Elena Kagan a Poor Choice for Supreme Court Justice, but at Least the Left Won't Have a Majority

Any more, it doesn't seem to matter much to people whether our government officials abide by the U.S. constitution that they take an oath to uphold. The selection of Elena Kagan as Supreme Court justice simply reflects yet another leftist appointment by President Barack Obama, whose vote can be counted on to carry the left-wing ideology when its crunch time.

Two examples come to mind that should illustrate why this woman can't be counted on to uphold the constitution. The first involves her role as solicitor general of the United States, acting on behalf of President Obama in a case that was heard in the Supreme Court on September 9, 2009. The case was Citizens United vs. FEC (Federal Election Commission). The case had to do with allowing corporations to use books during the political process, i.e., campaigns. Kagan basically said that "it was OK for the FEC to ban books, but that in reality they've never done it." Antonin Scalia, a sitting Supreme Court justice responds with, "We don't put our First Amendment rights in the hands of FEC bureaucrats." Scalia further elaborated by saying that if the statute covering the FEC gives them the right to imprison somebody over distributing a book, such as a campaign biography, that it's of no comfort to someone trying to abide by the law to know that distributing such a book may be against the law, but "not to worry, the government's never imprisoned anyone for doing it." Yet.

The second example of why Elena Kagan can be counted on to shred the constitution is her repeated attempt to avoid answering the direct question of whether she's an originalist or not. An originalist is simply someone who believes that interpreting the U.S. constitution according to its original intent, is the way to apply the law. Those on the political left, such as President Obama and Elena Kagan, do not believe in originalism, and believe that the constitution should be changed or reinterpreted to change with the times. Indeed, Sen. Patrick Leahy, a like-minded Democrat (is there any other?), expresses in his remarks during these confirmation hearings for Kagan, that "the founders of our country could not have foreseen what our country is today, that they could not foresee every challenge." When Kagan was asked to respond to questions about whether she's an originalist, she used the example of how the constitution requires that "a U.S. Senator must be at least 30 years of age, regardless of their maturity level or changes in current life spans,"and that in that sense, "we're all originalists," but then adds that "there are a range of other provisions in the Constitution that were meant to be interpreted over time." Given the context of how she handled herself in the Citizens United vs. FEC case, the First Amendment doesn't seem to mean much to her, given that she wouldn't guarantee that the government wouldn't imprison someone for distributing a book.

Further evidence that Elena Kagan will be nothing more than a partisan political hack on the Supreme Court bench are the following items that appear on her resumé: (1) four years as President Clinton's associate counsel, (2) clerked for the ultra-liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, during which time she wrote memos to Marshall expressing concern over what she viewed as a "conservative Supreme Court," (3) the fact that she's never sat as a judge anywhere and (4) that her work during the Clinton years was that of a policy wonk. Even the NY Times and The Washington Post speak of her as being "a political animal," and these two publications are not exactlly known for their right-wing biases. Her main claim to fame appears to be her involvement in the anti-tobacco legislation in which she worked to raise taxes on tobacco products and to get the Food and Drug Administration to oversee the tobacco industry. She worked tirelessly to defend Clinton's economic policies, most of which increased the tax burden on everyone. All this doesn't sound like someone who could be counted on to be impartial and to uphold the U.S. constitution if confirmed as Supreme Court justice. But the Republicans don't have the votes to prevent it, so it would appear to be a foregone conclusion that no matter what face she puts forward during her confirmation hearings, she'll be the next sitting Supreme Court justice. A woman who never married and spent all her life in academia at Harvard when she wasn't working directly for the Clinton White House.

There will still be five remaining Supreme Court justices among the total of nine perceived to be leaning Republican: Chief Justice John Roberts (appointed by George W. Bush), Samuel Alito, Jr. (appointed by George W. Bush), Antonin Scalia (appointed by Ronald Reagan), Anthony Kennedy (appointed by Ronald Reagan), and Clarence Thomas (appointed by George H.W. Bush). To briefly remind the public how important the Supreme Court is to the left, one can only remember the Robert Bork hearings in which the left torpedoed his nomination, and the Clarence Thomas hearings in which the left ginned up a sex scandal involving Anita Hill. There can be no doubt that when Elena Kagan is confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, that her role will be to deliver her vote for the left and that any thoughts of consulting the constitution will be very distant in her mind.