Kim Simac: Help yourself to an abortion

It's your responsibility, and don't let anybody stop you:

I support the rights that are guaranteed by the US Constitution, and believe it is our responsibility as good citizens to exercise those rights, and to refrain from infringing on the rights of others. — Neanderconservative recall candidate Kim Simac

You have to watch this.* Did you know that once Elena Kagan is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, you won't be allowed to even talk about your religious freedoms and beliefs. Simac wrote a book for ages 7 and under on "owning and operating firearms." The book, With My Rifle by My Side, sells for $18.95 and appears to contain about 7 or under pages. She sat down for an interview with Dorothy Spaulding.

Dorothy Spaulding: [This book for 3-year-olds is] just such an easy read: "And the days all get shorter, the leaves turn brown." And I bet they're going to go deer hunting. Eh heh. "We watched the geese fly above and travel to warmer ground. We love to go out with our dad in the truck. He loads up corn and apples and does it in the bucks." [puzzled] "And does it in the bucks ... "

Kim Simac: The does and the bucks.

Dorothy Spaulding: Oh!

More Kim Simac traditional family values.

* Or not. It's drearily familiar far-right fruitcakery.

Wing-nut jurisprude goes off message

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was in MKE tonight ...

Long after Obama is out of office we'll have to live with the intellectual lightweights he (Kohl and Feingold) appointed to the Supreme Court. Introducing Kagen ...

Can't even spell her name.

You know what's funny is the most articulate recommendation and support for Justice Kagan's nomination came from Miguel Estrada, who not too long ago was the wing-nut juridical hero par excellence.

And there is Justice Kagan chatting with Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge and legendary conservative constructionist Frank Easterbrook. Think he thinks Kagan is an "intellectual lightweight"?

Doubt it.

By the way, Wisconsin State Senator Leah Vukmir pronounced former Associate Justice David Souter "dim" and then Obama's other appointee to the Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, "even dimmer."

Perhaps a debate could be arranged. So, evidently these views are shared not just among anonymous online conservative Republicans but voiced and encouraged by their elected political leaders.

Good to know. Especially on July 12.

Good thing Obama didn't appoint a judge

[Elena Kagan's] former job as Obama's solicitor general already has forced her to take herself out of 24 of the 51 cases the United States Supreme Court has so far agreed to hear.

That's approaching an obstruction of justice.

Ron Johnson's judicial heliology

[Ron Johnson] said he preferred justices who would strictly follow the Constitution in their rulings.

How would he know whether they were or not? Ron Johnson has admitted himself that he's barely even read the damn thing:

I will say, y'know, prior to doing this,* I've sat down and read the Constitution probably, thoroughly, three ... probably about five or six times. It is not an easy document to read. It is not, unless you study it in detail, it's hard to study. — Ron Johnson

Better:

[Ron Johnson] said he would have voted against both of President Obama's Supreme Court appointees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, as well as both appointees of President Clinton — Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I would like to hear why, in detail. Did the J-S think of asking? Is it not significant that the imaginary Senator Ron Johnson would have attempted to block four of the last six Supreme Court appointees?

No other Senator has done that, but only because Jesse Helms didn't live long enough. So here we have this Ron Johnson receiving the torch from Jesse Helms; by God, it's the North Carolina of the North.

Did the J-S ask Johnson about Harriet Miers? Does Johnson think she's a "strict constructionist"? What about Justice Scalia, are his constructions to the appropriate degree strict (a highly effective b.s.-detector question)? If they asked, they didn't print the answers.

Sunspots are behind climate change, Ron Johnson says

How can people actually read this stuff and not laugh out loud. Or else how can they write it with a straight face.

Senate candidate Ron Johnson maturing quickly

— Wisconsin State Journal, 08/01/10

* Answering Dick Morris's plea for a "rich guy from Wisconsin."

Hooligans seek Elena Kagan's disbarment

Former general counsel to Richard B. "Dick" Cheney Shannen Coffin claimed that when Elena Kagan was working in the Clinton administration's domestic policy shop, she persuaded the American College of Ob/Gyns to alter the language it used in a statement on the merits of the partial-birth abortion procedure to support the political fight against the ban.

I would imagine the local bar association would instead give Kagan an award for such skillful and persuasive advocacy. If anybody deserves a measure of sanctioning here — other than these rabble-rousing wing-nuts, of course — it's the College of Ob/Gyns for recalibrating its evidentiary findings at the behest of a smart-talking attorney.

In any event, disbarment wouldn't do these characters a lick of good. You don't need to be a lawyer to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.*

* Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma doesn't seem to grasp this either. A few moments ago on the Senate floor, he was jabbering that Elena Kagan's lack of practical and judicial experience (however he assesses that) was itself enough to disqualify her from the bench.

