Judiciary

The Pathetic Desperation of the Anti-Kagan Campaign

Submitted by Kyle on June 23, 2010 - 7:44am

Because the Right has very little ammunition against Elena Kagan heading into her confirmation hearings next week, they have been desperately trying to make up "controversies" that they can try to use against her.

Which is why a donation made by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal to Harvard University to establish an Islamic Studies program at the time that Kagan was Dean of Harvard Law School has been transformed into a right-wing claim that Kagan supports Sharia Law and "the enemy" while hating our troops.

So I guess it was only a matter of time until we started seeing things like this in Frank Gaffney's column in The Washington Times:

Hats off to Sen. Jeff Sessions. The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee has opened up an important new front in the debate over Solicitor General Elena Kagan's fitness to serve on the Supreme Court: her attitude toward the repressive legal code authoritative Islam calls Shariah and her enabling of efforts to insinuate it into this country.

By so doing, the Alabama legislator has given his colleagues and the country an opportunity not only to flesh out and evaluate the thin public record of President Obama's second nominee to a lifetime appointment on the nation's highest court but also afforded us all what Mr. Obama might call a "teachable moment."

Specifically, this Supreme Court nomination offers a prism for examining the concerted and ominous campaign under way to bring Shariah to America, thanks to the troubling role Ms. Kagan played during her tenure as dean of Harvard Law School.

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Dismantling the Right Wing Campaign Against Elena Kagan

Submitted by Kyle on June 11, 2010 - 1:30pm

Our latest Right Wing Watch In Focus in now available and it examines the Right's plan of attack against Elena Kagan and her nomination to the Supreme Court.

It explains how, from the very moment Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement, the Right was vowing to fight any nominee that President Obama put forward to replace him, without even having any idea who it might be, even though they knew that probably would not be able to defeat them.

So when President Obama nominated Elena Kagan, they swung into action, raising concerns about her so-called "radicalism":

The right-wing's routine charges of "radicalism" have settled into a tight little rhetorical circle which leaves no room for actual facts or logic. Here's how it goes: because Obama is dangerously radical, anybody he appoints to anything should be assumed to be radical. And the fact that he is appointing radicals just proves how radically radical he himself is.

While any Supreme Court nominee would draw close scrutiny from across the legal and political spectrum, including someone with Kagan's widely acknowledged intellect and her academic and public service credentials, those who were ready to scream "radical" no matter what the facts might actually be have been screaming about Kagan's alleged radicalism:

Fox pundit Sean Hannity said "her background is strident radical left like the president's."

Robert Knight of the Coral Ridge Ministries charged that the nomination was Obama's "in your face" selection of a "radical lawyer."

FRC's Perkins decried Kagan as an "ideological twin" to President Obama and said her "ultimate agenda" is "to reshape the court with a profoundly radical bent."

Focus on the Family's Tom Minnery calls her nomination "a triumph for liberal ideology and judicial activism."

And this from the Traditional Values Coalition's Andrea Sheldon Lafferty: "President Obama's pick of Elena Kagan demonstrates his willingness to subvert the Constitution for his personal agenda and impose his leftist ideology on our nation for the next 30 to 40 years."

Vision America's Rick Scarborough, in a piece called Elena Kagan and the War Against Christianity, calls her nomination "the latest step toward the moral abyss for America." He calls Kagan "a doctrinaire radical leftist with a written disdain for the Constitution of the United States…."

David McIntosh, co-founder of the Federalist Society, criticized Obama for nominating "an individual who has demonstrated a lack of adherence to the limits of the Constitution and a desire to utilize the court system to enact her beliefs of social engineering.

Those pushing the radical charges won't hear anything else. Sean Hannity asked former Clinton advisor Dick Morris, "So is this just another Obama radical being elevated to the highest levels of our government?" But when Morris repeatedly told Hannity that Kagan had been a moderate-to-conservative voice in the Clinton administration, and predicted based on his experience working with her that she would be a moderate voice on the Court, Hannity would hear nothing of it, cutting Morris off to insist "no way."

This was, of course, just one part of a multi-faceted strategy of lies that the Right has undertaken as they try anything and everything in an effort to sink Kagan's nomination - so be sure to read the entire report to understand how Republicans and the Right are trying to use this issue to boost their political standing.

