SCOTUS Nominee Elena Kagan doesn't have much of a paper trail, having never been a federal judge. This doesn't mean we have no insight on how she would interpret the US Constitution.

As a former clerk to Associate Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall it may be rightly inferred that Kagan agrees with, and has in fact never tried to distance herself from his views on judicial activism. Marshall said:

"You do what you think is right and let the law catch up." Stanford Law Review, summer 1992

This is the same Marshall that was known for being lazy, skipping deliberation to watch "Days of our Lives". He once told his friend Justice Brennan that there was a "lot to be learned about life" from soap operas. Apparently not so much about law was to be learned from the US Constitution.

Kagan has already shown her own willingness to invalidate the plain meaning of texts in her time at Harvard. As Dean of Harvard Law School in 2004 and 2005 she gave two professors (Larry Tribe and Charles Ogletree) a smack on the wrist when they were outed for plagiarism. Well no, not even that. Kagan said "Nevertheless, we regard the error in question as a significant lapse in proper academic practice." Any student would have been suspended at the very least, if not expelled, as per Harvard's written policies. Tribe and Ogletree were not suspended or fired, as leftist lawyers they are above such rules in Kagan's world.

Kagan will not interpret the Constitution as written nor even try to, but will in fact do all in her power to make it a nullity as she legislates from the bench in order to push an ideology that would never be accomplished by legal means through the legislature.

SCOTUS Nominee Elena Kagan doesn't have much of a paper trail, having never been a federal judge. This doesn't mean we have no insight on how she would interpret the US Constitution.

As a former clerk to Associate Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall it may be rightly inferred that Kagan agrees with, and has in fact never tried to distance herself from his views on judicial activism. Marshall said:

Stanford Law Review, summer 1992

This is the same Marshall that was known for being lazy, skipping deliberation to watch "Days of our Lives". He once told his friend Justice Brennan that there was a "lot to be learned about life" from soap operas. Apparently not so much about law was to be learned from the US Constitution.

Kagan has already shown her own willingness to invalidate the plain meaning of texts in her time at Harvard. As Dean of Harvard Law School in 2004 and 2005 she gave two professors (Larry Tribe and Charles Ogletree) a smack on the wrist when they were outed for plagiarism. Well no, not even that. Kagan said "Nevertheless, we regard the error in question as a significant lapse in proper academic practice." Any student would have been suspended at the very least, if not expelled, as per Harvard's written policies. Tribe and Ogletree were not suspended or fired, as leftist lawyers they are above such rules in Kagan's world.

Kagan will not interpret the Constitution as written nor even try to, but will in fact do all in her power to make it a nullity as she legislates from the bench in order to push an ideology that would never be accomplished by legal means through the legislature.

I believe we may as well consider this one lost and hope no one else leaves before Obama is gone.

Republicans won't fight her. at least not very hard.

I find it interesting that she, along with Obama and lots of others in government, media, and the general population do not know what kind of government we have in the U.S. They say "democracy" all the time. We have a republic, period; no adjectives or modifiers applied.

I saw posted on one of my old collage friend's Facebook page this morning: "Kagan has my support! She had free tampons placed at the Law School in Harvard when I temped there in 2007!"
I suppose I should not be surprised that liberal academic women only need their tampons supplied for free to be happy...Guess we didn't need all that liberation and education...only a free tampon...and to quote Twain's Tom Sawyer, "a string to swing it by..."
s......i.........g........h.........

Want to get into this nominee's mind?

how about her Thesis paper?

