Kagan Must Answer the Question About DOMA

This week the Senate looks to approve or filibuster Elena Kagan as another notoriously radical Obama appointment.  Again, going against the will of the people who want a conservative as the next Supreme Court justice, Obama nominates a radical ideologue.  If we have any more like Kagan, our constitutional rights, as laid out by our Founding Fathers based on years of experience, will be in serious peril.

This is why it is imperative that she be stopped.  We still do not know her position on the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), as she cleverly skirted around it.  DOMA has been challenged by the not-to-be-forgotten Martha Coakley, and it looks like it may go all the way to the Supreme Court.  We seriously need to know Kagan's stance on these issues, and needs to be called back to answer a few more questions.

Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum writes a brilliant piece on this, with oodles of fantastic references.  One of my favorites is the reference she makes to the devious (a la Obamacare) Obama administration as in it for the "long march", referring to the Mao dynasty in such a way that is chilling.

Anyway, be sure to get on that phone, fax or email to the Senators (Grassfire's contact list)

Kagan Must Answer the Question About DOMA
by Phyllis Schlafly, July 16, 2010

If Elena Kagan is confirmed for the Supreme Court, it will not matter that Martha Coakley failed to win her bid to fill out Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. Kagan's 30-plus years as one of nine votes on the Supreme Court is far more important than Scott Brown's three years as one of 100 votes in the Senate.

A litigation time bomb set by Martha Coakley — who remains state attorney general despite losing her Senate race — exploded last week in a Massachusetts courtroom. Federal Judge Joseph Tauro, who received his lifetime appointment from Richard Nixon in 1972, upheld Coakley's position in a lawsuit she filed a year ago against the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Responding to written questions by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kagan answered "Yes" when asked whether she had "reviewed briefs" and/or "participated in some discussions" concerning the lawsuit that resulted in last week's anti-marriage decision. Kagan should be called back to answer more questions about her role in that case.

What position did she take on the DOMA case that resulted in overturning that law, and why didn't she defend it more aggressively? Would she recuse herself when this case, or a similar marriage case, reaches the Supreme Court?

The one-man, one-woman definition of marriage is enshrined in the laws of 45 states, and has been upheld by popular vote in 31 states from Maine to Hawaii. The 1996 federal law attacked by Martha Coakley applies this same definition to the 1,138 federal laws that refer to marriage.

It was only six months ago that the charismatic Republican Scott Brown defeated the dour feminist Martha Coakley for the U.S. Senate seat that had been held by the Kennedy family for 58 years. It was a humiliating repudiation of liberalism in its Massachusetts homeland.

Scott Brown's election meant that Democrats lost their filibuster-proof 60-vote Senate majority for the remainder of Obama's presidential term. Pundits predicted that meant the end of Obamacare, cap and trade, card check, comprehensive immigration reform, and the rest of the "hope and change" agenda.

But the Obama-Pelosi liberals are here for the "long march," and they quickly regrouped their forces. Using unprecedented parliamentary chicanery to bypass Senate rules, they managed to get another | version of Obamacare to the President for his signature at the end of March.

As soon the ink was dry but before congressmen had actually read the over-2,000-page bill, Democrats tried to pretend the debate was over because Obamacare is now the "law of the land." But polls continue to show that 60 percent of Americans oppose Obamacare, including 52 percent who "strongly favor repeal."

Missouri just became the 21st state to sue on behalf of its citizens for a ruling that Obamacare's central provision — the mandate on individuals to buy health insurance — is unconstitutional.

Judge Tauro's written | opinion has already been criticized as illogical, even by liberals who support same-sex marriage. But liberal legal scholars are already hard at work on developing a better rationale because they are so deeply invested in getting rid of DOMA.

As Justice Scalia wrote about an earlier case, the new DOMA decision is "the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda." Kagan on the Supreme Court would permanently entrench what Scalia called the "law profession's anti-anti-homosexual culture," by reading it into the U.S. Constitution.

Elena Kagan has been called Obama in a skirt. Her youth was steeped in the notoriously radical politics of the Upper West Side of New York City, absorbing "progressive" views that are reflected in the theses she wrote at Princeton and Oxford. If confirmed, she would be the 6th Justice on the current Supreme Court who was born in New York or New Jersey and the 9th who attended Harvard or Yale law schools.

