Jew Corrupter: Elena Kagan an Idiot Jew Princess and Moral Degenerate

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Elena Kagan: Jewish Ethnic Networking Eases the Path of a Liberal/Leftist to the Supreme Court

Kevin MacDonald

May 20, 2009

A recent LA Times article, "Supreme Court Nominee has admirers left and right," by David G. Savage and James Oliphant, although masquerading as news, is a brief for the candidacy of Elena Kagan for the position on the Supreme Court vacated by David H. Souter.  The article notes that she is well connected to top people in the Obama Administration, and there is effusive praise from two legal bigwigs, Laurence Tribe and Charles Fried, both of Harvard.

Kagan's candidacy raises a number of issues. If nominated and confirmed, there would be three Jewish justices on the Supreme Court — all on the left. Jews are of course always overrepresented among elites — especially on the left, but 33% is high by any standard given that Jews constitute less than 3% of the US population. This is much higher than Jewish representation in the US Senate (13%) and the House of Representatives (~7%).  The last time I checked, if there were three Jews on the Supreme Court, the percentage would be about the same as the percentage of Jews among the wealthiest Americans.

Jews as one-third of the Supreme Court seems sure to raise the eyebrows among people like me who think that Jewish identity often makes a big difference in attitudes and behavior. And if there is one area where mainstream Jewish political identity has had a huge effect (besides anything related to Israel), it's in attitudes and behavior related to multiculturalism. This is true of the Jewish mainstream across the entire Jewish political spectrum, from the far left to the neoconservative right. A major theme of The Culture of Critique is that Jewish identities and interests were apparent in all the Jewish-dominated intellectual movements of the left that have rationalized multiculturalism, massive non-White immigration, and the general displacement of Europeans:

Viewed at its most abstract level, a fundamental agenda is thus to influence the European-derived peoples of the United States to view concern about their own demographic and cultural eclipse as irrational and as an indication of psychopathology. (Ch. 5 of The Culture of Critique; emphasis in original)

Kagan seems to have lived a charmed life, with perhaps a whiff (or even a stench) of ethnic networking. At least one of the journalists writing the LA Times panegyric is Jewish (David G. Savage), and the two legal scholars who are quoted in the article (Fried and Tribe) are both Jews. In addition, Kagan was appointed Dean of Harvard Law by Lawrence Summers — also Jewish and with a strong Jewish identity. Summers and Kagan covered for Laurence Tribe when he lifted a passage from another scholar's book without attribution. Ethnic networking is nothing if not reciprocal.

While Jewish activists are doing all they can to promote a Jew for this position, we don't hear a peep from White Protestants — a group that dominated the Supreme Court for 150 years.  With Souter's departure, the only White Protestant left on the court is the superannuated Stevens, who is 89 and will doubtless be replaced by an ethnic minority if he retires during the Obama administration. (White males need not apply.)  When it comes to playing help-my-tribe battles, White Protestants are completely inept — in fact, they don't even play at all.

Tribe's praise for Kagan is particularly interesting: "She has an excellent chance, and she would be terrific. ... She has a masterful command of so many areas of law. And she's been vetted and recently confirmed. Her writing is not voluminous, which is also a plus."

Indeed, her writing is not voluminous at all. In her entire career at the University of Chicago and Harvard — the very apex of elite academic institutions — she has written a grand total of 9 articles. Actually, her scholarly output is even less than that because two of these publications are book reviews and one is a tribute to Thurgood Marshall. When she received tenure at the University of Chicago in 1995, she had exactly two scholarly articles published in law journals — a record that would ordinarily not get her tenure even at quite a few third tier universities much less an elite institution like the University of Chicago.

But on the basis of this record and later work in the Clinton Administration, in 2003 she became the dean of Harvard Law School, the most prestigious law school in the country. She has yet to publish any articles or books since becoming dean. But now her lack of scholarship is called a plus by Laurence Tribe, presumably because her positions on many issues are unknown. (Doubtless if Kagan had a stellar scholarly record, Tribe would have seen it as a major plus.)

Not only does she have a weak record as a scholar, she has yet to argue a case as Solicitor General even though she had the opportunity to do so. Her next opportunity to argue a case will not happen until after the Supreme Court nomination process is over, so we will have no information on how effective she would be in fending off the arguments of the conservative intellectual heavyweights on the Court before this weighty decision is made. On the basis of the arguments she endorsed in the Solomon Amendment case (see below), one must assume that she would not fare well.

Nor are there any other discernible positives. As Savage and Oliphant note, "Kagan does not have the 'real world' experience in politics. ...  It is not clear whether she has the "quality of empathy" Obama has said he wants in a nominee. But she has had an uncanny knack for winning important admirers and avoiding enemies in a series of top legal jobs."

The only thing Kagan has going for her seems to be that important people admire her. She's good at networking, and it would seem that many of her most prominent admirers are other Jews — liberal and conservative. (Tribe and Summers are liberals; Charles Fried is considered a conservative. Fried was Solicitor General in the Reagan Administration but voted for Obama.) Ethnic networking indeed!

This points to corruption in the Jewish sector of the American academic elite. Kagan's path to the academic heights of the legal profession and perhaps to a position on the Supreme Court is not based on a solid record of scholarship or any other relevant experience, but on ethnic boosterism from other Jews. As I noted elsewhere, Jews are represented in elite American academic institutions at levels far higher than can be explained by IQ.

Kagan is a poster girl for Jewish affirmative action. Not only does she have no discernible skills that would warrant her high position as dean of Harvard Law — much less an appointment to the Supreme Court, she is boosted by another Harvard professor (Laurence Tribe) who plagiarized another scholar's work. (Plagiarism seems to run rampant at Harvard Law. Norman Finkelstein provides a credible case that Alan Dershowitz plagiarized others' work in writing The Case for Israel. Charles J. Ogletree Jr., an African American, was involved in double plagiarism: foisting off the plagiarized work of his assistants as his own.) And Kagan was appointed dean of Harvard Law by then-Harvard President Lawrence Summers who has massive ethical problems of his own related to shielding another Harvard professor, his friend and protégé Andrei Shleifer. Shleifer  was found liable by a federal court in 2004 for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government for his activities during the transition to capitalism in Russia in the 1990s. Summers also accepted $2.7 million in speaking fees from companies that received government bailout money when he later became head of the National Economic Council.

What could we expect from Kagan on the Supreme Court? Kagan has been flagged by conservatives because of an amicus brief she and other law professors wrote seeking to strike down a law that prohibited colleges and universities that ban military recruiting on campus from receiving federal funds. The motive behind the brief signed by Kagan was to protest the military's policy on homosexuality. Their arguments were rejected 8-0 by the Supreme Court, indicating that even the Court liberals thought it was completely outside the mainstream.

This strongly suggests that Kagan would be quite willing to fashion her legal arguments to attain her liberal/left policy goals, and that is exactly what her other writings show. Her 1993 article "Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V," (60 University of Chicago Law Review  873; available on Lexis/Nexis) indicates someone who is entirely on board with seeking ways to circumscribe free speech in the interests of multicultural virtue: "I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the uncoerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation." She acknowledges that the Supreme Court is unlikely to alter its stance that speech based on viewpoint is protected by the First Amendment, but she sees that as subject to change with a different majority: The Supreme Court "will not in the foreseeable future" adopt the view that "all governmental efforts to regulate such speech ... accord with the Constitution." But in her view there is nothing to prevent it from doing so. Clearly, she does not see the protection of viewpoint-based speech as a principle worth preserving or set in stone. Rather, she believes that a new majority could rule that "all government efforts to regulate such speech" would be constitutional. All government efforts.

And until that day comes — doubtless speeded by her arrival on the court, she advocates finding ways to rationalize restrictions on free speech within the current guidelines of the court.  Her article proposes a variety of ways that "hate speech" may be restricted without running afoul of current Supreme Court guidelines. For example, she supports the constitutionality of "hate crime" laws that enhance penalties for crimes motivated by racial bias — precisely the sort of law recently passed by the House and now being considered by the Senate. Such laws have been strongly promoted by the organized Jewish community and condemned by conservative legal scholars as creating special victim categories and destroying federalism because they punish acts that are already illegal in the states.

Kagan's conclusion shows where her heart is:

[Efforts to draft restrictions on speech] will not eradicate all pornography or all hate speech from our society, but they can achieve much worth achieving. They, and other new solutions, ought to be debated and tested in a continuing and multi-faceted effort to enhance the rights of minorities and women, while also respecting core principles of the First Amendment.

For Kagan, the crusade to restrict speech is motivated by her feminist and leftist political attitudes. Indeed, her 1993 paper was originally presented at a conference titled, "Speech, Equality, and Harm: Feminist Legal Perspectives on Pornography and Hate Propaganda." She sees her job as a legal scholar to find a way to ensure that these goals are achieved while paying lip service to the legal tradition of the First Amendment. Indeed, she sees heavy-handed attempts to restrict free speech, such as the Stanford speech code, as counter-productive because they make "the forces of hatred into defenders of Constitutional liberty" and because they are so unreasonable they invite criticisms of the rest of Stanford's race and gender policies.