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FRC Planning $100,000+ Anti-Kagan Ad Campaign

Submitted by Kyle on June 10, 2010 - 12:06pm

I haven't really been writing much about the right-wing campaign against Elena Kagan ... mainly because the campaign against her has been so utterly predictable and ineffective.

Conservative groups continue to attack her even though, as Ed Whelan says, "Kagan is a safe bet to be confirmed, but it’s still important that conservatives use the opportunity to educate the public about the proper role of the court."

And so to that end, right-wing groups are planning on raising (and spending) hundreds of thousands of dollars on opposing Kagan's nomination:

“We MUST raise $360,000 by June 30 in order to continue the momentum of our life-saving work!’’ [American's United for Life] president, Charmaine Yoest, wrote to her followers. Activist groups of all persuasions are using similar appeals.

...

[The Family Research Council's Tom] McClusky said his group expects to invest $100,000 to $150,000 in a Web and print campaign that highlights Kagan’s opposition to the don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy that forbids openly gay armed service members.

...

Other groups are also busy with anti-Kagan videos. Curt Levey, director of the conservative Committee for Justice, said his group is producing anti-Kagan TV ads, likely to air shortly before the final confirmation vote.

“How much we can air them, of course, depends on how much money we can raise,’’ Levey said. His group spent about $15,000 last year opposing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Fund-raising currently is ahead of last year’s pace, he said.

Levey hopes to target the ads at Democratic senators in conservative states, such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jon Tester of Montana. In states without expensive media markets, a small investment can have a large impact, he said.

Pressure on Democrats in conservative states will be strong, predicted Gary Marx, director of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, which is spreading its research into Kagan’s record through new social media and by traditional radio interviews and phone banks.

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CA Voters Overwhelmingly Reject Better Courts Now Candidates

Submitted by Kyle on June 9, 2010 - 8:07am

A few months back, a group called Better Courts Now was formed on the idea that if the state of California just elected that proper sorts of Christian judges on the bench, then controversial issues like Proposition 8 would never even arise. To make that happen, the group backed a slate of candidates with an openly Christian bias who were committed to carrying out God's will from the bench ... and promptly saw each one of them get trounced in yesterday's election:

Four incumbent judges were headed to easy victories over a slate of challengers who were backed by a group of religious and social conservatives ... Judge Lantz Lewis was well ahead of challenger Craig Candelore in early unofficial results, and his colleague Judge DeAnn Salcido was leading challenger Harold Coleman. Judge Joel Wohlfeil was well ahead of Larry “Jake” Kincaid, and Judge Robert Longstreth was handily beating Bill Trask.

...

The four challengers ran as a slate backed by Better Courts Now, a group formed by pastors and supported by foes of same-sex marriage and abortion rights. It said it wanted to unify the “moral vote” and promote judges who would reflect their values.

Each of the victorious judges got more than 60 percent of the vote in his or her race, and several saw that wide margin as a rejection of the Better Courts Now effort to influence the makeup of the bench.

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Better Courts Now: Seeking Judges With a Christian Bias

Submitted by Kyle on June 7, 2010 - 8:32am

When Better Courts Now was launched back in March, its stated goal was to see right-wing judges elected "across San Diego County and eventually America." For now, the group is focusing on California and has, in recent weeks, been making it clear that they are not looking to support merely conservative judges, but Christian judges who will carry out God's will on the bench.

The election is tomorrow and pastor Brian Hendry, who is running the group, really wants to make their goal clear:

"We've always been involved in the political realm, in believing that too often Christians have dropped the ball over the years and have allowed...an agenda that's not a biblical agenda to take over," Hendry explains. "In our prayers and in looking for different ways to attack, we realized, especially in California, that the judiciary was definitely an area that had been running amok, if you will."

He contends that judicial activists have tried to push a social agenda, such as when the state Supreme Court legalized, albeit for a short time, homosexual marriage. Better Courts Now wants godly men on the bench, but opponents say Christian judges would be activists for Christ.

"To say that somehow a Christian coming in with a biblical worldview will give them a bias that will lead them to not be able to follow the law -- we actually believe that bias, if you will, or that worldview helps them to follow the law, because they stand on virtues and principles that they cannot violate," Hendry contends.

Hendry was also the guest on "WallBuilders Live" last Friday where he discussed this effort with Rick Green, who recently lost his own run for the state Supreme Court. To say that Green was excited by this new effort would be a massive understatement, as Green and Hendry spent a large part of the interview discussing their desire to see this operation duplicated all across the country.

