Another Progressive Act My Generation Will Be Paying For

The news over the past 3 weeks has been focused around one issue- THE oil spill. It is no longer AN oil spill, it is THE oil spill, the one my generation will compare future spills to in terms of size, damage, and the response. However, THE oil spill is going to start to take a back seat in the news, barring any more gaffes from either BP (not answering questions under oath) or the Federal Government (such as the Coast Guard pulling the crude oil removing boats off the gulf to inspect them…yes this happened).

No, from next Monday forward the political world will start to shift to something that will have long term implications that will far outreach any new laws that will come about from the Deepwater Horizon spill. The confirmation hearings on what is likely to be our next Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagan, will start on June 28^th. If I am reading the climate in Washington correctly it looks like we are one questionable memo away from this being an interesting hearing.

First of all, President Obama does not have the same political clout, nor the popularity, as he did one year ago. At this time last year President Obama’s approval rating was anywhere between a 53% that Rasmussen reported on 6/20 to a 65% that an ABC/Washington Post poll had on 6/21. Today (6/18/2010) Rasmussen has him at 41% approval and the highest rating over the past week was a 50% that was reported by CNN, Ipsos, and the AP, each in separate polls. It is obvious that his approval has dropped and dropped big, which in Washington terms, means it is not politically advantageous for members of Congress to continue to be on his side. Since this was not the case last year, it was an open and shut case to confirm someone such as Sonia Sotomayor, who made it clear that he job on the bench was not to follow the law, but to reform the law to follow her personal political viewpoints (Ricci v DeStefano should do the trick in proving that point).

However, Supreme Court nominees are confirmed by the Senate, which is insolated from shifts in public opinion more than the House. This means the Democratic members are likely to side with Obama and confirm Kagan. In order to get the Democrats to go against Kagan, one of a few things need to happen. The first of which we can throw out right away, which is a major slip up on the part of Kagan. If she somehow is stupid enough to make a comment so controversial that her fellow progressives cannot stand beside her, she is not intelligent enough to be on the bench.

There are other options; from the Senate finding her not qualified (not likely) to her having a poor showing at the hearings (less likely), but getting enough Democrats to side with the GOP will take a minor miracle. What is the most likely way to stop Kagan, Democrats or not, is a GOP filibuster. Mitch McConnell has not ruled out this possibility and we know that the ranking republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions (R-AL) will support a filibuster, the question is whether RINO’s such as Lindsey Graham, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins will go along with the idea. My guess is that they will not support a filibuster; help push through Kagan, and that will be that.

The point of this long post- not much, other than to show that Kagan is ending up on the Supreme Court of the United States no matter what Republicans do. She is a fierce partisan who determines law based on her personal politics based on what we can read from her memos during her time in the Clinton Administration. Chief Justice Roberts called her views on the first amendment “startling and dangerous” after Kagan said this

"Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs."

There is a saying that you can tell a lot about a man (in this case a woman) by looking at the company she keeps? Her judicial hero is Thurgood Marshall- one of the most activist judges in the history of the court. If her personal hero, the memos she wrote during her time in the Clinton Administration, and her own views she voiced in the Supreme Court are not enough evidence to show Kagan is a radical progressive who will ignore the Constitution just think about this- Is President Obama and his team stupid enough to blow a chance to get another person who is as far left as he is on the court for the remainder of her life?

No way are they dumb enough to blow this opportunity. They may lack leadership abilities, but they are still as politically savvy as any team out there. You can bet this is a carefully crafted move to get a member of the far left onto the court with as little theatre as possible.