In a revealing comment, she notes that those who want to restrict speech in heavy-handed and unconstitutional ways are motivated by the stubborn failure to close the racial gap:

The magnitude and duration of these inequalities may make them impervious to political (let alone to academic) efforts. We do not know how to solve these problems; we may not even know how to talk (or perhaps we are afraid to talk) about them. So some succumb to the allure of sideshows such as the one involving the Stanford Policy.

Given what many believe is the biological basis of these racial differences and recent reports that the racial gap in education is not narrowing despite the No Child Left Behind law aimed at raising the scores of Blacks and Latinos, I suspect that this temptation to restrict speech will be increasingly irresistible in the future. And if Kagan is on the Supreme Court, we can certainly expect that she would vote for such restrictions. Her heart, as I am sure Obama must know, is definitely in the right place.

They say politics is the art of the possible. For Kagan, law is also the art of the possible. There are no principles. Only better or worse tactics for achieving her policy goals.

Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach.  Email him.

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/ar ... Kagan.html


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More Idiot Press Jews crowing about making America the New Corrupted Jewish Weimar Republic  :x  -- The CSR

An Unnatural WomanThe secret life of a Supreme Court short-lister.
By Dahlia Lithwick and Hanna RosinPosted Tuesday, May 5, 2009, at 7:40 PM ET
http://www.slate.com/id/2217714

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Look at all of her "work" on Hate Speech and First Amendment Issues.... She's a Jew... pretty typical J.S.   :x

---------

Elena Kagan

On Leave: 2009-2010



Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law
Office:    Griswold 200
Phone:    (617) 495-4601
Fax:    (617) 495-5115
Email:    http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/dire ... bliography

[pas]

Daryl posted a connection with Goldman Sachs to this parasite.

[Christopher Marlowe]

I would have liked MacDonald's article more if he gave more generous quotations from Kagen.  As it is, I can't read "Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V" online so I have to trust professor MacDonald's interpretation.

After reading this article, I went to Judgepedia: http://judgepedia.org/index.php/Elena_Kagan
and found some of Kagen's responses to questions posed after she was nominated for solicitor general.

In answer to a question from Senator Specter, Ms. Kagan stated that she "view as unjust the exclusion of individuals from basic economic, civic, and political opportunities of our society on the basis of race, nationality, sex, religion, and sexual orientation."

Section 5 of the 14th amendment granted congress remedial powers.  

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
    ...
    Section. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

The Congress has used these remedial powers to pass the civil rights act of 1964.  The various titles of that act were:

Title I: Barred unequal application of voter registration requirements.
Title II: Outlawed discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce; exempted private clubs without defining the term "private."
Title III: Prohibited state and municipal governments from denying access to public facilities on grounds of race, religion, gender, or ethnicity.
Title IV: Encouraged the desegregation of public schools and authorized the U.S. Attorney General to file suits to enforce said act.
Title V: Expanded the Civil Rights Commission established by the earlier Civil Rights Act of 1957 with additional powers, rules and procedures.
Title VI: Prevents discrimination by government agencies that receive federal funding. If an agency is found in violation of Title VI, that agency can lose its federal funding.
(Wikipedia)

Title II is the part that was challenged and upheld by the "Heart of Atlanta" case. Note that Title II is NOT dealing with a government agency. The congress was allowed to regulate these businesses through the commerce clause. It was an excellent test case for the government because 75% of the patrons of the hotel were from out of state.  

The tricky part we are touching on here is nicely summarized by one website as:

Should the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment be used to advance the liberty of one class of individuals for good reasons when that action may infringe on the liberty of another?

Another tricky part, and the actual part that I was getting at in the first place is the inclusion of "sexual preference" in Kagen's quote.  Here in the civil rights act, it says: "race, religion, gender, or ethnicity."

Title VII of the act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to implement the law.
Subsequent legislation expanded the role of the EEOC. Today, according to the U. S. Government Manual of 1998-99, the EEOC enforces laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age in hiring, promoting, firing, setting wages, testing, training, apprenticeship, and all other terms and conditions of employment. Race, color, sex, creed, and age are now protected classes.
http://www.archives.gov/education/lesso ... ights-act/

So Kagen's own words can be seen to show a preference for expanding that set of protected classes to include sodomites.  I think that it is interesting that Kagen was sure to include "sexual orientation", which is not a protected class under the 14th amendment or the expanded EEOC rules, but she neglected to include "age", which is a protected class.  I would go so far as to say the ageism is probably the MOST prevalent form of discrimination in hiring today.    

I don't mind giving people a fair shake, but the end result of government interference tends to be a sort of quota system. I think the reasoning is as follows: If things were truly fair, then equal numbers of every type of person would be performing every type of work. If equal numbers of every type of person are not performing every type of work, then there must be some discrimination going on at the hiring level.

The current laws promote the Diana Moon Glampers society by preventing employers from using intelligence tests  because they are supposedly discriminatory.  

[T]he Supreme Court's 1971   Griggs v. Duke Power decision made it risky for employers to give  written tests to applicants.

If the test has a "disparate impact" on blacks, or other legally protected groups, the employer must demonstrate that the need for the test rises to the stringent level of a "business necessity."

So, because African-Americans average lower scores on every predictively valid IQ-style test ever devised, all written tests are guilty—unless proven innocent by a battery of high-priced consultants.

Many companies still do use written tests—because they are so useful. Consumer packaged goods giant Procter & Gamble, long famous for the quality of its employees, paid a large amount of money to have their 65-minute problem solving test validated. The NFL encourages all college football players hoping to be drafted to take the 12-minute Wonderlic IQ test.
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050417_college.htm

I think it is a nice idea to try and give everybody an equal chance to succeed in life, but I believe it is unreasonable to think that the government is going to make everything FAIR.  
==================

As far as hate crime and hate speech goes, I think these two ideas are pure losers. These laws are promoted by the ADL only to protect certain privileged classes; IMHO, mostly homosexuals and Jews.  I have read that the first law passed after the Communists seized power in Russia made anti-semitism a crime punishable by death. Here in this country, the latest hate crime law in congress was named after Matthew Shepherd, the homosexual man that was killed by speed freaks, and then made into a gay martyr. Similarly, the death of 72-year-old "gay"-identified Andrew Anthos in Detroit was widely exploited by the homosexual lobby to push for federal "hate crimes" legislation.

Homosexual activists assert that in February an unidentified African-American male called Anthos a "faggot" and struck him in the back of the head with a metal pipe, ultimately resulting in his death. Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan) wasted no time in citing the alleged "hate crime" on the floor of Congress as Exhibit A to push for passage of a "gay"-friendly federal "hate crimes" law.

However, there's one small problem. Investigators in Wayne County, Michigan, have determined that the crime the very same "hate crime" which was used to justify introduction of H.R. 1592 never even happened. Anthos, who reports indicate had been previously diagnosed with mental illness, originally told police that he did not know how he was injured, but a week later, changed his story to suggest that he had been the victim of a "hate crime." But investigators have now concluded that Anthos' death was in fact the result of an accidental fall brought on by severe arthritis in his neck.

For some reason the media likes to make a big deal about "hate crimes", but MSM doesn't like to talk about how many of these "crimes" are often faked by people seeking sympathy.  

As for the "real" hate crimes, the FBI is required to compile the statistics:

Of the 11,451 offenses reported, 67.8 percent were crimes against persons, 31.5 percent were crimes against property,and the remaining 0.7 percent were crimes against society. Within these offense types, intimidation was the most frequently reported of the crimes against persons at 55.9 percent. Destruction/damage/vandalism accounted for 83.7 percent of reported crimes against property. (Based on Table 2.)
A review of the total offenses (11,451) demonstrated that intimidation was the most frequently reported hate crime, accounting for 37.9 percent of the total. Destruction/damage/vandalism made up 26.4 percent; simple assault, 18.8 percent; aggravated assault, 10.8 percent. The remaining offenses accounted for 6.1 percent of the total.

Interestingly enough, hate crimes constitute a very small percentage of all crimes, about .07%, or 7 of every 10,000 crimes, nationwide. So if we remove the intimidation and vandalism crimes from that total, we get a whopping 0.025%, or 2.5 of every 10,000 crimes.  For example, in 2007, there were almost 17,000 murders and 9 murders were thought motivated by "hate". Of the 90,000 forcible rapes, 2 were hate inspired.

That's a very small percentage of crimes, but the result of hate crime laws is that Jews and homosexuals become protected classes.  Most religiously motivated hate crimes (3/4) are reported by Jews.  Almost all sexual orientation crimes are reported by homosexuals.  (THE REAL STORY OF US HATE CRIMES STATISTICS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS by William B. Rubenstein, p.2)

Hate crimes are punished with enhanced penalties. I think the whole idea of a "hate crime" or "hate speech" creates the presumption of a crime where there possibly isn't any.  If a homosexual gets attacked, it must be a "hate crime" right?  But what if the homosexual molested your son?  

And the threat of hate speech makes people more fearful of speaking out against certain people.  For example, a reporter writes about a criminal cabal of rabbis selling human organs on the black market. Is that investigative journalism or antisemitism? That story kicked around for YEARS before it finally came out in the media. Up until the last minute, defenders were saying (and probably are still saying) that the story was a revival of the blood libel.

