Reject Elena Kagan as US Supreme Court Justice!

As was the case in the confirmation process for Justice Sonya Sotomayor, I watch the confirmation process for Elena Kagan with disgust, horror, and deep concern about the future of liberty and human rights in the United States. Kagan came to the Senate Judiciary Committee with one of the thinnest records of any Supreme Court nominee in history. What little has been learned about her views so far has been highly disturbing. Nothing in her testimony has demonstrated she has either the respect for our nation’s founding documents or the independence from the current administration to correctly apply the law or dispense justice without regard to the parties before her.

In an ugly contrast to the necessary openness of a worthy confirmation process, the Obama Administration has carefully limited public access to Elena Kagan, her family, former teaching associates and anyone else who might be able to shine appropriate and essential light on just who she is. (Obama is a master at this, having carefully hidden all pertinent events of his own past.) It is Obama's goal to reduce Kagan's confirmation process to an inconsequential formality, after which she can govern from the bench according to their shared philosophy.

Nevertheless, sufficient evidence has surfaced to alarm any who might be concerned with the fate of the Constitution in her hands. Like Obama, she thoroughly disdains the Constitution and the great nation it once fostered. More dangerous still, she believes that upon donning the judicial robe, one may thereafter issue edicts from which no recourse exists. On this basis alone, she has proven herself to be wholly unfit and is extremely dangerous to take a place as a Supreme Court Justice.

Some, on the Republican side, are merely deriding her for a lack of sufficient judicial credentials. Others have questioned the depth of her thinking. What those politicians seem to fail to understand is that she was carefully selected because little is known about her -- outside Obama's circle of co-conspirators. But while concerns about her lack of "paper trail" may be valid, they by no means pose any threat to the nation comparable to that of an extremist activist judge, no matter how well credentialed she may be. It matters little how high of a pedigree can be claimed by a jurist who willingly invokes that background as an avenue to undermine the integrity of the Constitution.

Nothing valuable be expected to come from Republican grilling of Kagan, even eliciting "promises" of restraint (Sotomayor's promises have already been violated), if the end result is her confirmation.

It is disturbing that she has displayed considerable skill at dodging and evading direct answers to basic questions regarding her judicial philosophy. Such duplicity does not exemplify laudable jurisprudence and is in fact a reflection of dubious leanings and a willingness to publicly falsify them. Surely, she would never tolerate such behavior in her courtroom were she a judge. And, the entire Senate Judiciary Committee lets her get away with it!

One of the more interesting and disturbing aspects of this week's McDonald decision was that the Supreme Court's newest Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, voted against the concept of a fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms after repeatedly stating during last year's confirmation hearings that the Supreme Court's historic Heller decision was "settled law." She also stated, "I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller."

Despite Sotomayor's assurances to the Senate that she understood and supported the Court's majority decision in Heller, she showed her true colors when she joined this week's dissenting opinion in McDonald which stated "I can find nothing in the Second Amendment's text, history, or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as 'fundamental' insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes." So much for the concept of candid and forthright testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Now, Kagan is following the same tactic! Kagan is responding to the Senat Judiciary Committee's softball questions in a manner that might make one believe that she would honor Supreme Court precedents in Second Amendment cases. But Justice Sotomayor's actions in McDonald stand as stark evidence that we can't trust what they tell the Senate, we can only trust what their actions have shown in the past.

Much of Kagan's career has been as a left-wing political activist. A leftist, by definition, cannot be a constitutional originalist. Even a cursory examination of Kagan's past clearly identifies her as an extreme leftist. Therefore, the question of her fitness for a seat on the nation's highest court was answered in absolute finality before she ever uttered a single word in the Senate hearing.

Evidence has surfaced indicating that, while on President Clinton's staff, she manipulated expert testimony in order to overturn laws banning partial-birth abortion.

The President has the responsibility and opportunity to nominate persons to fill vacancies in the federal courts as well as in his own administration. In doing so, he must abide by his oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." The Senate also has the sworn responsibility to ensure that each nominee has a solid history of decisions that are consistently congruent with the original intent of the US Constitution -- the Supreme Law of the land.

While Kagan was employed as Dean of the Harvard Law School, she did not require students to study the US Constitution! While failure for requiring future lawyers to study the Consitution is hardly unusual in modern law schools, Kagan instead required that they study foreign and international law! The implications of such a mindset for a Supreme Court nominee are frightening.

It is obvious to me that Mr. Obama has carefully selected Elena Kagan because her judgement is largely undocumented -- although there are several hints from her past indicate that she may be very dangerous to the Constitution and hostile to traditional American ideals. You will remember that there was a huge uproar (most notably from the then-president's own party) over Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers because, like Kagan, there was no "paper trail" to indicate whether she would use the Constitution as her guide in making decisions. Ironically, what made Miers deficient apparently makes Kagan eminently qualified! Surely, someone in DC beleives the people and the nation deserve better!

Judicial confirmations are not about party loyalty. They are about each senator's sworn duty to support and defend the Constitution! No senator from either party can vote for Kagan's confirmation while credibly claiming to uphold the U.S. Constitution. In order to live up to your oath of office, you must soundly reject Kagan's confirmation. Instead, demand that the president nominate only persons who know, understand, honor, support and defend the Constitution.

The President and each Senator have a sworn duty to ensure that every judicial nominee understands and strictly follows the original intent of every aspect of the US Constitution as amended. That includes fully protecting all rights of the States and of the people by strictly limiting the power and size of the federal government to the limits established by the Constitution. There is absolutely no indication that Elena Kagan meets that standard. She therefor must be rejected.

While conservatives see the Constitution as a check on the government in order to defend the rights of the people, liberals -- like Kagan and Obama -- see the Constitution as something that gets in their way, if not a tool to be manipulated to control the people.

I am a single-issue voter: When I cast my votes, my primary concern is that candidates understand and have a solid history of living up to their sworn obligation to support and defend the US Constitution. I expect the President and each Senator to do likewise in all their decisions -- especially in the case of judicial nominees.