Ambinder: Kagan it Is

[Clio the Leo]

lol, you all realize that not only does the President know who his SECOND nominee is, he probably also knows, at this point, who is third and fourth picks (if needed) would be. The decision was apparently made a LONG time ago.

The Night Beat: Kagan It Is
MAY 9 2010, 10:36 PM ET

At 11:00 am ET, President Obama will introduce his solicitor general, Elena Kagan, as his choice for associate justice of the Supreme Court. The pro-forma criticism will come from the right; the more interesting response will be from the left, where Kagan is progressive enough, whether she endorses a variant of the unitary executive theory held by John Yoo and Dick Cheney, whether her scholarship is up to snuff, whether her views on campaign finance mirror those she was asked to argue for as SG.

(Thanks, Gallup, for telling us that 42% of Americans, roughly the same number who identify as conservative, want a conservative jurist.)

There will be an event at the White House, of course, which means that the groups will be notified; these are the acronymed collection of Democrats who need to be cared for and fed by the liaison operation at the White House. What happens next is going to be fairly predictable, given how long the White House and Republicans have been preparing for a Kagan nomination. (Obama signaled he wanted Kagan in the seat as early as a few DAYS after his transition in a meeting with close advisers. At said meeting, he also suggested he would select Sonia Sotomayor first.)

The more intense fire will come from the activist left, representatives of which have already voiced objections to Kagan's record of jurisprudence, her Catabrigian clubbiness, her record on diversity, and the way in which she seems to have constructed her career to leave as little a paper trail as possible. Remember: all judicial battles are fought on the right's terrain. So Democratic judges always have to pledge fidelity to a legal formalism they don't really believe in. So long as the Democrats have the votes, Republicans will have to grudgingly accept this.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/10/05/the-night-beat-kagan-it-is-/56433

[Pirate Smile]

1. Unless something comes up to change his initial choice, he goes with it.

[LeftyAndProud60]

2. I hope this gets fillibustered. NT

[HughMoran]

3. Why

explain...

[LeftyAndProud60]

4. I don't like this woman and she looks unhealthy. Roberts will live to 100. I wanted Karlan. NT

[HughMoran]

5. lol

No, seriously... (did I miss the sarcasm somewhere?) :D

[Clio the Leo]

10. Well *I* think she'd look supercute in a robe...

.... and hope she doesn't succumb to peer pressure and wear that little bib thing the girls usually wear.

(trying to offset one fluff post with another.)

[FrenchieCat]

6. So "Kagan It Is" was pronounced on 5/6/09 right before Sotomayor was announced.

Haha!

[HughMoran]

8. this time for sure!

:D

[slay]

7. Here is what Glenn Greenwald had to say about her: (he's against)

The latest on Elena Kagan
By Glenn Greenwald

I've laid out my case against Elena Kagan as thoroughly as I could, but with several anonymous (i.e., unreliable) reports percolating that she's the likely choice and could be announced as early as Monday, it's worthwhile to note several recent items from others pertaining to her selection:

(1) University of Colorado Law Professor Paul Campos, who previously expressed shock at the paucity of Kagan's record and compared her to Harriet Miers, has a new piece in The New Republic entitled (appropriately): "Blank Slate."

(2) Digby examines what a Kagan selection would reveal about Obama, and she particularly focuses on Kagan's relationship to Goldman Sachs. That relationship is relatively minor, but it is illustrative in several ways and will certainly be used by Republicans to advance their attacks on this administration as being inextricably linked with Wall Street. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein has more on the Kagan/Goldman Sachs connection.

(3) Following up on the article published yesterday in Salon by four minority law professors -- which condemned Kagan's record on diversity issues as "shocking" and "indefensible for the 21st Century" -- Law Professor Darren Hutchinson of American University School of Law today writes that Kagan's record is "abysmal."

more: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/08/kagan

Also he wrote:

The case against Elena Kagan
By Glenn Greenwald

(updated below - Update II )

It is far from clear who Obama will chose to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, but Elena Kagan, his current Solicitor General and former Dean of Harvard Law School, is on every list of the most likely replacements. Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog has declared her "the prohibitive front-runner" and predicts: "On October 4, 2010, Elena Kagan Will Ask Her First Question As A Supreme Court Justice." The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin made the same prediction.

The prospect that Stevens will be replaced by Elena Kagan has led to the growing perception that Barack Obama will actually take a Supreme Court dominated by Justices Scalia (Reagan), Thomas (Bush 41), Roberts (Bush 43), Alito (Bush 43) and Kennedy (Reagan) and move it further to the Right. Joe Lieberman went on Fox News this weekend to celebrate the prospect that "President Obama may nominate someone in fact who makes the Court slightly less liberal," while The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus predicted: "The court that convenes on the first Monday in October is apt to be more conservative than the one we have now." Last Friday, I made the same argument: that replacing Stevens with Kagan risks moving the Court to the Right, perhaps substantially to the Right (by "the Right," I mean: closer to the Bush/Cheney vision of Government and the Thomas/Scalia approach to executive power and law).

Consider how amazing it is that such a prospect is even possible. Democrats around the country worked extremely hard to elect a Democratic President, a huge majority in the House, and 59 Democratic Senators -- only to watch as the Supreme Court is moved further to the Right? Even for those who struggle to find good reasons to vote for Democrats, the prospect of a better Supreme Court remains a significant motive (the day after Obama's election, I wrote that everyone who believed in the Constitution and basic civil liberties should be happy at the result due to the numerous Supreme Court appointments Obama would likely make, even if for no other reason).

more: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/13/kagan

I'm NOT liking this - but I am getting used to it. Obama need not count on my campaigning for him in 2012. What a letdown. :(

[Arkana]

9. Confirming what a lot of us have suspected since the moment Stevens

announced his retirement.

I'd be willing to bet that one of the first questions asked of Kagan was which side she'd have come down on in the Citizens United case, too.