By Aaron Klein
NEW YORK – In her undergraduate thesis at Princeton, President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, lamented the decline of socialism in the country as "sad" for those who still hope to "change America." Titled "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933," Kagan opined that infighting caused the decline of the early socialist movement. She asked why the "greatness" of socialism was not reemerging as a major political force.
"In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories than of socialism's greatness," wrote Kagan, Obama's solicitor general."
Socialism's greatness?
You Ivy League academia twisted POS. LOOK around you moron! Look what socialism has done to every nation that invited that cancer in! We defeated it by the 1920's for a reason: We didn't want it.
Now,...you freaking moron, you pine longingly for a chance to let it spread in America? Get out,...I mean it,...get out! go throw rocks in Greece,...go sit in drab concrete apartments in Spain, or Poland...go march in some soul-less May Day parade.
I am so sick of this regime, these anti-American neoprogs who despise this nation, its freedoms, and capitalism.

Republicans MUST fight...it is the only way they can possibly save thier skinny butts come Nov 2nd.
The Tea party will march...and God will not spare those who stand in our way.

Want to get into this nominee's mind?

how about her Thesis paper?

By Aaron Klein
NEW YORK – In her undergraduate thesis at Princeton, President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, lamented the decline of socialism in the country as "sad" for those who still hope to "change America." Titled "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933," Kagan opined that infighting caused the decline of the early socialist movement. She asked why the "greatness" of socialism was not reemerging as a major political force.
"In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories than of socialism's greatness," wrote Kagan, Obama's solicitor general."
Socialism's greatness?
You Ivy League academia twisted POS. LOOK around you moron! Look what socialism has done to every nation that invited that cancer in! We defeated it by the 1920's for a reason: We didn't want it.
Now,...you freaking moron, you pine longingly for a chance to let it spread in America? Get out,...I mean it,...get out! go throw rocks in Greece,...go sit in drab concrete apartments in Spain, or Poland...go march in some soul-less May Day parade.
I am so sick of this regime, these anti-American neoprogs who despise this nation, its freedoms, and capitalism.

Republicans MUST fight...it is the only way they can possibly save thier skinny butts come Nov 2nd.
The Tea party will march...and God will not spare those who stand in our way.

There is the hidden key to why BO wants her. He is a socialist. He wants a socialist SCOTUS.

The Republicans need to delay this confirmation until after the swearing in of the new Congress, so the confirmation will not happen.

There is the hidden key to why BO wants her. He is a socialist. He wants a socialist SCOTUS.
The U. S. is a socialist nation, bro. Americans love socialism. If you don't believe me, just try to repeal the Social Security Act.

a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. The American people love Socialism. That's why 67% of our Congressmen favored expanding socialized medicine in 2009 by passing the the Marxist legislation that expanded the State Children's Health Insurance Program known as SCHIP.

It's hard to argue that the U. S. isn't a Socialist Nation, at least according to the simple minded wrong wingers who think all government is Marxism.

There is the hidden key to why BO wants her. He is a socialist. Of course he's a Socialist. We're a Socialist Nation. Americans love Socialism. Every President starting the Abe Lincooln has subscribed to the Socialist Principle that:

The legitimate object of government is to do for the people whatever they need to have done, but which they can not do, at all, or can not do, so well, for themselves - in their separate and individual capacities.

--President Abraham Lincoln

And people are surprised by the slow release and scrubbing of Kagan information from the White House to mitigate damage for her potential nomination! :coffee:

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LMAO - me too!

I withheld comment on Kagan's senior thesis until I had a chance to actually read it for myself. An endorsement of socialism it is not. An exploration of her ideological views it is not. An expression of her regard for socialism it is not.

It's a college thesis. She researched a subject - the life and activity of the Socialist Party in America, particularly in NY in the first few decades of the 20th Century. She formulated a novel thesis (common, widely accepted propositions generally don't make for good - or at least challenging - thesis subject matter) - that internal conflict, and not just external factors relating to the nature of American society, played a large role in the disintegration of the Socialist Party in America in the 1930's. She explored the subject and supported her assertion, rather aptly I think. She wrote a senior thesis.

I will add that it is very well written and I found it to be interesting. What it is not is an exploration of her political views or an expression of her fondness for Socialist ideology. Anyone that would assert that it is either hasn't read it, lacks reasonably developed reading comprehension skills, or is so intent on having, and desperate to find, ammunition to demonize Ms. Kagan, that they are willing to be intellectually dishonest.