But in fact, even the crazed James Inhofe is eminently qualified.

Ron Johnson: Champion of Freedom!

You and whose Dick Armey?

Champion of Freedom? Who are they trying to kid? Ron Johnson wants to license your guns and then inspect them every other year.

"In sum, it is clear that the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty."

— The United States Supreme Court, June 28, 2010

That was after Ron Johnson had a chance to read the United States Constitution four or five times (he found it "difficult to understand").

We cannot infer much about [Elena Kagan's] current view on the Second Amendment and what restrictions on guns are permitted by it. — the "conservative" candidate Ron Johnson

You needn't infer anything about Ron Johnson's. He flat out told you.

D.C. v. Heller changed everything

Which is to say, nothing:

This appeal presents a single issue, whether Defendant Michael Marzzarella's conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 922(k) for possession of a handgun with an obliterated serial number violates his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. We* hold it does not and accordingly will affirm the conviction.

[W]e begin with Heller ...

Third Circuit: United States v. Marzzarella (.pdf; 35 pgs.).

This identical question has come up here before, in the context of our top local right-wing conservative firearms experts. I think that Heller and its recent companion, McDonald v. Chicago, should be of greater import to historians and political theorists than to gun buffs.

* Two Reagans and a G.W. Bush, for the record. It's amazing there are still any guns left after Obama and Elena Kagan seized them all.

Thank Heaven for Russ Feingold.

Because everybody is on the edge of their seats

Yes, Lindsey Graham will vote 'Yea' to confirm Elena Kagan, because he is not a petulant child as are his Republican committee colleagues.

(She will respect "precedence.")

J-S: Kagan will make a competent probate judge

Solicitor General knows a creditor from a surviving spouse

[H]er answers demonstrated a respect for precedence ...

Presumably the editorial board meant precedent.

They did pick up on her throwing Thurgood Marshall under the bus.

(Speaking of Justice Thurgood Marshall, Prof. Mark Tushnet is appearing live in Milwaukee this Wednesday evening at 5:30.)

Sessions needs another week to think about "No"

Jefferson Beauregard III is not exactly the brightest of bulbs.

Bloomberg: Elena Kagan committee vote held over to next Tuesday

Kagan on the Wisconsin Supreme Court's "impasse"

Or: But isn't Gableman an "original intent" kinda guy?

COBURN: Is the [United States Supreme Court's case law] precedent more important than original intent?

KAGAN: Senator Coburn, let me give you an example. I'm not sure if it was an example I used before or not. But in the First Amendment context, which is a context I've written about a good deal, it's fairly clear that the First Amendment doctrine that's been established over [the last] 100 years departs significantly from the original intent of the Framers. One example is that I think that the Framers would never have dreamed that the First Amendment would in any way protect people against libel suits, that the First Amendment had anything to do with libel. So when the [Supreme] Court said in New York Times v. Sullivan that a public figure could not sue the New York Times and claim damages for libel without meeting a very high bar — without meeting the so-called actual malice standard — I think that that was something that the Framers would not have understood.

COBURN: [suddenly taken aback] Why would you think they wouldn't have understood that? I mean, they had print back then. I mean, we didn't start that early, in terms of the formation of our country.

[Kagan was saying that libel wasn't part of the Framers' "original" understanding in drafting the First Amendment; she wasn't saying that they wouldn't have understood the arguments which were presented and decided 173 years hence in NY Times v. Sullivan. Jeez, Coburn, she's talking about Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.]

KAGAN: I think that the historical evidence is very clear that the Framers didn't think that the First Amendment at all interfered with libel suits. Now, over time, as courts have applied the First Amendment to different contexts, to different circumstances, have seen different factual problems, have had to consider different cases, I think that the Court sensibly thought that the principles that are embodied in the First Amendment could not be protected unless the decision in New York Times v. Sullivan was issued.

Elena Kagan slams Thurgood Marshall

"To be a results-oriented judge is to be the worst kind of judge that you can be." — U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan

Let's see if Jeff Sessions is bright enough to pick up on that. If I was a Republican on the Committee, I'd be all over it like a cheap suit.

eta: Nope, Sen. Sessions just kept on barreling down his DADT blind alley, the proverbially unarmed man turning up for a battle of wits.

Beauregard's Bibliolator Boykin bounced

Monday's Republican circus is off to a flying start:

"Although General Boykin’s prior comments concerning the war on terror are unrelated to his scheduled testimony on Dean Kagan’s nomination, it is clear that these comments would be used to distract from the very important issues surrounding Ms. Kagan’s actions at Harvard Law School," said Stephen Boyd, a spokesman for ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions.

