[Newsbot]

Filibuster Cartoons
Title: The scandalizing Justice Kagan (click to view)
Date: July 4, 2010
Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination hearings wrapped up last week, concluding in a sadly predictable fashion.

Despite the fact that she was appointed by a liberal president to replace a retiring liberal justice on the Court, the Republican Party has feigned great shock at the fact that Kagan herself is a liberal too. The entire party caucus will likely vote against her appointment on these grounds alone, much as the entire Democratic caucus voted against President Bush's equally inconsequential replace-one-conservative-judge-with-another appointments he made as president.

All this knee-jerk partisan theater comes off as especially phony when you consider how ahistoric it is. For example, when President Clinton appointed the very liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993 she was approved 96 to 3 in the Senate, with almost every single Republican voting in favor. Likewise, the arch-conservative justice Antonin Scalia was approved unanimously by Democrats when he was picked by President Reagan in 1986. In those days, the Senate had a somewhat more mature understanding of its role in the appointment process, and would not raise much of a fuss if the president's choice did not change the ideological balance of the Supreme Court in any major way. Today, however, absolutely every issue must be treated as some all-or-nothing battle for partisan supremacy, so we get crazy fights over... maintaining the status quo.

[Kjorteo]

Anyone remember the big televised seven-hour health care summit that was on CSPAN (and later YouTube and the like)? Back then, President Obama made the point that a large portion of the Republican strategy appears to be to paint Obama as the devil and make absolutely no concessions whatsoever--if the President so much as says the sky is blue or 2 + 2 = 4, the Republicans will be there to attack his environmental agenda and intellectual elitism. The natural consequence to this is that it make any manner of bipartisan compromise on even the most trivial of issues impossible, because of how badly they poisoned their own well in that regard. Fast forward to today, where the tea party has knocked off an ever-growing number of incumbent Republicans in their own primaries for reelection for... um... not being tea party enough, I guess (I'll be honest, my list of people I would have expected to get picked off in the primary for being too centrist or whatever did not include Bob Bennett!) and it seems like that scenario is more true than ever.

Naturally, painting Kagan as an evil socialist because the evil socialist Obama nominated her is just another part of that.

[Mrwuggles42]

The best part of this whole debate over Kagan was the fact that she has practically no legal history. It isn't like Sotomayor who had several decades of court rulings to be argued over. The only attacks anyone could make were comments she had made about the actual supreme court nomination. (Mhmmm Shallow and pedantic.) So she could for all intents and purposes be a right leaning judge; who latter comes up to bite the Democratic party in the butt years from now. Considering President Obama could have gotten nearly any judge he would have picked through the selection process it is rather civil of the Democratic party to offer up Kagan. Not that the Republican party is paying any attention to that.

[BartSimpson]

The Democrats set the precedent for flaming Supreme Court nominees when they made Bork from a noun into a verb.

[Teikiatsu]

BartSimpson wrote:

The Democrats set the precedent for flaming Supreme Court nominees when they made Bork from a noun into a verb.

/seconded

Kagan and Sotomayor are pretty weak picks for Obama. I'm sure they will toe the liberal line with little or no logic to back their decisions (after all Sotomayor felt that our Second Amendment is just a suggestion) but they aren't going to be convincing the 4 solid conservatives to agree with them in any kind of meaningful consensus they way Obama says they will.

Bearing that in mind they need to confirm Kagan ASAP before Obama can change his mind and put in a real thinker. He'll get another chance for a heavyweight with Ginsburg I have no doubt.

What I'd like to see is some real honesty and integrity at the hearings. Ask a serious question and get a serious answer. No 'Twilight' questions or 'What were you doing on Christmas?' If she wrote that memo, she should say so. Don't just say 'that is my handwriting, yes.' If she thinks the Congress has power over what Americans must eat daily, she should say so, and back her statement up with logic. No foot shuffling and no back-pedaling. This is a lifetime post, it needs to be treated appropriately.

If the President thinks you are a serious legal philosopher and respects your mental accuity, why hide it? If you have your own interpretations you think are correct, why hide them? State them out loud, broaden the debate. That's the real sham to this theatre, people unwilling to state their mind on things.

[ASLplease]

SNL will have fun with it.

[Calbeck]

Fact is, JJ hit it on the head when he referenced partisanship. It's always been there, but in recent decades it's been knock-down/drag-out from both sides.

[BartSimpson]

Calbeck wrote:

Fact is, JJ hit it on the head when he referenced partisanship. It's always been there, but in recent decades it's been knock-down/drag-out from both sides.

You ain't seen nothing yet. This November's election promises to see some of the most foaming-at-the-mouth partisanship we've seen in ages. The Obama lawsuit against Arizona for their immigration law has pushed a solid number of swing votes over to the Republican side and the Democrats can be counted on to run out and solidify those votes by calling everyone a racist who supports the notion of securing our borders.

[Calbeck]

Sad thing is, I HAVE seen that before.

I first got "politically active" in the early '90s. There was already massive outcry against government overspending and the national debt (then at about $4T). Ross Perot got 20% of the national vote by promising nothing more or less than overhauling government and reining that spending in.

Subsequently, the Republicans adopted most of Perot's reformist platform for their "Contract With America". Its promises of fiscal austerity reeled in the votes and won the House for the Repubs.