I believe that the Russian antisemitism law was passed to prevent people from publicly stating that the communist revolution was Jewish, and that it was funded by New York Jews. It stopped people from saying that a cabal of Jews had taken over the country; that the vast majority of commissars were Jews and that the NKVD (secret police) were Jews. Even today, Jewish websites will talk about those laws as being necessary to protect the Jews who had suffered so much under the Russian Tsars.  

In the same way, these "hate crime" and "hate speech" laws are obviously created for a political reason.  Punishing such a tiny percentage of the total crimes serves no useful purpose.  Also the fact that they are being promoted by the ADL, the same promoters of criminal zionism, makes me think that these laws are ultimately for the same purpose as the ones passed after the communists came to power.  

All in all, the expansion of government powers to help everybody get more equal is about as useful as someone looking over my shoulder to help me urinate.
---------------------
I don't much care for Kagen as a Justice. Perhaps the association with Goldman Sachs and her openly homosexual lifestyle will be enough to end it for her.

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

Elena Kagan

Subversive dyke kike Kagan?  :sick:  :sick:  :sick:

[MikeWB]

I found these on 4chan. LOL

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

:lol: :lol: :lol: ---no wonder why this Jew dyke wants to stop 1st Amendment "Free Speech"... :lol:

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

An Updated List of Goldman Sachs Ties to the Obama Government Including Elena Kagan
By: fflambeau Saturday May 8, 2010 9:13 pm    
TweetTweet20 Share106 digg reddit stumbleupon  

I. Introduction.

This essay shows the pervasive influence of Goldman Sachs and its units (like the Goldman-Robert Rubin-funded Hamilton Project embedded in the Brookings Institution) in the Obama government. These names are in addition to those compiled on an older such list and published here at FDL. In the future, I will combine the names here and those on the earlier article but I urge readers to look at the earlier list too (links below). Combined, this is the largest and most comprehensive list of such ties yet published.

For readability and clarity, I have NOT included many of the details and links that are found in the earlier article so as to make this one less repetitive and easier to read. So, if you want more documentation, please look at my earlier diary here at Firedoglake called "A List of Goldman Sachs People in the Obama Government: Names Attached To The Giant Squid's Tentacles" published on April 27, 2010.

Note too that I have intentionally used the words, "Obama government" rather than "Obama administration" because some of these connections are not technically within his administration. These would include ambassadorial appointments and Supreme Court appointments (like that anticipated for Elena Kagan). This also includes lobbyists like Dick Gephardt who has multiple connections/input to Obama and to Goldman Sachs and the Hamilton Project.

In a similar vein, I use a broader definition than just Goldman Sachs (GS) because GS has funded, along with its ex-leader Robert Rubin, a right-leaning think tank called the Hamilton Project and embedded it within the Brookings Institution. Some of its activities thus also spill over into Brookings Institution projects which doubtlessly was one of the clever reasons Rubin and GS did this, along with providing their essentially neo-con/neo-liberal think tank with camouflage. This has worked beautifully for GS and Rubin as most writers–even critical ones like Matt Taibbi–seem unaware of the important doings of the Hamilton Project. The Hamilton Project has 32 people sitting on its Advisory Council and many have ties to Goldman Sachs, Rubin and the Obama government. Of the first four Directors of the Hamilton Project, three work in the Obama administration. Meanwhile, the most recent Director of the Hamilton Project came from academia and from a position as economic adviser to the Obama administration to Hamilton in the sort of "revolving door" that Washington is famous for.

The Hamilton Project (named after Alexander Hamilton whose most famous dictum was "The People are a Great Beast") is essentially pushing for cuts in entitlements (like social security), outsourcing American jobs, and for more NAFTA-type agreements. This is essentially the game plan for the Obama administration, not surprising since Barack Obama was the inaugural speaker at the Hamilton Project (and Joe Biden spoke there just weeks ago).

NOTE: This diary and its predecessor are the result of a lot of painstaking work. I am sure there are other Goldies out there in the Obama administration who I have missed. If so, PLEASE let me know by dropping their name in a comment below.

II. Additional Names of Goldies serving with Obama.

Enough background information, let's reveal the Goldies with connections/jobs within the Obama government (or with "revolving door" status). For your convenience, I've listed the new names to the list separately and in the first section, led off by Elena Kagan because the buzz is that she is Obama's pick to the Supreme Court.

NEW GOLDIES REVEALED (with respect to prior article):

KAGAN, ELENA.

Kagan was appointed by Obama to serve as the Solicitor General. The Solicitor General, often called the 10th Supreme Court Justice, is the person who argues the U.S. government side of cases before the court. Buzz has it that she is also Obama's next pick to the Supreme Court, perhaps as early as this Monday.

At any rate, she's already in the Obama government as Solicitor General. She also has ties to Goldman Sachs. From 2005 to 2008, according to USA Today and other sources, Kagan served as a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute. Matt Kelley of USA Today wrote in his article, "Possible Supreme Court Pick Had Ties to Goldman Sachs" that Kagan received $10,000 from Goldman Sachs for her services in 2008, per federal disclosure forms. But since she was doing the same thing in 2005, 2006, and 2006, it would appear that she pulled in $40,000 from Goldman Sachs for what appears to be sitting in on one day sessions looking at big issues affecting the global economy. $40,000 grand for so little time is a nice gig if you can get it (and she likely got expenses too) for so little time. It's not a huge amount but it is enough to affect a player's mind.

Here are some questions that Senators on the Judiciary Committee might want to ask of Kagan:

1) Can you produce all the paperwork/receipts related to your ties to Goldman Sachs?

2) Did you report the GS payments as income on your income tax returns (lots of people in the Obama administration (like Timothy Geithner) or wanting to be (like Tom Daschle) seem to have trouble filling out proper IRS forms.

3) Will you recuse yourself in any cases brought before you at the Supreme Court (if confirmed) that have any connection, no matter how remote, to Goldman Sachs or its entities?

4) As Solicitor General of the United States, have you handled (defined largely) any cases relating to Goldman Sachs or its entities?
Have you given advice on any such cases?

5) Have you had any dealings with The Hamilton Project? This includes speeches given there, conferences attended, papers published etc.

BERKOWITZ, HOWARD P.

Here is a murky connection (but an important one) between Obama and Goldman Sachs. Berkowitz serves as the Chairman, Board of Directors of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINAP). It is an important Washington think tank that gives input to Obama. It was established by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in 1985, according to Wikipedia. People affiliated with WINAP are a virtual Who's Who of foreign policy including Henry Kissinger, Warren Christopher, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Richard Perle.

Berkowitz also is Managing Director of BlackRock and sits on the Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs funded Hamilton Project.

BlackRock is a global investmentment management firm with over $3.35 trillion under management. There is a virtual revolving door of hiring and acquisitions between BlackRock and Goldman Sachs as reported here.

DUDLEY, WILLIAM C.

Dudley, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York web site:

    became the 10th president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on January 27, 2009. In that capacity, he serves as the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the group responsible for formulating the nation's monetary policy.

    Mr. Dudley was a partner and managing director at Goldman, Sachs & Company and was the firm's chief U.S. economist for a decade. Earlier in his career at Goldman Sachs, he had a variety of roles including a stint when he was responsible for the firm's foreign exchange forecasts. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs in 1986, he was a vice president at the former Morgan Guaranty Trust Company. Mr. Dudley was an economist at the Federal Reserve Board from 1981 to 1983.

Dudley seems to have Geithner's old job, passed from one Goldie to the next.

EFFRON, BLAIR W.

Effron is a money man. As a bundler for the 2008 Obama campaign, he raised more than $100,000. According to this web site he also was a "Mega Donor" to Obama in 2008, giving more than $28,500 though committees supporting Obama. His wife is also a major contributor, giving tens of thousands of dollars.

Effron is a founding partner of Centerview Partners LLC. Their web site indicates he has executed over $400 billion in transactions.

Effron is also on the Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs/Robert Rubin funded Hamilton Project.

FROMAN, Michael.

Froman (born August 20, 1962) is deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, a position to be held jointly at the National Security Council and the National Economic Council. His responsibilities will include serving as the White House liaison to the G7, G8 and G20 summits of economic powers.[

He's on my prior list but his name was misspelled there (as Frohman). Froman's days with Obama go back to Harvard Law School. Froman appears to be the original link between Robert Rubin/Goldman Sachs and Obama.

From Wikipedia:

    >Froman received a bachelor's degree in Public and International Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University in 1985, a doctorate in International Relations from Oxford University and a law degree from Harvard Law School where he was a classmate of Barack Obama[2][3], and also an associate of Obama's on the Harvard Law Review.[4]

    ...

    After Harvard, Froman had lost touch with Barack Obama until Froman heard of Obama's Senate run. Froman volunteered at that point to help, began raising funds for the candidate, and introduced the candidate to Robert Rubin, whom Froman had followed from the Treasury Department to Citigroup [Froman served as Rubin's Chief of Staff] after the Clinton administration.[4] Before moving to the Obama administration, Froman most recently was a managing director of Citigroup's Citi Alternative Investments Institutional Clients Group, where he was head of infrastructure and sustainable development [5]. He also served on 12-member advisory board of the Obama campaign's transition team.[1]

this source provides new information indicating Frohman, who was Mr. Goldman Sach's former Chief of Staff, as an "informal adviser" to Obama. They spell his name as Froman, Michael.

