This past weekend the Washington Post published a hit piece on the grand opening of a museum in Georgia dedicated to the birthplace of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The paper was desperate to make some grand conspiracy, some lawbreaking evil out of the project. But whatever is going on with the museum, this story was just one more shot orchestrated by the left aimed at forcing Justice Thomas to recuse himself from the upcoming hearings on whether or not Obamacare is Constitutional. Of course, this is all a smoke screen to hide the fact that it is really left-wing darling Justice Elana Kagan that should recuse herself from the case.

The Post story was a mishmash of innuendo, guesswork, and partisan claims, all amounting to much of nothing for proof of wrong doing. The Post even took the opportunity to use the word “whitewashed” when describing the color of the building housing the museum commemorating Justice Thomas’ birthplace. None too subtle, that.

There was plenty of other coverage of the opening of the museum that was positive, of course. Still it is apparent that the left hates Justice Thomas so much that they can’t even stand it that a small commemoration of his place of birth be created.

But real facts weren’t on the agenda for this article on Thomas. This article was meant as yet another slap at Thomas in order to mount pressure against him for the upcoming case against Obamacare. The left has been floating the demand that Justice Thomas recuse himself because his wife has worked as a “conservative activist and lobbyist, where she specifically agitated for the repeal of ‘Obamacare.’”

Contrary to the left’s new attack on Thomas, in America we do not hold the work of a spouse against someone. If we did that, half the members of Congress would have to be removed for the boards, or agencies, or organizations that their spouses work for. The pertinent fact is, though, that Justice Thomas himself was not the one working for any group that advocated for or against Obamacare.

This, however, is not true of another member of the Supreme Court. Justice Elana Kagan was actually involved in advising how to defend against challenges to Obamacare. If that isn’t directly relevant, what is?

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How much do you really know about her?

The word of the week is “transparency.”  No, this isn’t the vapid hopey-changey wordage that the Obama campaign and administration has been using for the past two years, rather the transparency I’m speaking of here involves the literal process of revealing truths, exposing potentially negative material and providing a fair playground on which lovers of rational thought can explore and determine reality for themselves.  At the end of the day, transparency is all about providing access to information and ideas, while shifting power to the people to subsequently formulate conclusions.  This week, two transparency medals of honor should be given out – one to the Sunlight Foundation and the other to Andrew Breitbart (naturally).

First and foremost, in a bid to once again outdo itself in the categories of “way too cool” and “ultra useful,” The Sunlight Foundation has created a timely democracy tool that offers the American public a first-hand look into the opinions and past work of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.  The new project, called “Elena’s Inbox” takes Kagan’s public e-mails from her Clinton administration years and organizes them in an easy-to-view format, thus providing unprecedented access and perspective.  In an e-blast from Sunlight yesterday afternoon, Jake Brewer wrote,

All of the emails sent and received by Supreme Court Justice nominee Elena Kagan during her time in the Clinton White House were recently put online… [We] built a site to take Elena Kagan’s emails and make them readable…While we’re in the middle of Kagan’s hearing for the Supreme Court, it’s fascinating to get a sense of her through her public emails.

In the past, I’ve voiced concern over Kagan’s take on the first amendment, so I personally plan to sift through her e-mails to gain a better sense of her worldview and how she’ll function on the Supreme Court. This website couldn’t have come at a better time, as the American public (and Congress) learns about the woman who might very well partially shape American law for decades to come. (more…)

We’ve blown it once again, another great opportunity to win the biggest sporting event on the planet and America comes away empty handed in the World Cup.

I thought this was our year. The world was supposed to love us. We were told that during the 2008 Presidential election that all we had to do was put Barack Hussein Obama in office, and the world would love us. Instead, what do we get? We get horrible calls where goals are being taken away from us by World Cup officials who are either blind, or they haven’t heard that Obama is now our President.

Now, before you think that sports and politics do not mix, just Google “USA Basketball vs. USSR 1972.” Sports and politics cannot be separated. Oh, there was another political incident that year involving Israeli athletes, but since Obama was only 11 years old at the time it’s not relevant to this White House.

I watched much of the media analysis of World Cup Soccer and much of it centered around who played where and why, and how USA coach Bob Bradley said “we needed stronger legs in the midfield.” You had Ricardo Clark and the Yellow Card and bla bla bla bla bla. No, forget all that, there is something much bigger here that the media is missing.  This is the biggest sporting event in this solar system, so no analysis can be ignored.

We were promised. (more…)

Every time you think that the left’s bizarre obsession with Sarah Palin’s personal life couldn’t get any weirder, they manage to step it up a notch. From fretting about the price of her wardrobe during the campaign through stalker Joe McGinniss decision to move in next door, the liberal press’ determination to intrude on Palin’s privacy makes the paparazzi seem tame by comparison.

But now that liberal blogger Wonkette has broken the “boobgate” story, we can officially abandon the use of the word “bizarre” to describe Palin Derangement Syndrome and move on to “ludicrous, ridiculous, embarrassing, unprofessional and outright insane.”

