Obama nominates Kagan for Supreme Court to replace John Paul Stevens Su

The male justices don't exactly look like Tom Cruise or Denzel Washington, either, no?

 

John Roberts is a good-looking man. (No homo.)

 

wonder how specter will vote?

 

I'm not saying they are not smart and bright folx there
but
THEY ARE NOT THE ONLY SMART AND BRIGHT FOLX IN AMERICA

*also*
Similar to why people join Frats

I wanna be successful --> I join a frat with successful people in it
they help me become successful --> I am an example of how success the frat folx are
Repeat!

Graduating IVY . . even with a 2.0 . . you have contacts and networks
that you simply cannot get anywhere else.

IVY maybe good school with good people. . but THEY NOT THE ONLY ONE
and they don't have the ONLY SMART PEOPLE THERE
for them to DOMINATE the Supreme Court 9-0 . . . seems a bit out of wack

What I am saying is. .. be careful
When you have an All Ivy SC
appointed by All Ivy presidents
confirmed by senate and house with a fair number of Ivy folx as well as those like your self which beleive the IVY *is* the best America has to offer . . . . .
Well . . . . you might as well call the IVY LEAGUES the illuminati
cause they control America by proxy
some nice Representative Democracy you have there.

Good people. . are good people
Smart people are smart people

A good Smart person without the Pedigree . . .. what are their chances
at those positions? Those that don't have the networks and connections
Those that legitimate VERY SHARP . . . but lack the pedigree

As of right now .. . One can say . . IF you not IVY
You Cannot become a member of the Supreme Court

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/us/politics/09ivy.html?_r=1
Interesting article.

Rocket River

 

reminds me of the council leonidas had to consult in the movie "300"

 

Exacly! I knew it, but couldn't call it. He was great in the "Birdcage."

 

For. He's already signaled some amount of support for her today to help fend off a strong challenge from the left from Sestak.

 

Thanks, and we do not disagree very much. I just wouldn't want to say they're more smoke and mirrors than substance. (Stanford education might get more of a smoke and mirrors argument from me, but we'll leave that for another day!)

So true about the networks and the meaning of the pedigree, and very true that there are plenty of smart and talented people outside the "network."

 

the best indication yet that votes on this, or any other issue, in congress, are all about politics, not principle.

 

Says the Republican whose party filibusters everything, even their own ideas, just to make political hay. You're the biggest hypocrite in the history of the internet.

 

some "must reading" for the basso

 

You do realize that it is possible to be an excellent jurist and not have gone to Harvard or Yale, right?

There are many fine law schools across the country. Two that come to mind are Stanford and Texas.

Oh...and for the record, judicial experience matters. You really don't want to have to do on the job training for a Supreme Court Justice.

 

This is pretty much on target and why I'm not happy with this nomination. While I don't oppose it and think she certainly is qualified, I'm disappointed in the President. As a liberal, I want liberals on the court that are just as "unabashedly liberal" as the recent Republican nominees have been unabashedly conservative.


Nomination of Kagan Leaves Some Longing on the Left

By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — The selection of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be the nation’s 112th justice extends a quarter-century pattern in which Republican presidents generally install strong conservatives on the Supreme Court while Democratic presidents pick candidates who often disappoint their liberal base.

Ms. Kagan is certainly too liberal for conservatives, who quickly criticized her nomination on Monday as a radical threat. But much like every other Democratic nominee since the 1960s, she does not fit the profile sought by the left, which hungers for a full-throated counterweight to the court’s conservative leader, Justice Antonin Scalia.

In many ways, this reflects how much the nation’s long war over the judiciary has evolved since Ms. Kagan was a child. While the American left back then used the Supreme Court to promote social change in areas like religion, race and abortion, today it looks at it more as a backstop to defend those rulings. The right, on the other hand, remains aggrieved and has waged an energetic campaign to make the court an agent of change reversing some of those holdings.

Along the way, conservatives have largely succeeded in framing the debate, putting liberals on the defensive. Sonia Sotomayor echoed conservatives in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings last year by rejecting the idea of a “living” Constitution that evolves, and even President Obama recently said the court had gone too far in the past. While conservatives have played a powerful role in influencing Republican nominations, liberals have not been as potent in Democratic selections.