FUDGE, ANNE.

Obama just appointed Fudge to his budget deficit reduction committee (whose real goal, like that of the Hamilton Project, is to cut entitlements). Fudge has been the public relations craftsman for some of America's largest corporations. She sits, according to the Washington Post, as a Trustee of the Brookings Institution within which the Hamilton Project is embedded.

GEPHARDT, RICHARD (aka "DICK") A.

Gephardt is one of the movers and shakers in the Democratic party and served as the Democratic Majority Leader of the House from 1989 to 1995. While he doesn't have an "official position" in the Obama administration his name was floated as a possible VP to Obama in 2008. Like so many ex-politicians, Gephardt has set up a consulting firm that has its fingers in just about every pie in the Obama government. Gephardt, for instance, advised the Obama administration, according to the New York Times, that universal health coverage could not pass in 2009 and urged Obama to "defer that goal." That's what the people Gephardt takes money from wanted and that's also what Obama did.

Here's more from The New York Times:

    One old friend links Mr. Gephardt's assessment to his lucrative new career as a lobbyist. "He's advising a lot of big corporations," said Tom Buffenbarger, president of the machinists' union.

Wikipedia says that:

    Dick Gephardt started Gephardt Group in January 2005 and is currently its President and CEO. Gephardt Group is a multi-disciplined consulting firm focused on helping clients improve Labor Relations, develop Political and Public Policy Strategies and enhance Business Results by gaining access to new markets or partners.[15]

According to Wikipedia:

    is also an active consultant for Goldman Sachs.

Gephardt also sits on the Advisory Council of the Hamilton Project funded by Robert Rubin and Goldman Sachs.

MURPHY, PHILLIP.

Obama appointed Murphy to serve as his Ambassador to Germany. In the 1990's, Murphy, who worked for decades with Goldman Sachs, served as GS's head of its German offices. From 1997-1999, Murphy served as President of Goldman Sachs, Asia (during the Asian economic crisis). In all, according to Wikipedia, Murphy spent 23 years at Goldman Sachs including as a Senior Director of the firm in 2003 before retiring from GS in 2006.

GRANOFF, MICHAEL D.

Granoff is a money man, and contributed lots of bucks as a "mega donor" to the Obama campaign. At least $28,500 according to Public Citizen.

Granoff is President, CEO and Founder of Pomona Capital, a venture capital group.

Granoff is also one of the 19 members of the Goldman Sachs-Robert Rubin funded Hamilton Project.

LIDDY, EDWARD MICHAEL.

Liddy was, until recently, the CEO of AIG which, during the Obama administration, was essentially taken over by the government. He served in high positions at Goldman Sachs including : Board Member (Chairman, 1990-94; Director, 2003-2008). He was picked to the Goldman board by none other than Hank Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs who was Bush's Treasury Secretary who with Obama's Treasury Secretary (Geithner) fashioned TARP.

Wikipedia reports:

    Liddy garnered national headlines in October 2008 for defending a controversial $440,000 AIG retreat for top-performing insurance salesmen at the luxury St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California. The retreat, which was held shortly after the U.S. government rescued AIG from insolvency with $84 billion in loans, included $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for the spa. In testimony before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, Liddy stated that such retreats "are standard practice in our industry."[11] During the U.S. presidential debate on October 7, 2008, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama mentioned the retreat and said, "The Treasury should demand that money back and those executives should be fired."[12]

But that's not what happened. Instead, Barack Obama as President kept Mr. Liddy on while AIG was essentially in receivership under the Obama administration.

How about this for a conflict of interest, again as reported by Wikipedia:

    Liddy owns 27,129 shares in Goldman Sachs, at the time worth just over $3 million.[18] In April 2009 members of Congress called for Liddy to sell these shares, as they create a conflict of interest due to Goldman Sachs' receipt of bailout money.[19] About two-thirds of Liddy's holding is restricted and cannot be sold until May 31.[18]

    Liddy announced on May 21, 2009 that he would resign as AIG Chairman and CEO when replacements were found, suggesting that the two roles be split.[20] Liddy was not paid for his time at AIG.[21] On August 3, 2009, Robert Benmosche was named President and CEO of AIG.[7]

NIEDERAUER, DUNCAN.

Niederauer is CEO of the New York Stock Exchange. While a private entity, it is heavily regulated by the government and has close government ties. Niederauer, for instance, is a frequent speaker at Federal Reserve events:

    New York Stock Exchange Euronext CEO Duncan L. Niederauer delivered the keynote address today at the fourth annual global summit on financial literacy hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Visa Inc.

He has an extensive Goldman Sachs background:

    He joined NYSE Group following a 22-year career at Goldman Sachs. He served as a Managing Director of Goldman Sachs since 1997 and was responsible for U.S. cash equities operations, including Institutional and Member Firm Client Group sales and client services for ... both the New York Stock Exchange and NYSE Arca. Mr. Niederauer was previously a Partner at The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (United States) ("GS") where he held many positions.

PERRY, RICHARD.

Perry is an Obama supporter, adviser and fund raiser. He worked for Goldman Sachs and is on the Goldman Sachs'funded, Hamilton Project's Advisory Council. He is also CEO of Perry Capital, a hedge fund. Perry owns the full floor penthouse at 1 Sutton Place in NYC and according to the Washington Examiner is one of 15 " fat cat Wall St. Banker" friends of Obama. These are the same "fat cats" that Obama sometimes flails out at in the press to pretend he's a populist!

SHAFRAN, STEVEN.

Shafran served as an advisor/aide to Timothy Geithner especially on TARP. All of the advisers on that appear in a very murky fashion. And Shafran, like a lot of other TARP advisers, has extensive ties to Goldman as a executive for years. He's especially shadowy, however. Here's a link about him from CBS News.

THAIN, JOHN.

John Thain has served as an adviser to Timothy Geithner. Thain was President and Chief Operating Officer of Goldman Sachs from 1999 to 2003.

TYSON, LAURA D'ANDREA.

An economic adviser to President Obama. Tyson is a Hamilton Project Advisory Council Member. The Hamilton Project as noted above was founded by Bob Rubin and Goldman Sachs and has close links to Obama personally.

III. COMBINED LIST OF GOLDIES TIED TO THE OBAMA GOVERNMENT.

This lists compiles the names above and those in the prior diary on this. For more detail on names not annotated in this diary, see the earlier diary linked here):

ALTMAN, ROGER.

BERKOWITZ, HOWARD P.

BIDEN, JOE.

BRAINARD, LAEL.

BUFFETT, WARREN.

CLINTON, HILLARY.

CRAIG, GREGORY. (revolving door)

DONILON, THOMAS.

DUDLEY, WILLIAM C.

EFFRON, BLAIR W.

ELMENDORF, DOUGLAS.

EMANUEL, RAHM.

FARRELL, DIANA.

FRIEDMAN, STEPHEN.

FROMAN, Michael.

FUDGE, ANNE.

FURMAN, JASON.

GALLOGLY, MARK.

GEITHNER, TIMOTHY.

GENSLER, GARY.

GEPHARDT, RICHARD (aka "DICK") A.

GREENSTONE, MICHAEL (revolving door to Hamilton Project)

HAMILTON PROJECT, THE

HORMATS, ROBERT.

KAGAN, ELENA.

KASHKARI, NEEL.

KORNBLUH, KAREN.

LEW, JACOB (AKA "JACK") J.

LIDDY, EDWARD MICHAEL.

LIPTON, DAVID A.

MINDICH, ERIC

MURPHY, PHILLIP.

NIEDERAUER, DUNCAN.

OBAMA, BARACK H.

ORSZAG, PETER.

PATTERSON, MARK.

PERRY, RICHARD.

RATTNER, STEVE.

REISCHAUER, ROBERT D.

RIVLIN, ALICE.

RUBIN, JAMES.

RUBIN, ROBERT.

SHAFRAN, STEVEN.

SPERLING, GENE.

STORCH, ADAM.

SUMMERS, LARRY.

THAIN, JOHN.

TYSON, LAURA D'ANDREA.

RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING:

1. Greg Gordon (McClatchy Newspapers), "Goldman's White House Connections Raise Eyebrows" April 21, 2010.

2. Fflambeau, "With the Obama Administration Infested With Goldman Sachs People, How Real is the Obama/Democratic Attack on Big Banks" FDL Diary, April 21, 2010.

3. "More Investigations of Goldman Sachs, A Double-Edge Swords for Obama and Democrats"

4. Paul Street's article showing that Obama held corporatist ideas long before elected and his indebtedness to the interests of big business.

5. Matthew Skomarovsky, "Obama Packs Debt Commission with Social Security Looters", March 28, 2010 at Alternet.

6. Fflambeau, "A List of Goldman Sachs People in the Obama Administration: Names Attached to the Giant Squid's Tentacles"

ESSENTIAL READING ON THE HAMILTON PROJECT AND ITS TIES TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION:

1. Kirk James Murphy, M.D. "The Hamilton Project: Same Corporatist Whine In New DLC Vessels." THE seminal article on the Hamilton Project which also features a video clip of then Senator Barack Obama talking about "my friend, Bob [Rubin]" and espousing cuts in entitlements and the "need" for more free trade pacts like NAFTA.