Nice try, Sessions.

Oh well, he's still got Tony Perkins and Ed Whelan.

Johnson misrepresents Feingold Senate vote

Being the first of many misrespresentations to come, undoubtedly.

Not so long ago, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Dave Westlake served as last-minute understudy for missing GOP rival Ron Johnson at a Madison, Wisconsin Tea Party affair.

Johnson disappeared after his notoriously "disastrous" performance last week, a YouTubed excursion to a deep woods Patriot clubhouse where Johnson dismayed Tea Party sympathizers not only with his inability to address specific Tea concerns, but with his failure to even recognize their most cherished constitutional ideals.

Some were led to wonder: Was he Tea or wasn't he GOP?

Yesterday morning Johnson emerged in the affluent Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield presumably after days of relentless murder-boarding with his new internets research specialist to face Westlake and WisPolitics.com's intrepid presenter Steven Walters.*

U.S. legal system derived from Bible stories

Seizing another opportunity, Westlake went on Full Tea Mode in Brookfield, calling for the abolition of the federal Departments of Education and Energy along with the IRS. He announced that in every Biblical story, one "undeniably" finds a little bit of Constitution, some Declaration of Independence, and a treatise on patent and trademark prosecution, and that the Second Amendment "defines who we are."

He proclaimed the Federal Reserve "a consumer threat," denounced Obama for performing "nothing more than a shakedown" on British Petroleum yachtsman-in-chief Tony Hayward, whose industry's safety record Westlake deemed "impeccable," and demanded that obese, sedentary tobacco smokers accept responsibility for their own poor health and stop insisting everybody else pay to take care of them.

Westlake also spoke emotionally of values and morality and especially moral hazards (to wit, federal unemployment benefits extended for another week or two, and their resultant Devilish temptation of the beneficiary to remain unemployed in perpetuity, in accordance with Tea Party psychology and prophesy).

Mr. Ron Johnson was less than truthful

Candidate Johnson came armed with new quips researched and served up from the deep recesses of the Googles, including one about how Senator Russ Feingold "voted for funding a sanctuary cities [sic]." Which sounds a lot like, "Feingold voted directly in support of something having to do with funding whatever thing it is that makes a sanctuary city a sanctuary city," doesn't it?

Except Johnson's implication is just a bit wide of the mark. Last October, Feingold voted to table (kill) a one-liner nuisance amendment advanced by wingnut Republican Sens. David Vitter and James Inhofe to withhold funding from COPS, a program in place and duly appropriated for since 1994. COPS is devoted to assisting selected local law enforcement engaged in specialized challenges.

For example, combating the social blight and attendant crime of methamphetamine addiction in distressed communities where State or municipal resources are otherwise unavailable.

There wasn't any connection between any particular city's so-called sanctuary ordinance — which discourages municipal employees from participating in immigration investigations except where required by the law — and COPS. Save that connection fabricated inside the roiling medullae oblongatae of Messrs. Vitter and Inhofe.

In fact a number of Republicans joined Sen. Feingold in opposing Vitter and Inhofe's transparent, regressive grandstanding.

Johnson said of immigration, which he claimed "is one of the weakest issues [Feingold's] on," that Feingold "has a zero rating from a group that basically calls for open borders." But wouldn't that be a good thing? Perhaps it will take Johnson a few more days to properly digest all of that newly discovered internets research.

Elena Kagan already "probably disqualified"

In a similar vein, Johnson also asserted that Feingold "voted for partial birth abortion seven times." Obviously nobody votes for "partial birth abortion." But Russ Feingold has certainly voted against placing onerous federal restrictions on women's access to what is and has been for decades — whether Ron Johnson likes it or not — a legal and constitutionally protected right: "the settled law of the land."

Johnson's embedded accusation that supporters of abortion's safe and legal availability are by definition active proponents of infanticide may be the most disingenuous of conservative Republican fallacies.

Among other freshly released Johnson zingers, the candidate determined that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan** was "probably disqualified" for "actually den[ying] access to military recruiters at Harvard" (another falsehood) and that the very thought of Obama having the authority to appoint federal judges was "depressing."

And he repeated his nonsense about knee replacements in Canada, adding a new twist: that it's not unusual to wait one year to receive a coronary bypass in Germany, which sounds equally preposterous.

WisconsinEye supplies the video.

* Sample Walters inquiry: "Do you support President Obama's move to require BP to set up a $20 million [sic] trust fund for oil spill damage that came ahead of any formal finding of criminal or civil negligence?" Both candidates answered "No" based almost entirely on the response Walters had thoughtfully provided in the question.