In that vein, then, no Democratic nominee since Thurgood Marshall in 1967 has been the sort of outspoken liberal champion that the left craves, while Justice Scalia has been joined by three other solid conservatives in Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. By all accounts, Mr. Obama did not even consider the candidates favored most by the left, like Harold Hongju Koh, his State Department legal adviser, or Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford Law School professor.

“Why do the conservatives always get the conservatives, but we don’t get to get the liberals?” Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, asked the Web site Politico recently, voicing the frustration of the left when Ms. Kagan was considered the front-runner but was not yet Mr. Obama’s selection. “What the hell is that all about?”

Ms. Kagan addressed the point herself 15 years ago in the University of Chicago Law Review: “Herein lies one of the mysteries of modern confirmation politics: given that the Republican Party has an ambitious judicial agenda and the Democratic Party has next to none, why is the former labeled the party of judicial restraint and the latter the party of judicial activism?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/us/politics/11nominees.html

 

Republicans are tougher, that's what it's about. And they're more secure in their ideology. And even as their values shift, sometimes radically, most often due to political expediency, they're willing to vote in lockstep. (In fact, with the serious threat to moderate Republicans the tea party freaks represent, they really don't have any choice to vote in lockstep.) And that's what makes a party powerful. Liberals have been apologizing for their beliefs since Ronald Reagan. That's what makes them weak.

 

Big, bad John...

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2...erience_matters_--_except_when_it_doesnt.html

Judicial Experience Matters -- Except When it Doesn't

"I mean, one reason I felt so strongly about Harriet Miers's qualifications is I thought she would fill some very important gaps in the Supreme Court. Because right now you have people who've been federal judges, circuit judges most of their lives, or academicians. And what you see is a lack of grounding in reality and common sense that I think would be very beneficial."

-- Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), quoted by Salon, on the lack of judicial experience of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, October 27, 2005.

"Ms. Kagan is likewise a surprising choice because she lacks judicial experience. Most Americans believe that prior judicial experience is a necessary credential for a Supreme Court Justice."

-- Cornyn, earlier today on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

 

Not to fret, I'm sure Obama wouldn't have picked her for his nominee if she didn't mirror his socialistic views.

 

That's quite funny, like flipping the switch on a bright light and turning night into day, and just as dishonest. It's not day at all, you see, but night, despite everything you see.

Is that supposed to make me feel better? I'm disappointed in the President. I expected more from the guy. Is appointing clearly liberal/progressive judges to the highest court in the land to much to ask? Sure, the two appointments are an improvement over what we would have had if McCain had been elected, but I want more.

 

No, it's not supposed to make you feel better. I'm disappointed too that Obama doesn't have more fight in him, but he's a pragmatist and he understands that a more liberal nominee would definitely trigger a filibuster, as virtually every single thing he's tried to do has, for the simple reason that the Republican party has decided on a strategy of obstruction and its members have agreed to go along with it. And that filibuster would be solid and would lead to a long, bloody battle, it would derail the president's agenda on immigration, the environment and the economy and jobs -- with midterms fast approaching -- and the battle would probably not be won in the end.

It's just the nature of the parties. Democrats insist on being both realistic and reasonable. Republicans insist on being cynical and stubborn. The result of that conflict is inevitable. If Obama wants to be successful at all in the face of that, in the face of the fact that his own party will not support him in force the way the Republicans oppose him in force, he's really left with very few options.

The prospective solutions don't include governing more from the left. They include electing more Democrats (and more reliable supporters of the Democratic platform, because when Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln, etc. are in the party we do not have 59 votes) and making more noise about what unprecedentedly cynical obstructionists the Republicans have been since Obama took office. Obama has been doing more of that lately. I hope he will continue to as the midterms approach.

But nominating someone more liberal in the current climate would be a temporary, symbolic win for liberals which would be followed by a horrible mess which would derail his agenda for months and then likely followed by starting all over again with a Kagan-like nominee. It's a drag but these Republicans are serious dicks.

 

I'm not sure how much this has mattered in the past. About 40% of our Supreme Court Justices in our history had no bench experience when nominated.