2. Fflambeau, "Obama's 'Smoking Gun': His Hamilton Project Speech Shows His Links to Goldman, Entitlement Cuts, Part 1.

3. Fflambeau, "Obama's 'Smoking Gun': His Hamilton Project Speech Shows His Links to Goldman, Entitlement Cuts, Part 2".

4. Another source for Obama's Hamilton Project speech of April 2006. Contains video clip.

5. James Kirk Murphy, M.D., "Remember the Hamilton Project?" Dr. Murph's latest look at the Hamilton Project.

6. David Sirota, "Wall Street Democrats Unveil Plan to Undermine Progressives", April 5, 2006.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/46267

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Typical overpromoted J-Triber Jew.... IMHO....
--------
Elena Kagan and the Supreme Court: A Barnyard Smell in Chicago, Harvard and Washington

By James Petras | May 13, 2010

President Obama has nominated Elena Kagan for Justice of the United States Supreme Court on the basis of an academic publication record, which might give her a fighting chance for tenure at a first rate correspondence law school in the Texas Panhandle.

A review of her published scholarship after almost two decades in and out of academia turns up four law review articles, two brief pieces and several book reviews and in memoriam. There is nothing even remotely resembling a major legal text or research publication.

Her lack-luster academic publication record is only surpassed by her total lack of any practical experience as a judge: zero years in adjudication, unless one accepts the line of her exuberant advocates, who point to Kagan's superb ability in adjudicating among the squabbling faculty at Harvard Law School when she served as Dean. No doubt Kagan had been very busy as the greatest fundraising Law School Dean in Harvard's history ($400 million), which may account for the fact that she never found time to write a single academic article during her nine year tenure (2001-2009).

The criteria for her appointment to the Supreme Court have little to do with academic performance as it is understood today in all major universities. Nor does her total inexperience as a judicial advocate compensate for academic mediocrity.

The evidence points to a purely political appointment based, in part, on social networks and certainly not on her lack of affinity for the agenda of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Kagan's approval of indefinite detention of suspects squares with the extremist restrictions on constitutional freedoms first articulated during the Bush Administration and subsequently upheld by President Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder. It is no coincidence that Kagan appointed a notorious Bush torture advocate, the genial Jack Goldsmith, to the Harvard Law faculty.

Elena Kagan's appointment certainly was not based on "diversity". She will be the third Jew on the Supreme Court and, together with the six Roman Catholics, will decide the most critical cases with far-reaching and profound impact on citizens' rights and protections. For the first time in US history the nation's largest demographic group, the Protestants (of any hue or gender), will have no representative on the Court, thereby excluding the descendents, like retiring Justice Stevens, of the brilliant, strongly secular judicial heritage that formulated the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and its amendments.

Kagan's nomination to the US Supreme Court is not exceptional if we consider many of Bush and now Obama's choices of advisers and officials in top policymaking posts. Many of these officials combined their diplomas from Ivy League universities with their absolutely disastrous performances in public office, which no amount of mass media puff pieces could obscure. These Ivy League mediocrities include the foreign policy advocates for the destructive and unending wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan and the leading economic advisers and officials responsible for the current financial debacles. The names are familiar enough: Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Levey, Greenspan, Axelrod, Emmanuel, Indyk, Ross, Summers, Rubin, et al: Prestigious credentials with mediocre, or worse, performances. What is the basis of their rise? What explains their ascent to the most influential positions in the US power structure?

One hypothesis is nepotism . . . of a certain kind. Elena Kagan got tenure at the august halls of the University of Chicago in 1995 on the basis of one substantive article and one brief piece, neither outstanding. With this underwhelming record of legal scholarship, she became visiting professorship at the Harvard Law School, published only two more articles (one in Harvard Law Review) and received tenure. Prima facie evidence strongly suggests that Kagan's ties to the staunchly Zionist faculty at both Chicago and Harvard Law Schools (and not her intellectual prowess) account for her meteoric promotions to tenure, deanship and now the US Supreme Court, over the heads of hundreds of other highly qualified candidates with far superior academic publication records and broader practical judicial experience.

The public utterances and political writings of innumerable Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, Yale, John Hopkins professors, whether it be on the speculative economy, Israel's Middle East wars, preventative detention, broad presidential powers and constitutional freedoms are marked by a singular mediocrity, mendacity and an excess of hot air reeking of the barnyard.

If you do not qualify on the basis of excellent scholarship or broad-based practical experience, your ethnic tribesmen will wax ecstatic over you as a "wonder colleague", a "superb teacher", a "brilliant consensus builder" and a "world champion fund raiser". In other words, if you have the right ethnic connections and political ambitions, they can adjust the criteria for tenure at the University of Chicago, the deanship at Harvard Law School and a lifetime appointment to the US Supreme Court.

Elena Kagan joins a long list of key Obama appointees who have long-standing ties to the pro-Israel power configuration. Like Barack Obama, Elena Kagan started her legal apprenticeship with the Chicago Judge Abner Mitva, an ardent Zionist, who hailed the newly elected President Obama as "America's first Jewish President", probably his soundest judgment.

The issue of the composition of the US Supreme Court is increasingly crucial for all Americans, who are horrified by Israel's devastation of Gaza, its threats to launch a nuclear attack on Iran and its Fifth Column's efforts to drag us into a third war in ten years. With the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations pressing the compliant US Congress to declare "anti-Zionism" as a form of "anti-Semitism" and "opposition to Israel's policies" as amounting to "support for terrorism", thus criminalizing Americans critical of Israel, another active pro-Zionist advocate on the Court will provide a legal cover for the advance of Zionist-dictated authoritarianism over the American people.

Yes, Kagan would be another woman on the Supreme Court. Yes, she would probably adjudicate conflicts among the judges and strengthen Obama's police powers. And yes, she would likely favor your indefinite detention if you support the right of Palestinians to struggle ("terrorism") against the Israeli occupation . . . especially if you defend America against Israel's Fifth Column.

But remember when you apply for Ivy League law school appointment or a top judicial post and your CV lacks the requisite publications or work experience, just ask Judge Abner Mikva or Larry Summers or Rahm Emmanuel for a recommendation. With such support you will shoot ahead of the competition. . . because you have the right ethnic connections.

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/05 ... ashington/

[Christopher Marlowe]

Elena Kagan: Toward a Pro-GM Supreme Court?
http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive ... urt/56587/
May 12 2010, 9:20 AM ET | Comment

It's a good thing for Elena Kagan that there's no non-GMO litmus test for Supreme Court nominees. She'd flunk.

As solicitor general, Kagan is supposed to represent the interests of the American people in matters that come before the Supreme Court. Instead, she has gone to bat for Monsanto. In a case that the court is currently considering, Monsanto is trying to overturn a 2007 California decision that imposed a nationwide injunction on planting the company's genetically modified alfalfa. In March, Kagan's office interceded on Monsanto's behalf (click here for a PDF of its brief) even though the government was not a defendant in the appeal. The original suit was brought by Geertson Seed Farms and a collection of environmental groups, who claimed that pollen from Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa could contaminate neighboring plots of conventional alfalfa, causing irreparable harm to Geertson's non-GMO business.

The decision that Kagan and Monsanto object to was issued by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who ruled that during the Bush administration, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) should not have given its blessing to GM alfalfa without considering possible environmental, financial, and health consequences (a requirement under the law). Erring on the side of caution, Breyer said that until the USDA conducted the proper environmental assessment, no GM alfalfa could be grown.

The appeal that is now before the court has a telling aside. Justice Stephen Breyer recused himself from the case because Charles Breyer, the lower court judge, is his brother. Notably, Justice Clarence Thomas, who was once a lawyer for Monsanto, did not recuse himself.

The case will probably be decided this summer, prior to Kagan's taking up her new post, assuming she is confirmed. But she still might have an opportunity to show her true colors. Last fall, another lower-court judge ruled that the Bush-era USDA erred when it approved GM sugar beets without a proper environmental assessment. The Obama administration was given the opportunity to drop the USDA's case, but the Justice Department told the court that its position had not changed.

We'll see if Monsanto pursues that case through the appellate courts. Whatever happens, it's all but certain that the Supreme Court has not heard the last of GMOs.

The media divides everybody with the "is she gay or straight" stuff and ignore the obvious fact that she is a CORPORATE WHORE. All the homosexuals will get behind Kagen because they have some idea that once there are enough homosexuals on the court, everyone will change their minds and start applauding with homosexuals kiss in public.

Even if she was married 50 years and has twenty children, anyone who takes Monsanto's side is fighting for the enemy.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Sounds like a "Jewish" Berlin or a "Jewish" Vienna in the 1920s.... a decrepit and over-promoted worthless Jew culture...

---------

Elena Kagan's Upper West Side story

Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 5:07 PM by Dan Freedman in Commentary, Elena Kagan


Elena Kagan in 1977.

Politically speaking, the Manhattan neighborhood that nurtured Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is a conservative's worst nightmare. The new health-care reform law? Doesn't go far enough. Don't ask, don't tell? It should be don't ask, period, paragraph, end of story.

