Why Kagan should be filibustered
Senators should filibuster Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Here’s why.
It’s not because of her mostly empty answers to the mostly easy questions posed by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee during this week’s hearings. It’s not even because she hinted at an extremely expansive view of Congress’s ability to put mandates on our everyday lives when Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) asked her whether it would be constitutional for legislators to require Americans to eat three vegetables and three fruits a day, and she demurred.
No, the reason Senators should filibuster Kagan is Sonia Sotomayor.
The Senate confirmed Sotomayor last year as President Obama’s first appointment to the Supreme Court. Like Kagan, and like pretty much every nominee to the high court since Robert Bork was demonized by Ted Kennedy and blocked by Senate Democrats, Sotomayor cruised to confirmation by refusing to tip her hand as to how she would rule on certain issues.
But already we can see that the confirmation process as it’s been conducted the past quarter-century has yielded more than evasiveness. As Jonah Goldberg writes at Townhall.com, in the McDonald vs. Chicago gun-rights case that the Supreme Court ruled on this week,
[Sotomayor] concurred with Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent, which held that there is no fundamental right to bear arms in the U.S. Constitution. “I can find nothing in the Second Amendment’s text, history or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as ‘fundamental’ insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes,” Breyer wrote for the minority.
But when Sotomayor was before the Senate Judiciary Committee one year ago for her own confirmation hearings, she gave a very different impression of how she saw the issue. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy asked her, “Is it safe to say that you accept the Supreme Court’s decision as establishing that the Second Amendment right is an individual right?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
Both Sotomayor and Leahy festooned their colloquies with plenty of lawyerly escape hatches. That’s why Leahy asked the questions the way he did, and that’s why Sotomayor answered them the way she did. It’s also why he spun her answers into more than they were: “I do not see how any fair observer could regard (Sotomayor’s) testimony as hostile to the Second Amendment personal right to bear arms, a right she has embraced and recognizes.” He made it sound as though she was open to an expansive reading of the Second Amendment when everyone knew she wasn’t. (As a judge, she was hardly a hero of the NRA.)
Whether you are a liberal or a conservative or something in between, I’d hope you could agree with me that a confirmation process in which nominees say so little of substance, and yet manage to be misleading nonetheless, is a sham. Enough is enough.
If the Senate is going to insist on a process that’s more than a formality, the process ought to mean something. Either that, or we should go back to the pre-Bork era.
(And, lest someone accuses me of partisanship: I haven’t researched the record of every confirmation hearing since Bork and compared the nominees’ comments to their record on the bench. But I will stipulate that Sotomayor is probably not the first justice to issue a ruling at odds with her statements as a nominee, and that this probably isn’t a problem confined to one end of the ideological spectrum.)
So, why should Kagan now pay for the sins of Sotomayor and others?
Because she probably won’t be the last person nominated to the court by Barack Obama, and if the Senate is going to send a message about the way nominees are expected to perform at confirmation hearings, it has to be sent to a president who will be in a position to do something about it.
I suppose the message could get through to a future president, and I don’t really care whether that president might be a Republican or a Democrat. But I think it would be communicated most clearly right now, and Obama’s the president right now.
This is a chance to end the charade. Either senators do it now, or they stop grumbling about the farce that they insist on carrying out.
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341 comments Add your comment
BW
June 30th, 2010
2:50 pm
@ Dr Stan…I think the description can be applied to all greedy people…you sound like a libertarian…the world will just magically sort itself out because humans are rational…yeah right
WOW
June 30th, 2010
2:51 pm
“You can’t solve anything unless one ADMITS that a problem exists”
HDB, white people don’t just sit around thinking up ways to keep black people down. You on the other hand write paragraph after paragraph about how you are a victim of evil republicans etc….
You are the one with the problem. Problem is, it’s all in your head.
Mr. Holmes
June 30th, 2010
2:52 pm
Jose: Same here. Well, a wife. Baby #1 will arrive next week!
OK I take it back for you. But pretty certain WOW and BADA BING are the same nebbish.
booker T
June 30th, 2010
2:52 pm
Great show you are putting on here WOW. I have read HDB’s statements and he is as racist as they come. You are totally owning these clowns on this debate and it isn’t even close. Carry on HDB, you only speaking the truth and these idiots can’t come up with any lies to trump you. Filibuster the racist, communist hag and lets take our country back! This nonsense has went on for too long and we are losing respect worldwide! Also, blacks are the most racist people in this country, and it isn’t even close.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
2:52 pm
Jobs Market Barely Budges in June as Hiring Stays Weak
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38013729
WOW
June 30th, 2010
2:53 pm
“But pretty certain WOW and BADA BING are the same nebbish.”
Prove it oh paranoid one.
