Records "shed light on Kagan’s commitment to political activism and her liberal beliefs"

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http://www.dailyprincetonian.com:8080/images/photos/2010/05/03/Kagan_FORWEB_RGB-small.jpg
Solicitor General Elena Kagan ’81 (standing) served as editorial chairman for The Daily Princetonian while at the University.Photo by Staff


Elena Kagan ’81 got drunk on election night in 1980. Standing in the Brooklyn Academy of Music with her vodka and tonic, she watched Walter Cronkite usher in the news that Democratic candidate Elizabeth Holtzman had lost the race for one of New York’s Senate seats. And then she sat down and wept.

Three decades later, Kagan is the first female solicitor general of the United States and one of the leading candidates for President Barack Obama’s nomination to fill the seat of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, who is due to retire when the court’s term ends this summer. Yet despite her life in the public eye, Kagan has kept her political beliefs largely under wraps, sparking discussions about where she would fall on the court’s political spectrum and how her intellectual capabilities would match with the demanding life of the court.

Yet a glance back at Kagan’s undergraduate years at Princeton reveals a young woman who, even if restrained, was passionate about political life. Her senior thesis, the editorials published under her tenure as editorial chairman of The Daily Princetonian and her campus activities, as well as the words of those who worked closely with her at Princeton, shed light on Kagan’s commitment to political activism and her liberal beliefs.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/05/03/26081/

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1. "her politics — progressive and thoughtful but well within the mainstream of the ... sort of...

...liberal, democratic, progressive tradition, and everything with lower case.”

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2. “I absorbed ... liberal principles early,” she said. “More to the point, I have retained them"

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3. kick

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4. Well we can't have THAT!

Imagine, someone on the Supreme Court who doesn't appreciate the primacy of some citizens over others, and who might interpret the law in a way that doesn't put monied interests first. Radicalism! And she's widely rumored to be a woman, and we already have our quota of those people on the court.