I know the culture well, having been raised a scant 12 or so blocks from where Kagan grew up at West End Avenue and 75th Street. The term "New York Jewish intellectual'' has a clichéd ring to it, a Woody Allen laugh line deriding people who sent their kids to "socialist summer camps.'' But it pretty much summarizes the kind of family that dominated the Upper West Side's social and political landscape _ liberal at a minimum, and often very much farther to the left.

President Obama's standard for judicial appointments is straight forward: He wants nominees with "real world'' experience who look at the law "as it affects the lives of ordinary people.''

The unstated question Kagan may face when she goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee and its potentially hostile Republican questioners from Texas, Alabama, Utah and elsewhere in heartland America: Is the Upper West Side part of the "real world''?

Kagan's father, Robert, was a lawyer who helped tenants whose rental apartments were being turned into not-always-affordable co-ops. He also was chairman of Community Board 7, one of many such quasi-official entities set up to give average New Yorkers a say in big projects going up around them. Her mother, Gloria, was a public school teacher. Kagan's parents are deceased; her two brothers carry on their mother's tradition as public school teachers.

"Where I grew up _ on Manhattan's Upper West Side _ nobody ever admitted to voting for Republicans," Kagan wrote while an undergraduate at Princeton University. Those elected to office were "real Democrats _ not the closet Republicans that one sees so often these days but men and women committed to liberal principles and motivated by the ideal of an affirmative and compassionate government."

Starting in the 1950s, "real'' Democrats, including my mother, organized themselves into brigades of "reform'' Democrats in opposition to the old Tammany Hall machine. In 1960 they managed to elect one of their own, William F. Ryan, to Congress _ a watershed event in neighborhood history.

Ryan was a grinning Irish-American reformer in a sea of Jewish voters. He did a fine job of representing the Upper West Side's brand of liberal politics, opposing the Vietnam War early on, marching for civil rights in the South, and advocating admission of mainland China to the United Nations _ a radical position in the early 1960s.
TWITTER bird3.jpg

His mantle is carried today by the neighborhood's current representative in Congress, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., whose voting record is rated zero by the American Conservative Union, and 95 percent by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action.

Elena Kagan and many of this culture's children emerged from the Upper West Side political cauldron as committed to making the world a better place for all, mindful that everyday people can affect change as teachers, doctors, lawyers _ and, yes, even journalists _ and make government work for the common good.

Kagan certainly has blazed her own trail as the first woman to serve as dean of Harvard Law School and U.S. Solicitor General. Most conservatives assume that, if confirmed, she would be a reliable liberal vote on the conservative-leaning high court. But many on the left fear that she might be a closet, gasp, centrist.

Liberal interest groups were unabashed in their preference for someone other than Kagan to play the role of chief antagonist against conservative heavyweight Justice Antonin Scalia.
In going her own way, Kagan may have had to shake off at least some of the Upper West Side's orthodoxies.

Let's face it, at least some of the neighborhood's inherited wisdom has not panned out. The United States is not always wrong in foreign affairs. The Berlin Wall was not the result of Western provocation, and blame for the Cuban missile crisis could not be laid solely at JFK's doorstep at the White House.

But on the other hand, the Upper West Side was an incubator of the civil rights movement, supplying its dollars and human power to the cause of integration. Andrew Goodman was a neighbor of ours on 86th Street and taught me and my brother to ride bikes. He became a civil rights martyr when he was killed by Ku Klux Klaners (including a deputy sheriff) along with Michael Schwerner and James Earl Chaney in 1964 outside Philadelphia, Miss.

My father was a supporter of health care reform going back to his days in medical school in the late 1930s and early 1940s. At age 93, he could scarcely believe he had lived to see his dream enacted into law.

On many issues, the Upper West Side gestalt simply fell flat. But on many others, the outlook was ahead of its time. As my mother, age 88, likes to say, "we weren't wrong about everything.''

http://blog.timesunion.com/nypotomac/el ... tory/2904/

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

(This article is disgusting and shows the Jewish lust for absolute power - Scorpio)
Elena Kagan And Jewish Justices (From The Jewish Times)

Kenneth Lasson
Special to the Jewish Times


"We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being."
— Justice William O. Douglas, Zorach v. Clauson (1952)


She will be the member of the Supreme Court who is most Jewishly knowledgeable."
— Nathan Lewin, on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan


In January of 1916, when Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis Brandeis to the U.S. Supreme Court as the first Jewish justice, anti-Semitic passions in America were running high. The choice of Brandeis was as bitterly contested as that of Elena Kagan, President Obama's recent nominee, is likely to be.

Wilson and Brandeis both knew what they were in for.  A year earlier, the High Court had briefly considered a petition for habeas corpus brought by Leo Frank, an American Jew who'd been convicted in 1913 of murdering 13-year-old Mary Phagan, one of the employees at a pencil factory Frank supervised in Atlanta. The case had become a sensational saga of Southern prejudice — pitting North against South, black against white, industrial culture against agrarian and Christian against Jew.

Although Georgia's Jewish community had flourished since its origins in the mid-1700s, by the turn of the 20th century hundreds of thousands of immigrants were making their way to the U.S. and injecting themselves into the American way of life. They were resented by many of the so-called natives.

Among the seven justices who rejected Frank's challenge to the fairness of his trial was Joseph Rucker Lamar of Georgia. (The two dissenting justices were Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Evans Hughes, who agreed that the trial was a gross
miscarriage of justice.)

When new evidence emerged suggesting Frank's innocence and the governor of Georgia (John Slaton) commuted his death sentence to life in prison, a group calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him.
(Slaton also was threatened with lynching and left the state. B'nai B'rith founded the Anti-Defamation League as a result of the lynching. In 1986, "without attempting to address the question of guilt or innocence," Georgia granted Frank a pardon.)

With this backdrop it was hardly surprising that Wilson's nomination engendered controversy. As Justice William O. Douglas later wrote, "Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be. He was dangerous not only because of his brilliance [and] his courage.

He was dangerous because he was incorruptible ... [and] the fears of the Establishment were greater because Brandeis was the first Jew to be named to the Court."

The nomination was denounced by conservative Republicans, including former President William Howard Taft (who had appointed Lamar) and Elihu Root, who had been both a U.S. senator and president of the American Bar Association and who claimed Brandeis was "unfit" to serve on the court. Even The New York Times wrote that having been a "reformer" for so many years, he would lack the "dispassionate temperament that is required of a judge."

Brandeis had his supporters as well. Harvard law professor Roscoe Pound called him "one of the great lawyers." Others said that he "had angered some of his clients by his conscientious striving to be fair to both sides in a case."

After nearly 3 1/2 months of contentious Senate hearings, Brandeis was finally confirmed, by a vote of 47 to 22. He went on to become one of the most respected and influential justices ever to serve on the Supreme Court. His opinions articulating the freedom of speech remain among the most eloquent, his defense of the right to privacy the most ennobling.

Brandeis' brethren on the bench were not always appreciative. From the beginning, he was shunned by Justice James Clark McReynolds — an arch anti-Semite who had been appointed two years earlier and who insisted that his law clerks could not be "Jews, drinkers, blacks, women, smokers, married or engaged individuals." After Brandeis was confirmed, McReynolds stringently refused to talk to him; he habitually left the conference room when Brandeis spoke, and he refused to sign opinions written by his Jewish colleague. When Brandeis retired in 1939, McReynolds declined to sign the customary farewell letter.

Although Brandeis had always been a decidedly secular Jew, he evolved into an ardent Zionist.

Unlike the majority of American Jews at the time, he felt that the re-creation of a Jewish national homeland was one of the key solutions to anti-Semitism and the so-called "Jewish Problem" in Europe and Russia, while at the same time a way to "revive the Jewish spirit."

In a speech to Reform rabbis in 1915, Brandeis justified the effort to establish a homeland in Palestine as "a manifestation in the struggle for existence by an ancient people which has established its right to live, a people whose 3,000 years of civilization has produced a faith, culture and individuality which enabled it to contribute largely in the future, as it has in the past, to the advance of civilization; and that it is not a right merely but a duty of the Jewish nationality to survive and develop. They believe that only in Palestine can Jewish life be fully protected from the forces of disintegration; that there alone can the Jewish spirit reach its full and natural development; and that by securing for those Jews who wish to settle there the opportunity to do so, not only those Jews, but all other Jews will be benefited, and that the long perplexing Jewish Problem will, at last, find solution."



He also said, "Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with patriotism. Multiple loyalties are objectionable only if they are inconsistent. A man is a better citizen of the United States for being also a loyal citizen of his state, and of his city; or for being loyal to his college. ... Every American Jew who aids in advancing the Jewish settlement in Palestine, though he feels that neither he nor his descendants will ever live there, will likewise be a better man and a better American for doing so. There is no inconsistency between loyalty to America and loyalty to Jewry."

Brandeis brought his influence to bear on the Wilson administration in the negotiations leading up to the Balfour Declaration, a British government statement supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In the late 1930s, he endorsed illegal immigration to Palestine in an effort to help European Jews escape genocide when Britain denied entry to more Jews.