HDB
June 30th, 2010
2:53 pm
WOW
June 30th, 2010
2:45 pm
BADA BING
Yeah, and HDB is also a doctor but doesn’t know what a suture is. LOL
Nope…not a doctor…but I do know what a suture is….also diagnosis…anterior/posterior, cardiovascular……….neonatal……
My cranial cavity is always desirous of expansion…………….not by cockiness…but by confidence!!
BW
June 30th, 2010
2:53 pm
@ WOW…the Tea Party is a group of locally to unorganized people who will never agree on anything in a large enough group to matter worth a sh**. Establishment politicians do need to go but if people are not going to organize around an agenda because it deprives the individual of his or her “freedom” then the status quo it will be.
booker T
June 30th, 2010
2:54 pm
Edit: I meant “carry on WOW”. HDB, you are dumber than Hank Johnson, or are you Hank Johnson, hahaha!
WOW
June 30th, 2010
2:54 pm
“Also, blacks are the most racist people in this country, and it isn’t even close.”
No, not all blacks. The ones that aren’t are busy working and staying away from people like HDB, Obama, Tucker and Jesse Jackson.
NJF
June 30th, 2010
2:56 pm
BW:
Black folk have been voting for white folk forever. I’m willing to bet that I’ve voted for more white candidates than black candidates. I’m also willing to bet that you’ve voted for more white candidates than you have black candidates…
WOW
June 30th, 2010
2:57 pm
“the Tea Party is a group of locally to unorganized people who will never agree on anything in a large enough group to matter worth a sh**.”
Then explain Scott Brown, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Nikki Halley, Marco Rubio and every other Tea Party candidate that is riding a wave to getting elected in November?
“the Tea Party is a group of locally to unorganized people”
If they’re so “unorganized” why does PMSNBC, CNN, ABC, NY TIMES, WAPOST, PBS, CBS and NBC devote almost 30 mins a day railing on the Tea Party movement?
If something is unorganized and stupid, the left doesn’t talk about it.
It’s like when Jay Bookman wrote about Rush Limbaugh being irrelevant all while devoted 3 days a week to bashing him.
Recovering Demoholic
June 30th, 2010
2:58 pm
Kagan thinks its O.K. if the law bans books, because the government wouldn’t enforce it anyway. Huh? Another befuddled socialist in her own words:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBqdKKKRrrg
[But, this time it will be kinder, softer versions of socialism, shariaism, and union thuggery.]
BADA BING
June 30th, 2010
2:58 pm
I’m not sure what filibuster really means. Is it what Gore was trying to do to the woman in his room? Daddy, what’s a chakra?
WOW
June 30th, 2010
2:59 pm
“I’m also willing to bet that you’ve voted for more white candidates than you have black candidates…”
That is true. Unless you live in a poor area or city, you don’t see black candidates on the ballot. Sad but true. We need more JC Watts, Alan Keyes and Tim Scotts.
booker T
June 30th, 2010
2:59 pm
You are right WOW, there are great black people out there. They are overshadowed by these bumbling fools. Apologies to the hard working and king black people out there.
BADA BING
June 30th, 2010
3:00 pm
No, we are not the same person. WOW is the smart one. I am the smart , FUNNY one.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
3:01 pm
“Nope…not a doctor…but I do know what a suture is….also diagnosis…anterior/posterior, cardiovascular……….neonatal……”
Something about that statement makes absolutely no sense.
Joe
June 30th, 2010
3:02 pm
Kyle,
I agree that the process is a problem. However, this is not a reason to filibuster a nominee. When you suggest filibuster as some sort of constructive move to force a reconsideration of the process, your assertion seems disingenuously partisan.
Instead, why not create a series of questions you would like asked of Elena Kagan and that you would, as a concerned citizen, pass them on to your senator? Frankly, this process has worked for a long time in the same manner as journalism. You ask the tough questions. If they don’t answer them, or answer evasively, your hope is to expose their reluctance or evasiveness to a discerning, informed public (in this case, moderate/swing senators).
Disagreeing with the process doesn’t equal filibuster if you’re trying to offer something that transcends petty partisanship.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
3:02 pm
“No, we are not the same person. WOW is the smart one. I am the smart , FUNNY one.”
Hey, I’ve said some funny things! Go back and read my first statement on this blog!
BADA BING
June 30th, 2010
3:03 pm
holmes, I am not a nebbish. I am caucasian
BW
June 30th, 2010
3:04 pm
@ WOW…let’s see…in order:
Martha Coakley, Jon Corzine, it’s Kentucky after all, SC finally got tired of the old boy network, Rubio will lose to the traitor Crist, and every other Tea Party got through their primaries but will see what happens in the general especially with Sharron Angle.
They devote so much time because of that liberal media bias of course. They do it in order to frame the voter’s viewpoint as a choice rather than a referendum. This isn’t rocket science.