The American people were hoping the next Supreme Court justice would be conservative. According to a Fox News poll in April, 52 percent said they wanted President Obama to nominate "someone who is more of a conservative" and only 29 percent wanted "someone who is more of a liberal."

We hope the Senators realize that their vote on Elena Kagan is crucial because she could be the deciding vote on the constitutionality of both DOMA and Obamacare. Despite all her non-answers to softball questions in the hearing, there is no question about how she will vote.

Abe Lincoln warned us that "if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, ... the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."

Further reading:
Elena Kagan Should Be Rejected 7-10-2010
Obama Steers the Court Left 5-14-2010

Read more pieces by Phyllis Schlafly here

ELENA KAGAN SHOULD BE REJECTED

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

That was an old typing practice sentence that I remember well, and is very apropos today. In light of this week's close call regarding upholding our 2nd Amendment rights, keeping the Supreme Court clean of judicial activists could not be more crital.

The ever lovely and brilliant Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum has written an excellent dissertation on the reasons why Elena Kagan is not fit to wear the robes of a Supreme Court justice from the great Townhall.com.

It is so important to voice your opinion to the Senators about to make an all important decision about her. Here are their numbers on page 1, page 2, and page 3.

Elena Kagan Should Be Rejected
by Phyllis Schlafly, June 30, 2010

Barack Obama revealed his goal for the Supreme Court when he complained on Chicago radio station WBEZ-FM in 2001 that the Earl Warren Court wasn't "radical" enough because "it didn't break free from the essential constraints placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution" in order to allow "redistribution of wealth." Now that Obama is president, he has the power to nominate Supreme Court justices who will "break free" from the Constitution and join him in "fundamentally transforming" America.

That's the essence of his choice of Elena Kagan as his second Supreme Court nominee. She never was a judge, and her paper trail is short. But it's long enough to prove that she is a clear and present danger to the Constitution.

When Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School, she presented a guest speaker who is known as the most activist judge in the world: Judge Aharon Barak, formerly president of the Israeli Supreme Court. The polar opposite of the U.S. Constitution, which states that "all legislative powers" are vested in the elected legislative body, Barak has written that a judge should "make" and "create" law, assume "a role in the legislative process," and give statutes "new meaning that suits new social needs."

Barak wrote that a judge "is subject to no authority" except himself, and he "must sometimes depart the confines of his legal system and channel into it fundamental values not yet found in it." Channel? Does he mean he channels in a trance, as Hillary Clinton supposedly channeled discourse with the long deceased Eleanor Roosevelt?

Despite Barak's weirdo writings, or maybe because of them, Kagan called him her "judicial hero." Judge Robert Bork, a man careful with his words, says that Kagan's praise of Barak is "disqualifying in and of itself."

Bork said that Barak "establishes a world record for judicial hubris." Bork wrote that Barak embraces a judicial philosophy that "there is no area of Israeli life that the court may not govern."

During Kagan's confirmation hearing for solicitor general, Sen. Arlen Specter asked her views on using foreign or international law or decisions to interpret our Constitution and laws. She wrote in reply that she approves using "reasonable foreign law arguments."

Au contraire. The U.S. Constitution states that our judges "shall be bound" by "the Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof."

Federal law requires all educational institutions receiving federal funds to present an educational program on the U.S. Constitution on every Constitution Day, September 17. Kagan thumbed her nose at Constitution Day 2007 by hiring a transnationalist to the Harvard faculty, Noah Feldman, and featuring him for two days of speeches.

Transnationalists are lawyers who advocate integrating foreign and international law into the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and laws. In his Harvard Constitution Day address, Feldman urged the "use of international legal materials in constitutional decision-making ... to help actually decide cases," and opined that "international tribunals' rulings must be treated as law."

Kagan's hero is also a transnationalist. In his book "The Judge in a Democracy," he sharply criticizes the U.S. Supreme Court for failing to cite foreign law, and he praises Canada, Australia and Germany for their "enlightened democratic legal systems."