Brandeis' immediate successor to the "Jewish seat" on the Supreme Court was Benjamin Cardozo. When he was nominated in 1932 by President Herbert Hoover, McReynolds joined with Justices Louis Butler and Willis Van Devanter in urging the White House not to "afflict the court with another Jew." (McReynolds reportedly declared, "It seems that the only way you can get on the Supreme Court these days is to be either the son of a criminal or a Jew, or both.") During Cardozo's swearing-in ceremony, McReynolds ostentatiously read a newspaper and would often hold a brief in front of his face when Cardozo delivered an opinion from the bench. As with Brandeis, McReynolds never spoke to Cardozo, nor did he attend the memorial ceremonies held at the Supreme Court after Cardozo's death in 1938.

Cardozo must have been bothered by such bald-faced bigotry, but what might be grounds for impeachment by today's politically correct standards was notoriously tolerated on the High Court during the first half of the 20th century. Besides, Cardozo was well known and much admired for his modesty and philosophical outlook.

"In truth," said Cardozo of himself, "I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity — please observe, a plodding mediocrity — for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry."

'Another Jew'
Felix Frankfurter, an old friend and protégé of Brandeis, became the next Jewish justice, appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938.

His confirmation hearing is notable for two reasons: it was the first time that a nominee for the Supreme Court appeared in person before the Senate's Judiciary Committee, and he was confirmed without a single dissent. (At Frankfurter's swearing-in, McReynolds, who didn't retire until 1941, is said to have exclaimed, "My God, another Jew on the court.")

Frankfurter was born in Vienna, Austria. His forebears had been rabbis for generations. In 1894, when he was 12, his family immigrated to the United States, where he learned English growing up on New York City's Lower East Side. After graduating from City College of New York, he worked for the city's Tenement House Department in order to raise money for law school. He was accepted at Harvard, where he became an editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated with one of the best academic records since Brandeis.

As World War I drew to a close, Frankfurter was among nearly a hundred intellectuals who signed a statement of principles for the formation of the League of Nations. With Brandeis, he lobbied President Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration. In 1918, he participated in the founding conference of the American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia, and served as a Zionist delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

In 1921, Frankfurter was given a chair at Harvard Law School, and continued progressive work on behalf of socialists and oppressed and religious minorities. When the president of Harvard University, Lawrence Lowell, proposed to limit the enrollment of Jewish students, Frankfurter worked with others to defeat the plan.

In the late 1920s, he came to public attention when he supported calls for a new trial for two Italian immigrant anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, who had been sentenced to death on robbery and murder charges. He served as an associate justice for 23 years (from 1939 to 1962), during which time he became the Supreme Court's most outspoken advocate of judicial restraint — the view that courts should not interpret the U.S. Constitution in such a way as to impose sharp limits upon the authority of the legislative and executive branches. In time, Frankfurter became the leader of the court's conservative faction.


In 1962, Abe Fortas represented Clarence Gideon in a landmark case (Gideon v. Wainwright) that held the Sixth Amendment required all criminal defendants, even those who were indigent, to be offered the assistance of counsel. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson, who had persuaded Goldberg to become U.N. ambassador, appointed Fortas to the Supreme Court.

When Chief Justice Earl Warren announced his retirement in June 1968, Johnson nominated Fortas to replace him. The Warren Court's liberal agenda had disenchanted many conservative members of the Senate, and Fortas — the first nominee for chief justice ever to appear before the Judiciary Committee — faced hostile questioning, mostly about his relationship with the president. Eventually, he was accused of seeking a pardon on behalf of his friend and former client, Wall Street financier Louis Wolfson.

Though Fortas denied any wrongdoing, he chose to resign from the court instead of risking an impeachment trial.

Prior to the 20th century, Supreme Court justices were always white, male and overwhelmingly Protestant. Concerns about diversity were mainly geographic. The first Catholic on the court (there have been 12) was Roger Taney, appointed in 1836.

The first African-American was Thurgood Marshall (1967); the first woman, Sandra Day O'Connor (1981). The first Hispanic may have been Cardozo, who was a member of the Sephardic Portuguese community in New York, although most historians grant that distinction to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama in 2009.

Star Pupil

If Elena Kagan's nomination gains Senate approval, as appears likely, she will join Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer — both of them appointed (in 1993 and 1994) by President Bill Clinton — as the third Jewish member of the current Supreme Court. The other sitting justices are all Catholic, and conservative.

Born 50 years ago in New York City, Ms. Kagan was the middle of three children whose parents, Robert Kagan and Gloria Gittelman Kagan, strove to educate their children well.

Her schooling was indeed formidable: She earned successive degrees from Princeton, Oxford and Harvard Law.  After clerking for Justice Thurgood Marshall at the Supreme Court, she entered private practice at Williams and Connolly in Washington, D.C.

She became a professor of law at the University of Chicago, associate White House counsel under President Clinton, and professor of law and then dean at Harvard.

In January of 2009, Mr. Obama appointed her the first woman solicitor general of the U.S., and then on May 10, he nominated her to fill the vacancy created by the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens at the end of the Supreme Court's current term.

Not much is publicly known about Ms. Kagan's Judaism, but a glimpse at her Upper West Side upbringing offers some interesting possibilities. The local Westside Independent noted the neighborhood reputation as "a haven for cheese-eating Socialists." Her late father was a trustee of the West End Synagogue. In 1968, he was president of the United Parents Association, a citywide parents' advocacy group. He was also a trustee of the West End Synagogue. When her mother, a teacher at Hunter College, died in 2008, the synagogue paid for a death notice honoring "this small but mighty, highly principled, intelligent, idealistic lady."

The New York Times also described Ms. Kagan as "a creature of Manhattan's liberal, intellectual Upper West Side, cocky (or perhaps prescient) enough at 17 to pose for her high school yearbook in a judge's robe with a gavel and a quotation from Felix Frankfurter underneath."

According to the Times, Ms. Kagan was a star pupil in her Hebrew school on the Upper West Side. When she turned 12, she wanted a formal bat mitzvah ceremony, but there had never been one at the Orthodox shul her family attended, the Lincoln Square Synagogue. So instead, she read from the Book of Ruth, which she also analyzed in a speech.

Ms. Kagan now considers herself a Conservative Jew. (Mr. Obama also revealed that she is a diehard New York Mets fan.) Like Supreme Court nominees before her, she has not granted interviews with the news media.

Nathan Lewin, a Baltimore-born attorney who is perhaps the pre-eminent Jewish expert on Constitutional law, has argued many key religious issues before the Supreme Court and is familiar with Ms. Kagan's background.


"She will be the member of the Supreme Court who is most Jewishly knowledgeable," he told the Baltimore Jewish Times.

"Breyer and Ginsburg had virtually no Jewish education whatsoever, although they have become more religious since they came on the court. I am told that notwithstanding her West Side upbringing and the bat mitzvah at Lincoln Square Synagogue, she is less actively Jewish than Martha Minow, her successor as dean."

On religion-and-state issues, Ms. Kagan is still largely an unknown quantity, although she just won one of the first cases she argued as solicitor general — Salazar v. Buono — in which she presented a position that supported religious displays on public property.

In any event, says Mr. Lewin, the Orthodox community should be happy to trade Justice   Stevens for Ms. Kagan. Mr. Stevens voted against the right of a U.S.  Air Force officer to wear a kippah while on duty, against the Chabad menorah  in front of Pittsburgh's City Hall and against the town of Kiryas Joel in an aid-to-education case — all of which Mr. Lewin argued before the Supreme Court.


"He was the hardest vote for me to get in the cases in which I represented the Orthodox community," Mr. Lewin said. "Kagan cannot be worse."

Mr. Lewin said that Ms. Kagan was a resounding success as dean at Harvard because of her ability to make peace between the right and left. "I heard rave reviews from friends on the faculty long before she became nationally famous by being appointed solicitor general," he said.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Ms. Kagan's place on the court will be her interaction with the arch-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. "I know from what both Scalia and she have said to me," said Mr. Lewin, "that there is a great mutual respect and friendship between them. I doubt that she'll be able to persuade Kennedy to move to the left, so the Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-Alito group will still win if they can get Kennedy to join."

Religion, however, does not dictate ideology.

For example, the late William Brennan, perhaps the most liberal justice in Supreme Court history, was Catholic and his jurisprudence could not have been more different than that of Justice Scalia (with whom he was a personal friend).

Predictably, Ms. Kagan's nomination has been condemned by conservative Republicans and praised by liberal Democrats. The litmus test for all contemporary nominees is quite different from the issues raised by her Jewish predecessors: What is her stand on abortion? She has virtually no written record on the subject.

In a 1992 law review article, she praised Thurgood Marshall's "special solicitude for the despised and the disadvantaged."

Republicans are already attacking her admiration for Marshall, who once claimed that the original Constitution was defective because it specifically sanctioned slavery.

Although it's virtually inevitable that conservative pundits will soon refer to the "Jewpreme Court," and question Ms. Kagan's status as an unmarried woman, the criticism so far has centered on her stance against military recruiting at Harvard. (She has long opposed the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuality as discriminatory.)

Several law professors also have raised concern of a Supreme Court with no Protestants.

