard Law School’s Office of Career Services and expressed “regret” when she was forced to lift the ban.
Joined a brief submitted to the Supreme Court that attempted to obtain a constitutional right for schools to exclude military recruiters.
Openly supports the use of foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution.
Donated to radical pro-abortion feminist groups with ties to pro-choice PAC Emily’s List.
Has strong ties to abortion-advocacy organizations and has expressed admiration for activist judges who have worked to advance social policy rather than to impartially interpret the law. President Obama said, just weeks before appointing Kagan, that he was looking for someone who would be a “strong advocate for women’s rights.” As “women’s rights” is code for “abortion rights,” Elena Kagan fits the bill.
Condemned the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy as “a profound wrong, a moral injustice of the first order.”
Failed to seek a Supreme Court review of a rogue Ninth Circuit ruling that threatened “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and that subjected the military to burdensome litigation.
It has also been falsely interpreted that Elena Kagan opposes same-sex marriage. Under her charge, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief that gratuitously abandoned strong grounds for defending the Defense of Marriage Act. Prominent supporter of same-sex marriage, Law Professor Dale Carpenter, celebrated the brief as “a gift to the gay-marriage movement” that “will no doubt make its way into judicial opinions.” During Kagan’s confirmation process when she was nominated for Solicitor General last year, she strongly signaled that if given the chance, she would invent a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Second, she is a radical homosexual rights advocate.
MassResistance has uncovered Kagan’s record of bizarre and disturbing activities during that period, which we’ve compiled in a report, “How Elena Kagan ‘queered’ Harvard Law School.” During that time it was clear that Kagan was committed to the radical campaign pushing acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism as “civil rights.” – and changing the mindsets of generation of Harvard lawyers to embrace those views. Will she do the same to America?
Among the things we’ve uncovered (which are elaborated on in the report):
* Kagan accelerated and legitimized the GLBT “rights” concept and law studies at Harvard Law School and in the larger university community.
* Kagan encouraged Harvard students to get involved in homosexual activist legal work. At a time when she as Dean pushed students to engage in “public interest law” and to get “clinical” legal experience, the Harvard Law School established the LGBT Law Clinic. How could a “Justice Kagan” on the Supreme Court be impartial involving cases brought by “gay” legal activists — when she so openly advocated for homosexual legal goals and integrating homosexuality into legal studies and practice at Harvard?
* Kagan recruited former ACLU lawyer (and former ACT-UP activist) William Rubenstein to teach “queer” legal theory. Few Americans can comprehend the radical nature of “queer” academics. Rubenstein described one of his courses as involving “new identities (bisexual, trans, genderf**k),” and “polygamy, S&M, the sexuality of minors.”
* Kagan promoted and facilitated the “transgender” legal agenda during her tenure at Harvard. In 2007, HLS offered a Transgender Law course by “out lesbian” Professor Janet Halley and Dean Spade, a transsexual activist attorney, both of whom she recruited. (Halley’s extremism and contempt for natural gender boundaries is illustrated by her calling herself a “gay man.”) Kagan also brought in Cass Sunstein (currently Obama’s regulatory czar) who has written in support of polygamy and other free-for-all marriage relationships.
* Kagan engaged in ongoing, radical advocacy opposing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and demanding an end to the ban on homosexuals serving in the military. Her highly partisan actions are unbecoming of a future judge – especially one who would be called upon to adjudicate such weighty and divisive matters.
* Even after Kagan and Harvard lost their legal campaign to ban military recruiters and Harvard Law School was forced to let them back on campus, she encouraged ongoing student protests against them — deputizing the radical Lambda group to come up with ideas of how to harass the recruiters legally. Kagan’s actions blatantly disrespected our military and exposed her as the out-of-touch, socially leftist academic that she is.
* Kagan attended functions of radical homosexual (GLBT) groups at Harvard University, absorbing and apparently agreeing with their goals.
* Kagan followed the wishes of campus homosexual organizations — within a month of meeting with a Harvard GLBT student group, she was agreeing with their demand to ban military recruiters on campus.
* Radical “trans” activism at Harvard: Kagan’s active promotion of the GLBT agenda at Harvard likely accelerated the campus environment that was becoming so “tolerant” of homosexuality and gender confusion that there was even a campaign during her tenure to make the campus “trans inclusive” — using Harvard’s “gender identity” nondiscrimination policy (in place since 2006). This included discussions between GLBT student activists and the law school administration (i.e., Kagan) “to make our restrooms safe and accessible for people regardless of their gender identity or expression.” (Read: allow men who identify as “women” to use female restrooms and locker rooms, etc.)