Kagan is particularly inappropriate because this anti-military woman would replace the only veteran on the court, John Paul Stevens. As Harvard Law School dean, Kagan signed a brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn or rewrite the Solomon Amendment, which she called "profoundly wrong."

That popular federal law denies federal funds to colleges that bar military recruiters from the campus. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected Kagan's argument, which proves what an extremist she is.

Kagan demonstrated her feminist extremism when she served as the lead White House strategist advising President Bill Clinton to veto the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Ten years later, substantially the same act was passed by Congress, signed by President George W. Bush and upheld by the Supreme Court.

Feldman has just published a long New York Times magazine article in which he worries about how the Supreme Court will rule on lawsuits over Obamacare, Obama's takeover of big corporations and the cronyism in stimulus spending. Feldman hopes the Kagan appointment means that "the moment has arrived for progressive constitutional thought" to take over the courts.

The left is counting on Kagan to play a major role in getting the Supreme Court to uphold Obama's transformation of our exceptional private enterprise system to a socialist economy. The New Republic magazine is salivating at the prospect that Kagan will reassert the discredited doctrine of the "living Constitution."

A Rasmussen poll reports that 42 percent of Americans oppose Kagan's confirmation, and only 35 percent favor her. Are senators listening?

Read more Phyllis Schlafly here.

BUTLER: The Latest Leftist Obama Judicial Nominee Pushed By Disrespectful Democratic Senators

Although I am relatively new to the 'activist' scene, current events was a big part of my life. Never before have I witnessed the rapid disintegration of our legislative process, and rapid disrespect for our democratic process. Consider the Democrat's backroom, locked door meetings [even changing the locks in the middle of the night], not to mention the interruptions and cutting short debates to their opposition.

This new wave threatens the very fiber of our democracy, and the use of a crisis to pass through drastic legislation and appoint radical leftist lifetime judicial positions will put our freedom in dire jeopardy.

RedState writes an alarming piece on this:


Butler - The Latest Leftist Obama Judicial Nominee Pushed By Disrespectful Democrat Senators
by hogan, December 3, 2009

The United States Senate Judiciary Committee just voted along party lines, 12-7, to send the nomination of liberal activist Judge Louis B. Butler Jr. to the floor of the Senate. The Democrats did so, according to friends inside the room, in a disrespectful manner… talking over Republicans who wished to voice their disapproval and tried to – heaven forbid in the U.S. Senate – actually debate the nominee. I am told Schumer and Whitehouse were on their cell phones, and a number of Democrat Senators were talking loudly during the limited debate they even allowed.

Classy.

This is the latest of an increasingly distinguished line of completely-out-of-the-mainstream, leftists who have absolutely no respect for, much less use for, the Constitution. If it weren’t so damaging to our nation’s well being, it would almost be comical how uniquely unqualified and crazy these nominees are.

Following on the heels of the nomination of admitted leftist and activist Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, someone who was overturned repeatedly, who believes judges make law, who holds sexist views and who has decided cases based on race… and then, David Hamilton, who was nominated for the 7th Circuit – someone who raised money for ACORN, who worked for ACLU, who blocked parental consent laws and who was soft on the worst of our criminals… NOW comes Louis Butler, Jr. for a Federal District Court slot in the Western District of Wisconsin… a nominee with a long track record of liberalism and activism (see Ed Whelan’s piece over at NR here).

Judge Butler was rejected by voters not once, but TWICE, for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. WISCONSIN. Butler, like Sotomayor, believes judges should base their decisions not on the law, but on their personal beliefs and policy preferences, having said, “…the background, personal beliefs and policy decisions of the justices selected will influence how they vote on the difficult cases before them… And that is the main reason I support Senator Obama.”

In his brief tenure on the Supreme Court (he was appointed by a Democrat Governor given his inability to get elected… again, in WISCONSIN), Butler distinguished himself by overturning the will of the people when he voted to strike down medical liability limits – and he earned the nickname “Loophole Louis” for his noted soft-on-crime stances, as documented in this Wall Street Journal editorial.

It is indeed a new day in America, and “change” is in the air. That change will be most notable in an Obama-planted activist judiciary ripping away what little grip the American people still have on this little democratic experiment. Nice work.