"When you have such a large part of the country that has a particular sort of religious worldview," said Mark Scarberry, an evangelical professor at Pepperdine Law School, "if there is no one on the court who is able to understand that worldview in
a sympathetic way, then that creates difficulties.

"Of course, there are also zero atheists or agnostics. Ms. Kagan, in accepting the nomination, mentioned that she prays every day [to live up to the example of her public service-minded parents who have passed away]. All justices past and likely present were reared in a religion that stands on the words in the Bible. My favorite quote comes to mind: Deuteronomy 16:20: 'Justice, justice shalt thou pursue.' "

Just because her religion might not be a direct topic at confirmation hearings doesn't mean it will be ignored. Mark Osler, a law professor at Baylor University, told The Washington Post that "There's an important part of our population that's not represented here.

Faith plays into the development of conscience in the same manner that race and gender do." Noting that justices often ask whether actions "shock the conscience," Mr. Osler went on to say that "Conscience is something that's developed, for many of us, in the context of faith. When you're asking that question, it's particularly important that you have a diversity of faiths."

Barry Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, says that regardless of what Ms. Kagan believes, she should maintain the high wall between the two. The Christian Post quotes both evangelical and Catholic conservatives in opposition to what they see as Ms. Kagan's liberal anti-family and pro-abortion rights.

As solicitor general, Ms. Kagan defended a law that bars providing material support to terrorist organizations, as "a vital weapon in this nation's continuing struggle against international terrorism." Even seemingly benign help is prohibited, Ms. Kagan said. "Hezbollah builds bombs," she said of the militant Islamic group. "Hezbollah also builds homes. What Congress decided was when you help Hezbollah build homes, you are also helping Hezbollah build bombs. That's the entire theory behind the statute."

Local lawyers interviewed for this story have mixed feelings about Ms. Kagan's nomination.

Laurence Katz, former dean at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said he knows very little about her. ("Harvard deans rarely come to national meetings.") Steven Sklar, a board member of the Baltimore Zionist District, suggested that a court with Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Kagan "will bring new meaning to the word 'Jew-diciary'."

Melvin Sykes, a prominent Maryland appellate attorney who met Ms. Kagan in 2008 at the 50th reunion of his Harvard Law School graduating class, said, "She wrote a very fine article about presidential powers in the Harvard Law Review. She handled herself well at the reunion, and she was an effective fund-raiser as dean."

Lawyers and laymen alike might question whether Elena Kagan will be "good for the Jews" or, in any event, good for the country. The best hope is that she'll turn out like Louis Brandeis — and be good for both.

Kenneth Lasson, a professor of law at the University of Baltimore, is a frequent contributor to the Baltimore Jewish Times

http://www.jewishtimes.com/index.php/je ... ices/18767

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Silencing Dissent
theCL  2010-05-12  Communism, Dissent, Progressivism, Rights  3 Comments

  Communism, Dissent, Progressivism, Rights

Free speech, like so many other of our inalienable rights, is under attack in America. For a recent example, note Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's opinion that some speech should be "disappeared":

    I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the uncoerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation.

For those of you who support various limits on speech, I beg of you, beware.

Because while today you may be censoring speech you find abhorrent, tomorrow the very precedent you helped establish ... will doubtlessly be used against you.

    If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. -- Noam Chomsky

Speech and thought control have been preached (and enforced) on college campuses in America for decades now, slowly permeating our culture. The result being ...

America's regression from the "land of the free" to the "home of subjection." A sad and frightening story indeed.

Free Inquiry? Not on Campus

    Much campus censorship rests on philosophical underpinnings that go back to social theorist Herbert Marcuse, a hero to sixties radicals. Marcuse argued that traditional tolerance is repressive—it wards off reform by making the status quo . . . well, tolerable. Marcuse favored intolerance of established and conservative views, with tolerance offered only to the opinions of the oppressed, radicals, subversives, and other outsiders. Indoctrination of students and "deeply pervasive" censorship of others would be necessary, starting on the campuses and fanning out from there.

    By the late 1980s, many of the double standards that Marcuse called for were in place in academe. Marcuse's candor was missing, but everyone knew that speakers, student newspapers, and professors on the right could (make that should) receive different treatment from those on the left. The officially oppressed—designated race and gender groups—knew that they weren't subject to the standards and rules set for other students.

    Marcuse's thinking has influenced a generation of influential radical scholars. They included Mari Matsuda, who followed Marcuse by arguing that complete free speech should belong mainly to the powerless; and Catharine MacKinnon, a pioneer of modern sexual harassment and "hostile environment" doctrine. In MacKinnon's hands, sexual harassment became a form of gender-based class discrimination and inegalitarian speech a kind of harmful action.

    Confusing speech and action has a long pedigree on the PC campus. At the time of the first wave of speech codes 20 years ago, Kenneth Lasson, a    law professor at the University of Baltimore, argued that "racial defamation does not merely 'preach hate'; it is the practice of hatred by the speaker"—and is thus punishable as a form of assault   . Indeed, the Left has evolved a whole new vocabulary to blur the line between acts and speech: "verbal conduct" and "expressive behavior" (speech), "non-traditional violence" (Lani Guinier's term for strong criticism), and "anti-feminist intellectual harassment" (rolling one's eyeballs over feminist dogma).

    Campus censors frequently emulate the Marcusian double standard by combining effusive praise for free speech with an eagerness to suppress unwelcome views. "I often have to struggle with right and wrong because I am a strong believer in free speech," said Ronni Santo, a gay student activist at UCLA in the late nineties. "Opinions are protected under the First Amendment, but when negative opinions come out of a person's fist, mouth, or pen to intentionally hurt others, that's when their opinions should no longer be protected."  

    In their 1993 book, The Shadow University, Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglate turned some of the early speech codes into national laughingstocks. Among the banned comments and action they listed: "intentionally producing psychological discomfort" (University of North Dakota), "insensitivity to the experience of women" (University of Minnesota), and "inconsiderate jokes" (University of Connecticut). Serious nonverbal offenses included "inappropriate laughter" (Sarah Lawrence College), "eye contact or the lack of it" (Michigan State University), and "subtle discrimination," such as "licking lips or teeth; holding food provocatively" (University of Maryland). Later gems, added well after the courts struck down campus codes as overly broad, included bans on "inappropriate non-verbals" (Macalaster College), "communication with sexual overtones" (Lincoln University), and "discussing sexual activities" (State University of New York–Brockport). Other codes bar any comment or gesture that "annoys," "offends," or otherwise makes someone feel bad. Tufts ruled that attributing harassment complaints to the "hypersensitivity of others who feel hurt" is itself harassment.

As I've said many times before, it's a joke to believe we won the Cold War, defeated fascism, or that we're making gains against radical Islam. After all, America now has a fascist economy, Soviet-style speech crackdowns, Sharia law protections, and enslaved its citizens in debt ("justified" by the totalitarian Keynes' Magic Formulae).

Make no mistake about it either, speech and thought control isn't about saving anyone from getting their feelings hurt. No. It's about silencing political dissent ... and driving America back to the totalitarian stone ages.

Don't fool yourself ... They will be coming for you next.

http://the-classic-liberal.com/silencing-dissent/

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Jun 3, 2010
Kagan's confirmation mess

WASHINGTON - US Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's review of the book, A Confirmation Mess, is creating a confirmation mess of its own.

Ms Kagan's 1995 commentary on Stephen Carter's book rendered a harsh judgment on how lawmakers question Supreme Court nominees, and that has some senators preparing to interrogate her about it.

It will make for some uncomfortable moments for Ms Kagan during her confirmation hearings, scheduled to begin June 28. When she wrote her article in the University of Chicago Law Review, she had just had an up-close view of the confirmation process as a Judiciary Committee staffer during Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's    confirmation hearings.

Coming only a few years after the acrimonious confirmation hearings of Robert Bork - which led to his rejection by the Senate - Ms Kagan left no doubt what she thought about the Senate's subsequent treatment of Supreme Court nominees. Ms Kagan wrote: - 'If the recent hearings lacked acrimony, they also lacked seriousness and substance.' - 'The practice of substantive inquiry has suffered a precipitous fall since the Bork hearings, so much so that today it hardly deserves the title 'practice' at all.' - 'When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce    , and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public.' - 'Senators today do not insist that any nominee reveal what kind of Justice she would make, by disclosing her views on important legal issues. Senators have not done so since the hearings on the nomination of Judge Bork. They instead engage in a peculiar ritual dance, in which they propound their own views on constitutional law, but neither hope nor expect the nominee to respond in like manner.'  

Ms Kagan    even had mild criticism for the confirmation testimony of three of the justices she now wants to work with: Ms Ginsburg   , Stephen Breyer    and Clarence Thomas    (negro puppet). Of Ms Ginsburg's and Mr Breyer's testimony before the Judiciary Committee, she wrote, 'Most of the testimony disclosed only the insignificant and the obvious - did anyone need to hear on no less than three separate occasions that Justice Ginsburg disagreed with Dred Scott?' Ms Kagan was referring to the case in which the court ruled that slaves were not citizens.

Ms Kagan already has started backing away from her own statements. During her confirmation for her solicitor general job last year, she said she sees things differently now that she's older, no longer on the Senate staff and - most importantly - someone who herself faces confirmation.    -- AP

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNew ... 34905.html