So it should not come as a surprise if we see some sort of WallBuilders/Better Court Now joint operation emerge down the road.

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Better Courts Now Endorsed Candidates Vow To Carry Out God's Will

Submitted by Kyle on June 2, 2010 - 7:53am

A few months back, I wrote a post about a new right-wing group that had formed in California for the purpose of taking control of the state's court system. Many of those involved had been highly active in the Prop. 8 fight and saw this new effort, called Better Courts Now, as a way of making sure that issues like Prop. 8 never succeed in the courts by "unifying the moral vote" and electing judges with a right-wing agenda.

Well, the election for state judges in California takes place on June 8 and Better Courts Now has rolled out its slate of candidates:

A group of conservative attorneys say they are on a mission from God to unseat four California judges in a rare challenge that is turning a traditionally snooze-button election into what both sides call a battle for the integrity of U.S. courts.

Vowing to be God's ambassadors on the bench, the four San Diego Superior Court candidates are backed by pastors, gun enthusiasts, and opponents of abortion and same-sex marriages.

"We believe our country is under assault and needs Christian values," said Craig Candelore, a family law attorney who is one of the group's candidates. "Unfortunately, God has called upon us to do this only with the judiciary."

...

The Better Courts Now candidates accused the bar of being swayed by politics. Candelore said a victory would mark only the beginning: "If we can take our judiciary, we can take our legislature and our executive branch."

Better Courts Now has posted campaign videos from each of its endorsed candidates, including Candelore:

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JCN Up With First Anti-Kagan Ad

Submitted by Kyle on May 14, 2010 - 9:29am

Founded as the Judicial Confirmation Network to press for confirmation of all of President Bush's judicial nominee, the group recently underwent a name change which reflects the fact that the confirmation of judges is no longer their mission, thus re-naming themselves the Judicial Crisis Network.

And the Judicial Crisis Network is now hard at work leading the opposition to the nomination of Elena Kagan, demanding that "the Obama administration, The Clinton Presidential Library and the national archives to expedite the process of releasing all of Elena Kagan's documents from her service in the Clinton administration" and launching a viral ad campaign against her:

The Judicial Crisis Network today launched a viral campaign to educate and mobilize conservative activists on the questionable record of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan.

While Kagan was Dean of the Harvard Law School, the sole issue upon on which she took a public stand was the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Dean Kagan banned the military from recruiting for the JAG Corps on Harvard's campus during a time of war. When Dean Kagan’s legal argument for keeping the military off campus was presented to the Supreme Court, it was unanimously rejected.

“The debate over Kagan will focus on her status as an Obama insider who was picked to ‘rubber-stamp’ the president's domestic policy agenda, especially if legislation pertaining to healthcare and financial regulatory reform are challenged in court,” stated Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director to the Judicial Crisis Network.

JCN is distributing a video to its 1 million e-activists involved in SCOTUS and Court issues. Web ads will run in Virginia, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, and Montana.

Script of the video:

Elena Kagan, who, as the Dean of Harvard Law School, kicked the military off campus - incredibly - during a time of war.

When Dean Kagan’s legal argument attempting to keep the military off campus was presented to the very court President Obama would appoint her to, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected Kagan’s argument.

America deserves better.

This is a slightly edited version of the ad the group ran last year:

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The Least Informative Elena Kagan Discussion Ever

Submitted by Kyle on May 13, 2010 - 2:43pm

When I saw that Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network had spent nearly an hour discussing Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court with Terry Jeffrey, editor in chief of CNSNews.com, I certainly wasn't expecting it to be exciting.

But I didn't expect it to be downright painful ... but that is exactly what it was, as Jeffrey tried to use the Citizen's United decision, which he held up as a fundamental victory for the First Amendment, to make the case that Kagan should have resigned her position as Solicitor General rather than try to strip Americans of their basic rights.

To their credit, both Whelan and Severino repeatedly shot down Jeffrey's claims ... but it didn't matter, as every explanation they offered just seemed to further convince Jeffrey that government lawyers and Supreme Court justices and basically all lawyers are morally unfit to hold public office on the grounds that they are willing to argue positions with which they might not agree.

All of this eventually leads Jeffrey to start asking random hypothetical questions about whether an anti-choice Solicitor General who worked for a pro-choice administration would be morally fit to hold the office ... as if that is relevant to anything at all.