@ NJF….look I simply think it’s counterproductive to boil a diverse group of people down to Al Sharpton or Rush Limbaugh…I think it’s intellectually lazy….that was the point I was making.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
3:05 pm
“Martha Coakley, Jon Corzine, it’s Kentucky after all, SC finally got tired of the old boy network, Rubio will lose to the traitor Crist, and every other Tea Party got through their primaries but will see what happens in the general especially with Sharron Angle.”
Famous last words, BW.
Recovered Demoholic
June 30th, 2010
3:08 pm
Ooops. That should have been ‘Recovered’ and not ‘Recovering.’ And, while I’m at it. Though off topic, here’s something that is very illustrative of a wide range of things: the recent Supreme Court on guns, the forgiving eulogies of Byrd, and the differences in the roots of the Republican and Democrat parties:
http://www.georgiacarry.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/racist-roots-of-ga-gun-laws.pdf
The pictures and cartoons alone are stunning. I’ll bet you’ll end up reading it.
Jose
June 30th, 2010
3:09 pm
People, don’t get caught watching the paint dry when it comes to the Tea Party. Most critics have no idea what they stand for and as a member, the critics are usually dead wrong. Fiscal responsibility is what we are are about and if you check every poll coming out concering what Americans are most concerned about? Government spending number one in every major poll. By the way, Obama got elected through a grass roots start so if you think we are unorganized and going away, you will be pissed come November.
Mr. Holmes
June 30th, 2010
3:10 pm
“every other Tea Party got through their primaries but will see what happens in the general especially with Sharron Angle.”
Fascinated by the Nevada race. Angle is clearly out of the mainstream of political thought. Can she hide from herself long enough to take Harry Reid out? I think probably no. Nevadans may skew conservative, but I think they’d still rather have a sane Dem than a batpoop looney ideologue like Angle.
“They do it in order to frame the voter’s viewpoint as a choice rather than a referendum.”
Hmm. Would love to understand what this means.
“I simply think it’s counterproductive to boil a diverse group of people down to Al Sharpton or Rush Limbaugh”
Possibly the smartest thing that’s been posted on this blog today, including the original post by its owner.
NJF
June 30th, 2010
3:10 pm
Apologies BW…I didn’t notice the quotes.
HDB
June 30th, 2010
3:11 pm
WOW
June 30th, 2010
2:51 pm
“You can’t solve anything unless one ADMITS that a problem exists”
HDB, white people don’t just sit around thinking up ways to keep black people down. You on the other hand write paragraph after paragraph about how you are a victim of evil republicans etc….
If the POLICY is antithetical to what I desire…and the policy reflects the beliefs…..why can’t one call the policy as one sees it?? It’s not in my head…it’s what’s on paper……..
kif
June 30th, 2010
3:16 pm
sandra – if you want “facts”, go read a news report. this is a blog of opinion.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
3:16 pm
“Fascinated by the Nevada race. Angle is clearly out of the mainstream of political thought. ”
Yet she has a 13 point lead over Reid. Oh, and Reid’s son is running for governor yet he dropped his last name…..wonder why?
“Nevadans may skew conservative, but I think they’d still rather have a sane Dem than a batpoop looney ideologue like Angle.”
Yeah, I mean if they want to go bankrupt and continue to be represented by an idiot, by all means put another brain dead retard like Reid in office.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
3:19 pm
“It’s not in my head…it’s what’s on paper……..”
HDB, there obviously isn’t much in your head.
HDB
June 30th, 2010
3:20 pm
WOW
June 30th, 2010
2:54 pm
“Also, blacks are the most racist people in this country, and it isn’t even close.”
No, not all blacks. The ones that aren’t are busy working and staying away from people like HDB, Obama, Tucker and Jesse Jackson.
So….I’m busy working….and knowledgable of issues……and deal with a diverse group of people….read the platforms…and study history; does that marginalize my experiences….or creates the basis of how I vote……??
booker T June 30th, 2010
2:59 pm
I accept your apology…I AM one of the hard working people out here!! btw…don’t live in DeKalb….so Hank Johnson isn’t an issue with me……..
Question: why do you tend to marginalize a person’s experience if that experience has been counter to yours? Do you take the time to attempt to learn from it….or do you continue to denigrate and belittle it?? Here, it seems to be more of the latter than the former…….
Mr. Holmes
June 30th, 2010
3:21 pm
“Yet she has a 13 point lead over Reid.”
Rasmussen (which always tilts right, as you know) has it at a 7-point lead (48-41) as of 6/24. At some point, Angle will have to open her mouth and speak. When that happens, I expect the race to tighten immediately.
And, of course, the 4+ months until the election is an eternity. Oil spill is due to be capped in August, consumer spending will be picking up closer to Christmas… I don’t think 2010 is going to be quite the resurgence the GOP thinks it will. They’ll take back some seats, but not control of either house.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
3:24 pm
“So….I’m busy working….and knowledgable of issues”
No, you’re here blogging. If you’re working I hope your boss fires you for wasting company money. As for issues, first you should learn to spell knowledgeable the correct way, second you have opinions, not knowledge.
