Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, left (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan should be filibustered.
We have learned a lot more about Elena Kagan and her views on the right to bear arms since the last time she appeared in this column, and what we have learned is not pretty.
As an initial matter, recall that Justice Sotomayor, President Obama's last appointment to the Supreme Court, stated in her confirmation hearings that she accepted the Supreme Court's Heller decision as establishing "that the Second Amendment right is an individual right." In Monday's McDonald v. Chicago ruling, however, she joined the dissent that 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." In other words, she lied.
Elena Kagan, however, has not even gone so far as to pronounce lip service to the right to bear arms. Today, in her hearings, she refused to answer simple questions about the Second Amendment. She claimed to "accept" the McDonald decision, but refused to state that she believed that the right to bear arms was a "fundamental" right.
A nominee who does not believe that the right to bear arms is a fundamental right, like free speech and the free exercise of religion, should not be permitted to sit on the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has declared rights to be "fundamental" that are not even mentioned in the Constitution, like abortion, travel, and procreation. A right expressly written into the Bill of Rights that has been described as the very "palladium of liberty" cannot possibly occupy a lesser status.
Yesterday, when asked by Sen. Grassley whether the Constitutional right to bear arms created a right or merely protected a right that pre-existed the Constitution, Elena Kagan looked puzzled and answered,
Senator Grassely, I've, uh, I've never really considered that question.
Watch the video here. She also stated, "The [McDonald] case is based so much on history, which I've never had the occasion to look at." That's American history, folks. Perhaps this explains why when Elena Kagan was Dean of Harvard Law School, students were required to take classes in International Law, but not Constitutional Law.
Keep in mind, this is just the confirmation hearing. Other things we have learned about Elena Kagan on the right to bear arms issue include what she has and has not written about the subject. As Solicitor General of the United States, she did not ask for time to argue before the Court in the McDonald case and filed no brief whatsoever. There is a memorandum she wrote when working as a judicial clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall. She asked him not to hear a man's appeal of his conviction for having an unlicensed gun. The defendant's:
sole contention is that the District of Columbia's firearms statutes violate his constitutional right to 'keep and bear arms . . . I'm not sympathetic.
This was of course written in 1987, well before the Heller decision in 2008. Undoubtedly she would have been in the minority dissent had she been sitting on the Supreme Court when it held that the District of Columbia's firearms statutes violated the right to keep and bear arms.
Elena Kagan was also a part of the Clinton administration's efforts to ban the importation of certain firearms by reclassifying them as "assault weapons," impose background checks on private sales, and evade the Supreme Court's decision in Printz v. United States, which held unconstitutional certain provisions of the Brady Act.
Elena Kagan is a clear and present danger to the fundamental right to bear arms.
Please check out David Codrea's column for the latest on the NRA with respect to its Directors testifying at the Kagan hearings.
Comments
Thanks Mr. Stone, You worried me with that last article. Ive been waiting egerly for our GCO President to confirm what I've been seeing and hearing the confermation hearings. Maybe she is the best we can expect but we dont have to like it. No one who will not recognize an inharent right to self defense should ever be placed on the Supream Court.
Thanks Ed Stone.
You make a very well argued point, but I must challenge one of your preconceptions. Respect for a right does not necessarily preclude one from being on the Supreme Court.
There have been justices who have ignored fundamental rights throughout American history. Consider the Plessy V. Fergusen case, in which the supreme court explicitly ignored the 14th and 15th amendments. There have been instances throughout history. The SCOTUS interprets the constitution, they say what it reads. And you must remember the constitution MUST change with time.
Let me take for example, something I'm sure you will love. The Constitution explicitly states that the state is to control the post office, in a socialist state policy. However, due to the wonders of the free market, the United States Postal Service has been privately run since 1995. Technology and economics have made it so. Would you rather have another state controlled enterprise?
In short, your argument follows. It's precepts are
Ttarler says that the "constitution MUST change with time". Evidently he (or she, sorry do not know the person's gender) believes in the "living document" point of view .... a point of view that is the very bedrock of the "progressives" attempts to limit individual sovereignty.