So if you want to see the single least informative discussion of Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination, jump ahead to the 5:00 mark of this video and watch as Whelan and Severino struggle to deal with Jeffrey's never-ending stream of nonsense:

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Scarborough: Kagan Nomination the "Latest Step Toward the Moral Abyss for America"

Submitted by Kyle on May 12, 2010 - 2:24pm

It was just earlier today that I was noting that Matt Barber was using the arrest of Dale Mcalpine to try and terrify Christians into thinking that they are about to be rounded up and imprisoned here in the United States.

Now, Rick Scarborough of Vision America has sent out an new email alert, also making the same claim, but using it to generate opposition to Elena Kagan:

On October 22, 2009 Hate Crimes protection was extended to sexual orientation by the Senate and sent to the President's desk to be signed shortly thereafter.

On April 20, 2010, police arrested Dale McAlpine, a 42-year-old Baptist street preacher in Britain for telling a passerby -- in earshot of a policewoman -- that God views homosexuality as a sin. Under Britain's Public Order Act 1986, which forbids "using threatening, abusive or insulting words ... tending to and causing harassment, alarm or distress," he will face a criminal trial at a date yet to be determined. McAlpine was fingerprinted, given a DNA swab and retina scan, and was locked in a police cell for seven hours.

The law was in place for 24 years before it was applied to a preacher of the Gospel, but now, in Great Britain, you can go to jail for agreeing with the Holy Bible on homosexuality. And you can rest assured America is on a collision course with the same tragic conclusion.

The appointment of Elena Kagan is the latest step toward the moral abyss for America. As the President's latest pick for the Supreme Court, this judicial neophyte is a doctrinaire radical leftist with a written disdain for the Constitution of the United States, the very document which she will be sworn to uphold if approved by the Senate, an almost fore drawn conclusion unless enough God fearing Americans raise their voices and demand that she be withdrawn.

...

The real losers are not the preachers who will go to jail, for they shall find God's presence there and be rewarded in this and the next life. The real losers are those caught up in a sin that our Government forbids us to tell the truth about, without being threatened with arrest.

Can't happen here? Just ask Rev. Dale McAlpine of Great Britain.

Till they come for me, I am going to continue to announce the truth and pray for revival in America.

Scarborough urges activist to sign up to blast fax "ALL 100 Senators for just $99" to urge them to oppose Kagan.

Gordon Klingenschmitt is offering the same service for only $38.

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Chaps Klingenschmitt Likewise Demands To Know if Kagan Is Gay

Submitted by Kyle on May 10, 2010 - 1:47pm

Gordon "Chaps" Klingenschmitt is also demanding to know whether Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is gay and is launching a petition urging the Senate to "oppose and filibuster reported Lesbian Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court":

As far back as 2006 and 2007, four different Harvard Law Students confirmed that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was a Lesbian. Why is the Obama Administration now suddenly ashamed of Kagan's homosexual orientation?

CBS News first reported that President Obama's new Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will be the "first openly gay justice," pleasing much of Obama's liberal base. But after pressure from the White House they amended the report: "I have to correct my text here to say that Kagan is apparently still closeted -- odd, because her female partner is rather well known in Harvard circles." CBS later pulled the report entirely, after The Washington Post criticized CBS policy, saying "most major news organizations have policies against 'outing' gays or reporting on the sex lives of public officials unless they are related to their public duties."

Why the sudden media blackout, even among conservative news organizations?

Only the Alliance Defense Fund asked, "If Elena Kagan Is a Lesbian, She Should Say So because Public Has a Right to Know." Kagan's private sex life already has, and will directly impact her public Supreme Court decisions, especially on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and other issues.

In breaking news, Chaplain Klingenschmitt reveals that four different Harvard Law School students reported Kagan was Lesbian Homosexual as far back as 2006 and 2007.

The 4 Harvard law students' quotes are now online at www.prayinjesusname.org/kagan.

Will any news reporter dare to track down and interview these four students?

Chaplain Klingenschmitt, who delivered over one million faxes to the Senate against the anti-Jesus Judge David Hamilton, is now launching a new "Fax Congress" petition drive campaign to oppose and filibuster reported Lesbian Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court.

For the record, it was not the Alliance Defense Fund that asked if Kagan is gay, it was Peter LaBarbera and his Americans for Truth.