Yet, in the spirit of friendly competition, I couldn’t help but wonder: how difficult would it be to find pictures of Democrats of the fairer sex that also suggest breast-enhancement? It has been my humble experience that the apparent dimensions of most any gal’s – (ahem) “attributes” – can vary significantly depending on choices in clothing and undergarments. This is, I believe, the reason that Victoria’s Secret exists. But, what do I know? I’m a guy and, being a gal, Wonkette surely has more intimate (apparel) knowledge to draw upon here. Accordingly, I hope some gals will weigh in, but if we apply the left’s Palin test, the following famous libs appear to have had a little work done too.

Note to MMFA hacks and non-entities: what follows is called “satire,” which is a form of “humor,” which in turn is designed to elicit a kind of “human emotion” that is commonly known as “laughter.” (more…)

Comparisons are always a great way to show how differently the Old Media treats conservative and leftist politicians in America today and Obama’s nomination of the Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court gives us another opportunity to see the Old Media’s penchant to excoriate a Republican’s actions while soft peddling and excusing away similar actions by a left-winger.

In this case, it is instructive to see how the Old Media treated the claim that Sarah Palin banned books from the Wasilla library when she was mayor and today how it is treating the recently highlighted Supreme Court arguments made by Elena Kagan that the government could ban books under the McCain-Feingold Act.

After McCain picked Governor Sarah Palin for his number two slot on the ticket during the 2008 campaign the Old Media lit upon a story that said Sarah Palin tried to ban books from the Wasilla library when she was mayor there in 1996. A list of the supposedly banned books was even bandied about by the left-wing blogs, causing a ruckus in the media, but it turned out the list had books on it published years after Palin had left the Mayor’s office. The list was a fabrication and was lifted from a website that detailed the books that had been banned at one time or another, in one place or another, over the last 100 years. (more…)

In the brief period following President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the upcoming opening on the Supreme Court we have learned relatively little about her.  Apparently there is not much to know.  And anyway, everything you need to know about the candidate for the highest court in the land has already been gathered by ONN, (that’s the Obama News Network) and posted on the Internet so nobody needs to ask any more questions.

Wait, WHAAAAAT?  That’s it?  We get 3:22 of Ms. Kagan telling us what she wants to tell us?  And who is the interviewer?  Even the matrimonially-distracted Larry King could do a better job with this interview. Where are the “journalists” from every single network standing up and screaming about this obvious manipulation of their primary obligation to the public?  Where are the truth seekers? Aside from a mild form of protest lodged online by CBS, we hear almost nothing about the troubling control of the message by the White House.

Many in the MSM and Kool-Aid drinking supporters of the administration have simply responded with the statement,  “Elections Have Consequences.” That’s the axiom often used to shut down any discussion from someone who opposes things like a 2,000+ page unpopular law, the fundamental transformation of America or even a Supreme Court nominee.  However, that axiom did not provide the same free pass back in 2005, when President Bush had an opportunity to put his stamp on the highest court in the land and nominated Harriet Miers, to replace the retiring Sandra Day O’Connor.  We all know how that ended.  After a couple of weeks filled with pushback from both sides, Ms. Miers withdrew her name from consideration. (more…)

This piece originally ran on the Opinion page of the May 17, 2010, edition of the Washington Times.

Elena Kagan’s problem is not that she has too much empathy but that she has too little. President Obama famously made “that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles” his key qualification for a seat on the Supreme Court. What little we know of Ms. Kagan’s record demonstrates that she does not meet even that nebulous standard.

Empathy would require that Ms. Kagan place herself in the position of the “despised and downtrodden,” as her mentor Justice Thurgood Marshall put it. And who could possibly be more despised than a United States Army officer assigned to recruiting duties at Harvard Law School?

Did Dean Kagan put herself in his place before enforcing her law school’s repugnant ban on military recruiters? Did she imagine the feelings inside that young captain, perhaps limping from the fragments still in his leg from an improvised explosive device that hit his convoy outside Ramadi, as he walked through Harvard’s gates? Did she consider the stares he drew at the training academy from the liberal elite, the palpable contempt directed at him as one whose mere presence Harvard had officially designated as morally unworthy? (more…)

In the aftermath of President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, ABC and Politico, among others, have reported on Kagan’s history of political contributions. Not surprisingly, she has donated exclusively to Democrats, with Obama receiving more than half ($6300) of the $12,300 in total she contributed to national level campaigns in the preceding 10 years. (Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry were also recipients.)

The Boston Herald ran a story which also highlighted some of her contributions to state-level candidates, including Deval Patrick’s gubernatorial campaign and Tim Murray for lieutenant governor. However, every media outlet has either failed to report, or missed, a campaign contribution of Kagan’s which seems pretty notable given how little is known about her political beliefs and preferences.