** Said Dave Westlake of Elena Kagan: "I don't have a whole lot of confidence in nominee Kagan. She's never served in any capacity similar to what she'd be experiencing on the federal court." But neither has Westlake served in any capacity similar to what he'd be experiencing in the federal legislature. As such, not among the most compelling or tactical objections to Elena Kagan's qualifications.

Feingold on the sad state of advice and consent

Russ Feingold: I found [U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan] more forthcoming in my meeting with her than the last three: Sotomayor, Alito, and Roberts. They're all real smart. But the other three — two different presidents and their staffs coached them to say nothing. And it really seemed to kind of make a joke out of the process. And I even had some direct words with [Kagan] about — because I thought she was more open than the others — there was a question or two, a private question about her views in the past and she said this and that and I said, 'Y'know, this is sad. You guys aren't even allowed to say what you really believe, because of this phony process.' It's dumbed down the thing to the point where at least it's good that the American people can see the person, we can ask them questions for a couple of days, but that's it. For life. And it really is sad that things have gotten this partisan and this difficult.

— Oshkosh Northwestern (editorial board video @ 6:10)

You can pose a question to Elena Kagan through Sen. Feingold here.

Run for cover, America

'Now the White House has got her wearing pearls!' — Fox "News"

In other words, because we don't know [Elena Kagan's] views, let's put out hypothetical questions that imply that she might be against free speech. I mean, she hasn't come right out and said that she's in favor of free speech, so let's assume the worst through disingenuous, leading questions. Sort of like the old Karl Rove-ian push polling. Run for cover, America, Obama's Supreme Court nominee is looking to overthrow the First Amendment.

That's a fair assessment.

Journal-Sentinel calumnist P. McIlheran fears teh Liberal Fascism (a.k.a. War on Christmas). Little does he know the remarks of Elena Kagan's he alludes to (third-hand: more impeccable scholarship) were made directly in the context of legislative attempts to mitigate (actual) cross-burnings and revoltingly brutal pornography and not, e.g., the beloved judicial election-quality protected speech.

Odd, because Robert Bork examined similar questions and found no First Amendment protections, to enormous conservative Republican acclaim. Since when did the right-wing rescind Bork's beatification?

If McIlheran was intellectually honest and consistent, he would distrust — as he always does — Obama's implied assurances that he's selected a Justice as liberal as her predecessor, John Paul Stevens.

And if you don't trust Obama — as McIlheran never does — then the Court will, as a necessary consequence of Obama's false assurances, move to the right. That is, the wingers ought to be celebrating.

But like I said, if honest and consistent. So forget it.

Frightful Fascist Flashback: Obama emptied all the prisons, also.

Kagan can be a judge but not a lawyer

According to Arlen Specter.

I would like somebody to once again ask Elena Kagan if the United States is "at war." Perhaps it's not so remarkable for a prospective solicitor general to reply in the affirmative, as Kagan did during the Senate hearings for her current position.

But as an auditioning Supreme Court Justice tasked with interpreting the Constitution, her answer will have to be, "No."

Only Congress has the power to declare war, and it hasn't.

Elena Kagan: Not enough paper

"Ms. Kagan has spent her entire professional career in Harvard Square, Hyde Park, and the DC Beltway. These are not places where one learns how ordinary people live," he said.

Big John Cornyn boned up on nominee by reading Glenn Greenwald

The Republican party chairman, Michael Steele, said today that given Kagan's opposition to allowing military recruiters on campus, "you can expect Senate Republicans to respectfully raise serious and tough questions."

Who's he trying to kid.

What you can expect is their usual petulant histrionics.

Come Monday, the next Harriet Miers

What, run out on a rail by the Federalist Society and Jay $ekulow?

Yesterday, I read everything Elena Kagan has ever published. ... Kagan's work reminded me of Orwell's observation that, if book reviewers were honest, 19 of 20 reviews would consist of the sentence, "this book inspires in me no thoughts whatever."

Consider that Obama and Kagan joined the Chicago law faculty in the very same year, after both were Harvard Law students and members of the Harvard Law Review. (The difference between a "crony" and a "colleague" is often something of a sociological mystery.)

A quasi-scholarly concern troll.

Diversity mocked

"Will Obama pick the former [Clinton] deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal division (Merrick Garland), the former [Clinton] deputy assistant attorney general for the antitrust division (Diane Wood) or the former [Clinton] associate White House counsel (Elena Kagan)?" Kerr wondered.

Mark Tushnet: What am I, chopped liver?