I'm continually disheartened by the disingenuous nature of so much of societal discourse. Are we really to the point where almost no one cares about the truth, about accuracy, about not being duplicitous or, at least, misleading? We are oh so willing to accuse 'others' of being undiscerning and/or unconcerned with the truth, while at the same time being such ourselves.

A thesis exploring the ultimate failure of Hitler's war machine, and asking and answering incisive questions about why it did, is by no means an endorsement of Nazi conquest or, necessarily, an expression of the thesis author's fondness for Adolf Hitler. More specifically, an assertion that, as a result of how history unfolded, 'modern Europeans are more likely to speak of Churchill's steadfastness than Hitler's genius' is not a proclamation that Hitler was a genius - quite to the contrary, it may mean to imply that he wasn't. Coincident to such an assertion, the person asserting such a thing may or may not believe that Hitler was a genius - but, at any rate, linguistically, such an assertion is not a proclamation that he was. Someone can pretend that it is in order to find support for something they want to believe, but that doesn't make it true.

Furthermore, in the whole of a 130+ page thesis, critics have found but one or two passages which they can point to, and misconstrue, in order to characterize the thesis as something that it most certainly is not - something that the entirety of the thesis clearly reveals itself not to be? These characterizations (e.g. the one quoted in this thread) are pathetic.

There's plenty of veracious bases on which to establish that Ms. Kagan lacks ideologically conservative credentials. Opposition to her nomination - if it seeks to be meaningful - would be best served by sticking to veracious criticism. This kind of nonsense accomplishes little more than the satiation of frustration. While the impulse to pursue such satiation is natural and understandable, indulging that impulse rarely leads to lasting benefits.

I withheld comment on Kagan's senior thesis until I had a chance to actually read it for myself. An endorsement of socialism it is not. An exploration of her ideological views it is not. An expression of her regard for socialism it is not.

People tend to choose their thesis based on something they are interested in. :shrug:

I withheld comment on Kagan's senior thesis until I had a chance to actually read it for myself.

Thanks for adding to this discussion in a thoughtful intelligent manner. Since I have not read her thesis myself, I will likewise refrain from commenting on it.

What do you think about the fact that she has not tried to distance herself from Marshall's comment: "You do what you think is right and let the law catch up."?

People tend to choose their thesis based on something they are interested in. :shrug:

I suspect that's true, though there are certainly other considerations that might be more important than pre-existing interest. That said, do you mean to confound interest in something with support for it? As relates to myself, I sure hope there aren't many people who have made that mistake. I don't think there have been.

Interest in something does not equate to support for something, nor is the former necessarily accompanied by the latter. Many people are interested in the Nazis, not so many support them or their policies. Many people are interested in the Great Depression and, perhaps, how FDR went about dealing with it, and many of those people have disdain for FDR. Many people are interested in the Bush Administration - I'm sure you get the point.

I've been interested in Karl Marx and his writings since at least high school. I've spoken and written about him and the ideas he expressed for decades (ad nauseam, I'm sure, in the minds of some). By no means do I support or subscribe to his views of how society should work - rather, my views to the contrary are considered radical by some.

Elena Kagan may be holding Socialist Party meetings in her basement every Thursday for all I know. That's beside my point, which is that her senior thesis doesn't provide veracious and substantive indication that she supported or was fond of the Socialist Party. It's an account of history and an exploration of causation, not a lament.

Thanks for adding to this discussion in a thoughtful intelligent manner. Since I have not read her thesis myself, I will likewise refrain from commenting on it.

What do you think about the fact that she has not tried to distance herself from Marshall's comment: "You do what you think is right and let the law catch up."?

