Liberals Balk at Obama's SCOTUS Front-Runner

[usregimechange]

President Obama has not yet named his nominee to filled John Paul Stevens' seat on the Supreme Court, but the liberal backlash against one of his top candidates is starting to build. Solicitor General Elena Kagan is quickly attracting controversy among liberal pundits for her conservative stances on issues relating to executive privilege and national security. Politico's Ben Smith called Kagan "everybody's frontrunner at the moment," SCOTUSblog's Tom Goldstein anointed her the "prohibitive front-runner," and the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin predicted she would be Obama's choice. Here's the liberal outcry.

* 'The Case Against Elena Kagan' Salon's Glenn Greenwald leads the charge, saying Kagan would "move further to the Right." He predicts she "could easily end up as the Democrats' version of the Bush-41-appointed David Souter, i.e., someone about whom little is known and ends up for decades embracing a judicial philosophy that is the exact opposite of the one the President's party supports." He is worried about why Kagan was "remaining utterly silent" through years of intense Bush-era legal battles over executive power and national security. He finds "serious red flags" in her record that should deeply concern liberals, he says.

* Not What We Need The American Prospect's Scott Lemieux sighs that Kagan, "while an attractive candidate in some respects, has a record on civil liberties and executive power that strongly suggests she would not be a liberal in this mold either. This would be bad for the development of progressive constitutional values." Instead, "Obama should nominate a sophisticated and tough-minded progressive along the lines of Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan, Legal Adviser of the Department of State Harold Koh, or Judge Diane Wood of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals."

...

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Liberals-Balk-at-Obamas-SCOTUS-Front-Runner-3209

[usregimechange]

1. See my rather positive research post about her here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8123568

[rpannier]

2. Jeffrey Toobin

Isn't he the guy who appears on CNN and whines about the OJ Simpson verdict

[usregimechange]

3. He is a CNN legal analyst

[provis99]

4. the Solicitor-General is being considered? What a joke.

That's about on the level of George Bush wanting to appoint the White House Counsel to the Supreme Court. Hey Obama, how about appointing a law professor to the court; maybe you came across some good ones in your time teaching law at Chicago????