The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Elena Kagan Vote Delayed So That The Judiciary Committee, In A Break With Recent Tradition, Could Read Up On The Topic Prior To Voting

Posted on | July 12, 2010 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

Hotline On Call reports

The Senate Judiciary Committee will not vote Tuesday on the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, GOP aides said today.

GOP senators will use the ability of any committee member under the panel’s rules to put off a vote for one week, several aides said. They said committee GOPers want more time to review the nomination. Kagan returned written answers to questions for the record submitted by senators on Friday. “The committee will need time to review her responses” said a GOP staffer.

More on the scheduling implications at the link.

Elaine Donnelly at Big Peace fell short of endorsing Elena Kagan. Well short. Donnelly hammers Kagan’s testimony on the Witt case:

[Kagan’s] incoherent statement misrepresented the law and provided even more evidence that she has no professional interest in defending the military against legal attacks from civilian homosexual activists that she personally welcomed to Harvard Law School seminars several times.

After revisiting the testimony about Harvard recruiters, Donnelly concludes:

Members of the Senate need to take Kagan’s thin but instructive record seriously, and refuse to confirm her nomination to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Over at The Enterprise Blog, Douglas Smith (no relation) picks up the 2nd Amendment and pistol-whips the Kagan nomination:

The McDonald decision also underscores the importance of each nomination to the Supreme Court, and in particular the pending nomination of Elena Kagan. Already, many have raised questions regarding Kagan’s commitment to Second Amendment rights, citing her role in promoting gun control during her time in the Clinton White House and a memo she wrote as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall in which she stated that she was “not sympathetic” to a litigant’s claim that the District of Columbia had violated his right to bear arms.

The whole Second Amendment argument is a joke. The right to bear arms was as blatantly obvious to even the most casual citizen in 1783 as the use of English to compose the Constitution. The Second Amendment exists to ensure that the newly-minted Federal government couldn’t round up the weapons and engage in Chicago-style tyranny. Any navel-gazing nitwit trying to build castles in the air and say otherwise deserves to be ignored at best, and these Progressive justices shame themselves to say otherwise.
Finally, Senator Orrin Hatch, at NRO, reviews the abortion concern:

Ms. Kagan played a central role in developing and advancing the Clinton administration’s extreme position on abortion, including the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion. In a 1996 legislative-strategy memo, she labeled a “disaster” a proposed statement by a key medical group that there exist “no circumstances” in which partial-birth abortion is the only option. She drafted, and persuaded the group to adopt, language with a much more positive political spin. At her hearing, she offered the Judiciary Committee the implausible claim that she was merely trying to ensure that the medical group accurately expressed its own medical opinion.

In a 1997 legislative-strategy memo after President Clinton vetoed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, Ms. Kagan urged him to support substitutes offered by Democratic senators. This tactic was intended to siphon votes away from a veto override, and, because the substitutes would not pass, leave partial-birth abortion unlimited. She made this political recommendation, however, even though the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the substitutes were unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade. It appears that her personal or political views trumped her legal views.

So, irrespective of the kindly, engaging person Elena Kagan no doubt is in person, she’s as fit for the SCOTUS as, say, me. Her nomination represents an un-serious decision on the part of this Administration, and merits as much support as any of the idiotic, detrimental legislation currently moving through the Congressional digestive tract.

The extremism and wrongheadedness of this Administration should be met with a standing filibuster until next January.

Category: Supreme Court

Comments

9 Responses to “Elena Kagan Vote Delayed So That The Judiciary Committee, In A Break With Recent Tradition, Could Read Up On The Topic Prior To Voting”

  1. Joe
    July 13th, 2010 @ 3:08 am

    If you are going to argue for taking out Kagan, make sure the alternative is not worse. Because Obama does not seem the type to replace a Bork with a Kennedy. He seems more the type to replace a Kagan with a Woods.

  2. Joe
    July 12th, 2010 @ 11:08 pm

    If you are going to argue for taking out Kagan, make sure the alternative is not worse. Because Obama does not seem the type to replace a Bork with a Kennedy. He seems more the type to replace a Kagan with a Woods.

  3. TR Sterling
    July 13th, 2010 @ 3:36 am

    Hope they can do a filbergibberty on Kagan but I doubt that. Scott Brown is is just one of the future gang of 14. Luckily the gang may soon have fewer recruits more like Elana’s military ‘boyz’ at Harvard Law but not until January.

  4. TR Sterling
    July 12th, 2010 @ 11:36 pm

    Hope they can do a filbergibberty on Kagan but I doubt that. Scott Brown is is just one of the future gang of 14. Luckily the gang may soon have fewer recruits more like Elana’s military ‘boyz’ at Harvard Law but not until January.

  5. No Committee Vote on Kagan Today
    July 13th, 2010 @ 4:58 am

    […] at The OtherMcCain as unique in that someone is going to bother to read documents before […]

  6. Adobe Walls
    July 13th, 2010 @ 2:14 pm

    Filibuster Kagan is the only principled action the fact that it is almost sure to fail is beside the point. In fact filibuster every thing except the simplest one provision bills. even when filibusters fail just attempting them burns time off the clock. Any tactic that hinders the Social Democrats legislative agenda even if it only slows their progress helps.

  7. Adobe Walls
    July 13th, 2010 @ 10:14 am

    Filibuster Kagan is the only principled action the fact that it is almost sure to fail is beside the point. In fact filibuster every thing except the simplest one provision bills. even when filibusters fail just attempting them burns time off the clock. Any tactic that hinders the Social Democrats legislative agenda even if it only slows their progress helps.

  8. Bert Spence
    July 13th, 2010 @ 5:35 pm

    Read the rules of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The motion to pass the Kagan nomination to the full senate for a vote cannot itself be voted on unless at least one minority members joins. In other words, if all seven GOP members refuse to join, she never gets a vote. Whenever you hear people say, “she is expected to be confirmed,” you should hear, “the GOP will pretend to be opposed to her but will not actually do what it takes to stop her nomination,” which is this simple: hold seven members’ feet to the fire. Period.

  9. Bert Spence
    July 13th, 2010 @ 1:35 pm

    Read the rules of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The motion to pass the Kagan nomination to the full senate for a vote cannot itself be voted on unless at least one minority members joins. In other words, if all seven GOP members refuse to join, she never gets a vote. Whenever you hear people say, “she is expected to be confirmed,” you should hear, “the GOP will pretend to be opposed to her but will not actually do what it takes to stop her nomination,” which is this simple: hold seven members’ feet to the fire. Period.