In 2006, Kagan made a maximum ($500) campaign contribution to John Bonifaz who was running in the Democratic primary campaign for Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  I suspect like me most of you have probably never heard of John Bonifaz, but it turns out he is about as far left as you can get before joining the Bernie Sanders fan club. His opponent in the 2006 race actually accused him of being a closet Green Party supporter, which of course is just a polite way of calling someone a socialist. But putting aside labels, here are a few facts about Bonifaz which demonstrate his extreme left credentials:

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Did you ever wish you were one of those big-time journalists in Manhattan, sitting in a nice office, opining on the state of the world each week and getting well paid for it? Would you like to say the same thing over and over again at tiresome length, in prose that reads like it was translated from the original Hungarian? Would you like to occupy and depreciate some of the most valuable journalistic real estate in the country?

Well, you can. All you have to do is follow a few simple rules.

Like most of his fellow, very bad, Op-Ed writers on the New York Times, Frank Rich — non-bestselling author and showbiz wannabee — has a few little bugbears and bogeymen he likes to write about each week in the course of wasting oceans of ink and newsprint in his mind-numbing essays about… well, pretty much nothing, except the usual suspects: show tunes, gay rights, and Those Darned Republicans.

So why don’t you try it?  Just follow the erstwhile Butcher of Broadway’s lead. First, start with some cheap pop-cultural reference: (more…)

The late William F. Buckley, Jr., once famously observed that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the entire faculty of Harvard. Buckley was prescient and correct about many things, but in this case his wish turned out to be spectacularly wrong: with President Obama’s choice of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court, Buckley’s nightmare has come true, and the Harvard faculty now really is running the country.

Starting with Obama himself, whose transition team alone included 20 Crimson classmates, there are more than 70 graduates of Harvard Law in the administration. Sure, Harvard has a lousy football team, and its record of reflexive anti-Americanism is second to none, but no mafia racket ever organized more effectively, or with such a baleful influence on the hapless country south and west of the Charles River.  Were it a conventional criminal organization,it would be under investigation by both Congress and the media for its “disproportionate” and deleterious effect on American society.

Even liberals are starting to notice. As my good friend Walter Shapiro wrote recently on Politics Daily:

If Elena Kagan (Harvard Law ‘86) is confirmed for the Court, all nine justices would have received their legal training at Harvard or Yale.

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From Mediaite:

Andrew Breitbart was back on Dylan Ratigan’s MSNBC show this afternoon to talk about Elena Kagan.

Last appearance saw the debut of “jovial and measured Andrew,” while today it was all about the “irony mustache.”

Here’ the explanation:

I told you when I was wearing a beard at the White House Correspondents Dinner that I would debut an irony mustache. Some people were meant to have mustaches. The Tom Selleck, and people in pornography. But I’m not. I said I’d wear it once. I’m going to shave it when the show’s over. Hopefully it doesn’t take away from the seriousness of the discussion at hand.

Ok then.

The discussion at hand was Elena Kagan – and Breitbart’s belief that we shouldn’t be discussing her personal life and it is liberals who are driving the discussion in the first place.

Read the full article here.

The Wall Street Journal is taking some PC heat for this cover photo. From Politico:

“It clearly is an allusion to her being gay. It’s just too easy a punch line,” said Cathy Renna, a former spokesperson for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation who is now a consultant. “The question from a journalistic perspective is whether it’s a descriptive representation of who she might be as a judge. Have you ever seen a picture of Clarence Thomas bowling?”

What do you think? Try to keep the baseball metaphors to a minimum, although we know you won’t.

Writing in Reason, Jacob Sullum’s got this one dead right:

Last month New York Times legal writer Adam Liptak said two recent Supreme Court cases “suggest that the Roberts Court is prepared to adopt a robustly libertarian view of the constitutional protection of free speech.” Elena Kagan, President Obama’s nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, was on the losing side in both.

As solicitor general, of course, Kagan has an obligation to defend federal laws against constitutional challenges. But her pro-censorship positions went beyond the call of duty. Together with some of her academic writings, her arguments in these cases provide grounds to worry that she will be even less inclined than Stevens, who has a mixed First Amendment record, to support freedom of speech.

The Obama Administration has already made its view of the First Amendment quite clear; as the president said just the other day, “Information becomes a distraction.” Indeed, the radical left has all but forsaken a tool it once used as a bludgeon against the establishment — free speech — and now seeks to constrain and even eliminate free speech on campuses and, increasingly, in the public arena as well.

More from Sullum: (more…)

Should reporters who believe that most of America is stupid and insane be in the journalism business? Let’s consider the question.

Take left-wing journalist Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic. He’s not bad at his job. His insights are often worthwhile and occasionally wise. Yet Ambinder sometimes writes things so foolish that one might expect to read them at the leftist propaganda site Media Matters for America.

His latest adventure in pseudo-intellectual self-absorption passing for journalistic analysis is, “Have Conservatives Gone Mad?” It brims with elitist condescension.

Ambinder observes that:

Serious thinkers on the right have finally gotten around to a full and open debate on the epistemic closure problem that’s plaguing the conservative movement.

The issue, to put it in terms that even I can understand, because I didn’t study philosophy much in college: has the conservative base gone mad?

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