And third, she is a radical abortion rights supporter. In an article entitled Exposed! Kagan’s partial-birth abortion scheme on 7/5/2010, Jill Stanek of WorldNetDaily.com reported the following:
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (“ACOG”) is well-known in pro-life circles to be radically proabortion.
For instance, ACOG supports the most heinous of all abortion practices, partial-birth abortion. When in 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the partial-birth abortion ban of 2003, ACOG released an indignant statement, which read, in part:
“Today’s decision … is shameful and incomprehensible to those of us who have dedicated our lives to caring for women,” said Douglas W. Laube, M.D., M.Ed., ACOG president. “It leaves no doubt that women’s health in America is perceived as being of little consequence.
“… The Supreme Court’s action today, though stunning, in many ways isn’t surprising given the current culture in which scientific knowledge frequently takes a back seat to subjective opinion,” he added.
How admirable of ACOG to stand on the principle of “scientific knowledge” in the face of “subjective opinion,” which overwhelmingly thought sucking out the brains and collapsing the skulls of almost-delivered late-term babies was gross.
But as it turns out, ACOG is the grandest of frauds.
It has just come to light through the process of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearing that in 1996 ACOG let the Clinton White House, via then-associate counsel Elena Kagan, write its medical opinion of the partial-birth abortion procedure.
Documents released from the Clinton library show ACOG inexplicably (because no one from ACOG will now respond to press inquiries for an explanation) submitted its draft unhelpful opinion of partial-birth abortion for review to the White House in the face of a ban being proposed in Congress and then changed it to suit Clinton’s proabortion agenda.
The statement ACOG originally planned to release read:
However, a select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which this procedure, as defined above, would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman. Notwithstanding this conclusion, ACOG strongly believes that decisions about medical treatment must be made by the doctor, in consultation with the patient, based upon the woman’s particular circumstances.
In other words, ACOG found no exceptional reason for the existence of partial-birth abortion. Legalized abortion could get along just fine without it. Nevertheless, in ACOG’s curious opinion, it should remain legal.
But when Kagan got wind of ACOG’s draft, she wrote in a White House memo it “would be disaster – not the less so (in fact, the more so) because ACOG continues to oppose the legislation.”
What came next shocked even me to learn, first that Kagan presumed she had standing to suggest a revision to ACOG, and then that ACOG accepted a revision of its medical opinion from a political hack.
But that’s what happened. Here are the edits Kagan gave ACOG.
Kagan’s suggestion on the key point of contention read:
An intact D & X, however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman …
The final version of ACOG’s January 1997 statement read (bold highlight theirs – accentuating what Kagan accentuated):
A select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which this procedure, as defined above, would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman. An intact D & X, however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman, and only the doctor, in consultation with the patient, based upon the woman’s particular circumstances can make this decision.
ACOG used Kagan’s language verbatim.
As former Justice Department lawyer Shannen Coffin pointed out in a National Review Online column yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court cited ACOG’s opinion when striking Nebraska’s partial-birth abortion ban in 2000, and U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf also cited it when he, as well as two other judges, enjoined the 2003 federal ban.
So it can be said Elena Kagan was largely responsible for keeping partial-birth abortion on the books 10 years beyond what it would have had the courts ruled based on uncorrupted medical opinion.
This is a scandal. For all its pomp, ACOG is unequivocally corrupt.
And Elena Kagan? She has demonstrated she doesn’t let reason, facts, medicine or science stand in the way of her proabortion ideology.
And this fanatic is on track to be our next U.S. Supreme Court justice, unless bold Republican senators can lead the way in successfully challenging her.
(Jill Stanek fought to stop “live-birth abortion” after witnessing one as a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. In 2002, President Bush asked Jill to attend his signing of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. In January 2003, World Magazine named Jill one of the 30 most prominent pro-life leaders of the past 30 years. To learn more, visit Jill’s blog, Pro-life Pulse.)
Therefore, it is not difficult to see why Sen. Durbin would say The Kagan nomination is supported by a wide variety of groups and organizations. Obviously, the radical internationalists, the radical homosexual rights proponents, and the radical abortion rights supporters would all endorse her nomination because it is quite evident that she is most likely to give them exactly what they want.
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