“and study history”
But you haven’t produced any historical evidence of anything, HDB.
“does that marginalize my experiences”
No, you do a good job at marginalizing yourself into a hole. A big racist hole.
“or creates the basis of how I vote’
I don’t care how you vote. You could go in blindfolded and standing on your head. Doesn’t make a difference to me how you vote.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
3:26 pm
“Rasmussen (which always tilts right, as you know) has it at a 7-point lead”
Still, a big lead.
“At some point, Angle will have to open her mouth and speak.”
She already did and has a big lead over Reid.
“Oil spill is due to be capped in August”
Not sure how that helps Democrats.
“I don’t think 2010 is going to be quite the resurgence the GOP thinks it will.”
Yeah, and James Carville said the GOP is going the way of the Whig Party in 2008. He’s singing a different tune now.
BADA BING
June 30th, 2010
3:26 pm
I will be so glad when I get my GED, I was too poor to have fancy things like holmes and hdb, you know , like plumbing , an education, and an informed opinion. When I get smart, I want to be able to understand all those big, fancy words that all the liberals use.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
3:27 pm
“why do you tend to marginalize a person’s experience if that experience has been counter to yours?”
No one is marginalizing anything HDB. You are the one who rants and rails on white people.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
3:29 pm
Mr. Holmes
Ted Kennedys old 30 year old seat was lost to a Tea Party candidate in a solid Democrat state. Now I know you gals on the left use the “oh we had a bad candidate to run” but guess what? YOU LEFTYS PICKED HER!!!!!!!
See ya in November!
BADA BING
June 30th, 2010
3:29 pm
Hey look holmes, proof that we are not the same person. WOW and BADA BING both have an entry at the same time……3:26.
Jose
June 30th, 2010
3:30 pm
People, Reid is toast in Nevada and even if a Tea Partier was not running, he would still lose. Reid has been his own worst enemy. Notice how he is not in the news much any more? Closed mouth, no stupid comments.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
3:30 pm
BADA BING
Did someone steal your handle or were you just being sarcastic to HDB?
pat
June 30th, 2010
3:33 pm
She’s flippin’ horrible. If she cannot answer questions directly she should be uncerimonially dismissed. At least with Sotomyer you had her prior experience on which to judge. You have nothing for Kegan. She is seeking a job for life by being evasive. I hope the democrats see through this too, but I doubt their genuiness. They’ll confirm her because she’s on their side, not because she’s qualified.
Her answers suck, she does not deserve the job. She’s done nothing but be obama’s chum to even be suggested.
BADA BING
June 30th, 2010
3:33 pm
Sarcasm, it’s a form of humor.
Mr. Holmes
June 30th, 2010
3:34 pm
“People, Reid is toast in Nevada and even if a Tea Partier was not running, he would still lose.”
You misunderstand. Reid is going to win precisely *because* there is a Tea Partier running–at least, because this particular Tea Partier is running.
BADA BING
June 30th, 2010
3:35 pm
WOW, none of the libtards could use my handle, they don’t know how to spell it.
BADA BING
June 30th, 2010
3:36 pm
It is really not a name, but a sound.
BW
June 30th, 2010
3:36 pm
@ Mr Holmes….it simply means that the means justified the ends….if I work at Fox News I paint liberals and Democrats in a bad light and if I work at MSNBC I paint conservatives and Republicans in a bad light….and hope it resonates so people turn gray issues into black and white ones and keep voting for the guy whose world view I agree with.
@ WOW…we will see if those are famous last words but though it works sometimes you can’t get elected by making the case that you suck a little less than the incumbent. Angle race will be interesting…ignore the polls until the week before…after both candidates debate each other and start making their final pitches…many things can happen between the end of June and November 4.
HDB
June 30th, 2010
3:38 pm
WOW June 30th, 2010
3:24 pm
I have not marginalized myself…nor anyone here! I relate my experiences and have cross-referenced them with data…..
The key thing is that I DO vote…..and since I do, I have the right to state my opinion….
Opinions are based on knowledge and experience…..and I am an informed voter…..
BW
June 30th, 2010
3:39 pm
@ Pat…regardless of what Mr Kyle believes…all the nominees will be confirmed as long as their experience doesn’t veer too far outside of the mainstream…this is a grandstanding exercise pure and simple.
WOW
June 30th, 2010
3:41 pm
“Opinions are based on knowledge and experience…..and I am an informed voter…..”
HDB, you’re also a narcissist. You talk only about your needs and your problems. Hey! You’re perfect for the Democrat Party! ME ME ME! MINE MINE MINE!