From the Desk of:
David Martin, Executive Vice President, Media Research Center
MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER
6/28/2010
Do you feel like you know enough about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to decide if she is fit to serve as a lifetime appointee on the highest court in the land?
Media Blackout of Supreme Court “Battle”.
Most people don’t, because the left-wing media have done a good job hiding what little we do know about her.
The Elena Kagan hearings began today, and few Americans are aware of her radical views on the Second Amendment, abortion, crime control, marriage rights, international law and many other critical issues.
Papers released by the William J. Clinton Library reveal Kagan’s belief that partial birth abortion needs to remain legal as the only certain way to protect the “health of women.” This is wildly out of the mainstream, and proves her commitment to a radical pro-abortion position.
Also during her time in the Clinton Administration, Kagan wrote an executive order to overturn nearly 30 years of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) precedent allowing the importation of certain hunting rifles to reclassify them as “assault weapons.” One of her own coworkers in the Clinton White House described this effort by saying “We are taking the law and bending it as far as we can to capture a whole new class of guns.”
All of these questions and more may be raised and should be raised – because they certainly weren’t raised by the so-called “news” media that have been noticeably silent about President Obama’s pick to replace Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
Since predicting the Senate confirmation process of Kagan would be a “meat grinder” and a “battle,” the networks have been eerily quiet –the complete opposite of their reporting of the run-up to the confirmation hearings for Bush appointees John Roberts and Samuel Alito hearings.
Kagan Argued Before Supreme Court: its Fine if The Law Bans Books Because Government Won’t Really Enforce It
She’s young, at 50, which means she could be on the court for a quarter century. And she’s never been a judge, which gives her a quality that Obama is known to have been seeking: someone to bring a different sensibility to a court that’s currently dominated by judges.
Many of the current justices hail from New York, or have ties to the city. All but one are from east of the Mississippi River. Picking Kagan does not send a message that Obama wants the court to represent the country better geographically.
That particular lack of experience also means she does not have a long record of controversial rulings that could provide fodder for the presidents political opponents.