The Democrats immediately went after it, calling it the "Contract ON America", declaring routinely that it would destroy Social Security and that children would be deprived of school lunches. House Speaker Newt Gingrich was vilified as a dastardly, heartless mockery of humanity, typified by a Newsweek cover which depicted him as "The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas".

The Democrats were simply rabid. Fear and loathing were their battle standards.

And the Repubs responded in kind. As a result, the Clinton Administration years were the start of a heavy-duty polarization whereby one party would find a reason to oppose almost anything the other stood for.

Obama ran, in part, on a "non-partisanship" platform, which the Democratic Party itself thoroughly ignored once he was elected. They'd risen to power on a wave of hate, whipped to a fine froth during the Bush era, and on various occasions Pelosi and even Obama himself openly stated that they expected the Repubs to follow the Dem lead rather than object in any strenuous manner.

And from all this has risen the Tea Party movement, which in many ways is strikingly similar to the Perot movement of the '90s. The same calls emanate for government austerity.

The Democrat/liberal response? To claim they're all a bunch of racists, and to hate them otherwise for little more reason than they've had Sarah Palin (considered something on the order of "The Murderess of Alaska" by many voices on the left) as a speaker at various of their meetings.

It can always get worse, of course.

People could start shooting each other in the streets.

[Psudo]

People shooting each other in the streets might actually be better, since there'd be a backlash of common, unaffiliated folk against the violence by way of opposing the mindless partisanship of the two major affiliations. Then again, that's arguably what the Tea Parties already are (minus the violence element).

[BartSimpson]

Calbeck wrote:

Sad thing is, I HAVE seen that before.

I first got "politically active" in the early '90s. There was already massive outcry against government overspending and the national debt (then at about $4T). Ross Perot got 20% of the national vote by promising nothing more or less than overhauling government and reining that spending in.

Subsequently, the Republicans adopted most of Perot's reformist platform for their "Contract With America". Its promises of fiscal austerity reeled in the votes and won the House for the Repubs.

The Democrats immediately went after it, calling it the "Contract ON America", declaring routinely that it would destroy Social Security and that children would be deprived of school lunches. House Speaker Newt Gingrich was vilified as a dastardly, heartless mockery of humanity, typified by a Newsweek cover which depicted him as "The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas".

The Democrats were simply rabid. Fear and loathing were their battle standards.

And the Repubs responded in kind. As a result, the Clinton Administration years were the start of a heavy-duty polarization whereby one party would find a reason to oppose almost anything the other stood for.

Obama ran, in part, on a "non-partisanship" platform, which the Democratic Party itself thoroughly ignored once he was elected. They'd risen to power on a wave of hate, whipped to a fine froth during the Bush era, and on various occasions Pelosi and even Obama himself openly stated that they expected the Repubs to follow the Dem lead rather than object in any strenuous manner.

And from all this has risen the Tea Party movement, which in many ways is strikingly similar to the Perot movement of the '90s. The same calls emanate for government austerity.

The Democrat/liberal response? To claim they're all a bunch of racists, and to hate them otherwise for little more reason than they've had Sarah Palin (considered something on the order of "The Murderess of Alaska" by many voices on the left) as a speaker at various of their meetings.

It can always get worse, of course.

People could start shooting each other in the streets.

+1 for outstanding authorship.

[BartSimpson]

CBS right now has 93% of Americans opposed to Kagan's confirmation.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162- ... ontentMain

[commanderkai]

Kjorteo wrote:

Anyone remember the big televised seven-hour health care summit that was on CSPAN (and later YouTube and the like)? Back then, President Obama made the point that a large portion of the Republican strategy appears to be to paint Obama as the devil and make absolutely no concessions whatsoever

Well, I saw it as completely the opposite, actually. Considering a large number of the Democratic comebacks to Republican criticism to the plan revolves around sob stories of some random constituent, or how Republican criticism was limited to "limits" that Democrats had none, so on so forth.

We see what we want to further our own world view.


Anyway, Republicans being against a liberal Justice is just a part of politics. If the Republicans didn't put up any challenge, then what's the point of even having the hearings at all? Some partisanship will occur in politics, especially in cases where it's basically required.

[GreenTiger]

BartSimpson wrote:

Calbeck wrote:

Fact is, JJ hit it on the head when he referenced partisanship. It's always been there, but in recent decades it's been knock-down/drag-out from both sides.

You ain't seen nothing yet. This November's election promises to see some of the most foaming-at-the-mouth partisanship we've seen in ages. The Obama lawsuit against Arizona for their immigration law has pushed a solid number of swing votes over to the Republican side and the Democrats can be counted on to run out and solidify those votes by calling everyone a racist who supports the notion of securing our borders.

Yes, This election will look at American version of the Taiwan's legislature. That might be Obama's legacy to reduce American Politics to a bitter and nasty process.

[Psudo]

BartSimpson wrote:

CBS right now has 93% of Americans opposed to Kagan's confirmation.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162- ... ontentMain

I wish that were true nationwide, but based on the results of the other questions I'm thinking there was some organized right-wing ballot stuffing. John Roberts as the most popular Supreme Court Justice? 81% think the court is "too liberal?" 93% think Kagan wasn't "forthcoming enough" in the Senate hearing? That all sounds more right-wing than the population at large.

Also, it carries a disclaimer that it is not a scientific poll. (Even if it were, what the people want is often far removed from what is right; the classic criticisms of polls all apply.)