You see when we no longer hold to the constitution as a contract between the people and government and instead look at it as some form of "living document" then we can then interpret the constitution to mean whatever we want it to mean. That path lies the subjugation of the minority to the majority.
The constitution is most certainly not a "living document". It means the exact same thing today as it meant when each section of it, to include the amendments, were written.
If you hold to the belief that the constitution MUST change, then I state that the constitution itself spells out how to go about making those changes. Changes are not made through judicial declaration!
It doesn't take a lot of brain cells to figure out where she stands on any issue. Just assume she will be way left on every decision she is involved in.
Let these vile creatures do and say what they will. The fact is I will never surrender my right to bear arms while I'm still breathing.
Same here Michael. Same here. "From my cold dead hands" is not just a bumper sticker to some of us. Those of us like you and I understand that the individual sovereign right to self-protection is the bedrock of all individual liberties. As well as the basis of all freedom.
Ttarle went off the rails early. In doing so he identified himself as unprincipled.His whole premise seems to be that because others who have been unfit to be Justices nor were they qualified morally, ethically, or intellectually to sit on that bench, have been appointed that no standards now apply and therefore it is acceptable to appoint another unfit candidate to that position.
This appears to be the same message coming from the administration, the Democrat party universally and the Republican party in part in congress. This lack of morality and character as exhibited by these persons coupled with their lack of any redeeming principle is exactly why all of them should be ignored, including Ttarle. Take not counsel of dishonest men. If not possible they should be harmed however possible as dissuasion from further reprehensible acts
The Constitution and the Original Bill of Rihgts were not written as living documents and as such their meaning was not subject to change at a later date. Those documents have guided this country for over two hundred years as the longest democracy/republic in the history of mankind. All of this is now being threatened by Obama's appointees to the Supreme Court. We are not a socialist state and never have been. The first step towards dictatorship is the loss of EFFECTIVE self protection. Kagan will help take that right away from the public. We were given the greatest gift possible when this country was born as any immigrant who became a citizen will tell you. But we are allowing our politicians to throw it away. We should make sure that if they vote for Kagan they should be recalled as we wait for a reason to impeach Kagan along with Sotomayor. We know she is unqualified and is withholding a lot that would deny her confirmation. The republicans have sold out for some reason.
One last comment. Sotomayor has been caught in what appears to be a few lies in regards to the second amendment and Obama is not dumb. He has coached Kagan to avoid telling a lie but also to avoid telling the truth thus making it hard to pin her down. But with her on the high court it will hard if not impossible to get back the parts of the second amendment we lost over the years in terms of the right to bear arms, to do so without undue cost or restriction, and to be able to defend ourselves wherever the need might be. If your Senator votes for Kagan you should start a recall because until some politicans in Washington fall they are going to do as they da-- well please and not as you as a majority want them to. A vote for Kagan should be a definite one way trip to the unemployment line where so many Americans are today thanks to these same politicans.
There was NEVER any question as to whether she'd be confirmed. Republicans are impotent, disorganized and have no political capital to pull off a filibuster. She was measured for her Supreme Court Robe on Friday. That pretty much says it all!!!
All four dissenting justices in the McDonald hearing should be impeached for "bad behavior" based on the verbiage in their dissenting opionion which proves beyond any reasonable doubt that they have violated both their constitutional duty as prescribed therein but also their Oath of Office to uphold it as the Supreme Law of the Land.
She's a full blown Marxist. If ever anyone should be filibustered it should be her. She has that track record and it's well recorded and preserved.
Will the republicans obstruct, filibuster? Will ANY democrat stand up for freedom and against a Marxist in any capacity of employment? NOPE! Because the republicans don't want to fight for a variety of reasons, testosterone is a factor as well as convictions and the democrats? Well their all their little red berets and those that aren't have them it their coat pockets where they can always reach them for sexual satisfaction. It's really the only interest that a Marxist has.
Just like I posted on other examiner articles about her...somebody gets it.
The Constitution hasn't changed and Kagan does not have the right to twist it's intended meaning for fit her situational ethics. Filibuster Kagan; show that Americans have a voice that has to be dealt with in the Senate -- don't roll over and play dead and reap the world wind for the rest of Kagan's tenure.
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