At this point, I don't have any substantive thoughts about it. I'd need to look into it and get a better sense of what he meant, and in what regard(s) she agrees with him. If I get a chance to do just that, I will offer you my thoughts on the matter - or indicate that I still don't have any meaningful ones. As yet, I haven't read a lot of her writings, but I intend to read quite a few more.

I suspect that's true, though there are certainly other considerations that might be more important than pre-existing interest. That said, do you mean to confound interest in something with support for it? As relates to myself, I sure hope there aren't many people who have made that mistake. I don't think there have been.

Interest in something does not equate to support for something, nor is the former necessarily accompanied by the latter. Many people are interested in the Nazis, not so many support them or their policies. Many people are interested in the Great Depression and, perhaps, how FDR went about dealing with it, and many of those people have disdain for FDR. Many people are interested in the Bush Administration - I'm sure you get the point.

I've been interested in Karl Marx and his writings since at least high school. I've spoken and written about him and the ideas he expressed for decades (ad nauseam, I'm sure, in the minds of some). By no means do I support or subscribe to his views of how society should work - rather, my views to the contrary are considered radical by some.

Elena Kagan may be holding Socialist Party meetings in her basement every Thursday for all I know. That's beside my point, which is that her senior thesis doesn't provide veracious and substantive indication that she supported or was fond of the Socialist Party. It's an account of history and and exploration of causation, not a lament.

True.

An endorsement of socialism it is not.
Since the U. S. is a socialist nation, she should endorse socialism.

I withheld comment on Kagan's senior thesis until I had a chance to actually read it for myself. An endorsement of socialism it is not. An exploration of her ideological views it is not. An expression of her regard for socialism it is not.

It's a college thesis. ...

I will add that it is very well written and I found it to be interesting. What it is not is an exploration of her political views or an expression of her fondness for Socialist ideology.

...

There's plenty of veracious bases on which to establish that Ms. Kagan lacks ideologically conservative credentials. Opposition to her nomination - if it seeks to be meaningful - would be best served by sticking to veracious criticism. This kind of nonsense accomplishes little more than the satiation of frustration. While the impulse to pursue such satiation is natural and understandable, indulging that impulse rarely leads to lasting benefits.

Thanks for your well written mini synopsis and analysis.

She may be all conservatives could hope for from Obama, but being suspicious of him leads to suspicion of others closely aligned with him including her. Right or wrong, people are known by those with whom they associate.

Thanks for adding to this discussion in a thoughtful intelligent manner. Since I have not read her thesis myself, I will likewise refrain from commenting on it.

What do you think about the fact that she has not tried to distance herself from Marshall's comment: "You do what you think is right and let the law catch up."?

I haven't seen anything yet where she comments on that Justice Marshall comment. Are you referring to something she said or wrote in specific, or just to the general notion that she is associated with Justice Marshall (having clerked for him) and thus might share his general judicial philosophy?

Since the U. S. is a socialist nation, she should endorse socialism.

Maybe she does. That said, the U.S. being a socialist nation surely doesn't, in and of itself, mean that any particular person should endorse socialism, does it?

Thanks for your well written mini synopsis and analysis.

She may be all conservatives could hope for from Obama, but being suspicious of him leads to suspicion of others closely aligned with him including her. Right or wrong, people are known by those with whom they associate.

You're welcome.

You're point is no doubt valid and correct. Elena Kagan is clearly no great friend of conservative ideology. Assuming she is confirmed, I've little doubt that I'll often disagree with the ideological positions underlying her decisions and opinions.

LMAO - me too!

Me three!

:buddies:

Thanks for your well written mini synopsis and analysis.

She may be all conservatives could hope for from Obama, but being suspicious of him leads to suspicion of others closely aligned with him including her. Right or wrong, people are known by those with whom they associate.

My mom and pop used to pound it into me (sometimes literally) that you are known by the company you keep. That is precisely the point that the latest televangelist, Mr. Glenn Beck, keeps trying to make. Whatever you think of Beck, he's exactly right about that.