It's all over but the show trials.

[Doktor Howl]

1 or 2.

Both of them will lose in November.

I checked up on the case in the OP, apparently SCOTUS still hasn't decided if giving accused criminals legal advice is constitutional or not.

HELLO!  SCOTUS!  AMENDMENTS V & VI!

[AFK]

We should take bets on how many "liberal" congressmen will stand up and say, "hey, wait a second..."

Russ Feingold.

And.

Um.

Maybe Kucinich.  Maybe Bernie Sanders. 

But they pretty much get ignored anyway so it will fall on deaf ears. 

[Doktor Howl]

CHANGE!



Dok,
Knows that things getting worse is, technically, change.

[Elder Iptuous]

Dok,
Knows that things getting worse is, technically, change.

your patriotic duty is to fall back on 'hope' then...

[Doktor Howl]

Dok,
Knows that things getting worse is, technically, change.

your patriotic duty is to fall back on 'hope' then...

No, your patriotic duty is to rat your neighbors out.

[Elder Iptuous]

Dok,
Knows that things getting worse is, technically, change.

your patriotic duty is to fall back on 'hope' then...

No, your patriotic duty is to rat your neighbors out.

not only is it patriotic, but i've got the whole cul-de-sac to myself, now!
my kids can ride their bicycles in the street with Safety™!

[Doktor Howl]

Dok,
Knows that things getting worse is, technically, change.

your patriotic duty is to fall back on 'hope' then...

No, your patriotic duty is to rat your neighbors out.

not only is it patriotic, but i've got the whole cul-de-sac to myself, now!
my kids can ride their bicycles in the street with Safety™!

Until your kids turn YOU in, for a gold star and a peppermint candy.  All for the Perfect State™.

[Juana]

  Fuck this. Fuck it twice.

[Elder Iptuous]

Dok,
Knows that things getting worse is, technically, change.

your patriotic duty is to fall back on 'hope' then...

No, your patriotic duty is to rat your neighbors out.

not only is it patriotic, but i've got the whole cul-de-sac to myself, now!
my kids can ride their bicycles in the street with Safety™!

Until your kids turn YOU in, for a gold star and a peppermint candy.  All for the Perfect State™.

Ha!
already thought of that!
i'm making it clear that i have been designated as the sole source of the mind numbing medically necessary psychoactive drugs that they will require...
if they kill me, then they'll be up the creek, having to face this stark reality on their own.

at least until they start serving Ritalin muffins and Prozac pastries as standard fare in the cafeterias....

[Cramulus]

Ugh, this is depressing. Other than this particularly dismaying ruling, what is your (plural) take on Kagan?

[Requia ☣]

I can't find anything good about this woman.  Maybe its a side effect of being one of the president's top lawyers, and she just gets to argue all the shit cases, but it seems she wants unlimited power for congress and the president (but only if they agree, so Obama voting himself warrantless wiretapping powers when he was in the senate become very important).

Almost everything else I can find when I look her up is things from her confirmation hearing as solicitor general, which is about as reliable as campaign promises.

[Doktor Howl]

Ugh, this is depressing. Other than this particularly dismaying ruling, what is your (plural) take on Kagan?

"Other than that, we liked Lee Harvey Oswald's resume."   

Sometimes a single issue is enough to damn a nominee.  This is one of those times.

[Iason Ouabache]

Ugh, this is depressing. Other than this particularly dismaying ruling, what is your (plural) take on Kagan?

Here's a good place to start: http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/05/9750-words-on-elena-kagan/

I haven't read it all yet, because it's almost 10,000 words long!

[Jenne]

I can't find anything good about this woman.  Maybe its a side effect of being one of the president's top lawyers, and she just gets to argue all the shit cases, but it seems she wants unlimited power for congress and the president (but only if they agree, so Obama voting himself warrantless wiretapping powers when he was in the senate become very important).

Almost everything else I can find when I look her up is things from her confirmation hearing as solicitor general, which is about as reliable as campaign promises.

Here, and you're welcome:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/05/10/32scotus.h29.html?tkn=OZWFm6SQUA6U7teqc8oRyVyfeGrCcIacAW6F&cmp=clp-edweek

Published Online: May 10, 2010

High Court Pick Has Sparse K-12 Policy Record

By Mark Walsh




President Barack Obama's choice for his second nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court—current U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan—is a nonjudge without the record of dealing with education law issues typical of nominees who have served on federal appeals courts.

Nonetheless, the nominee to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens, who will retire at age 90 at the end of the current term, had education as part of her portfolio when she served as deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 1999.

"She is very smart," said Michael Cohen, who is now the president of Achieve, an education policy organization in Washington and who was an education policy aide to President Clinton during that time. "She did not pretend to be the education policy expert. But she asked thoughtful, probing questions about policy proposals that were under development."

And just days before President Obama introduced her as his nominee for the high court, Ms. Kagan filed an education-related brief with the justices, defending the No Child Left Behind Act against teachers'-union objections that the law constitutes an unfunded federal mandate.

The NCLB law "seeks to improve the academic achievement of disadvantaged students through a combination of flexibility and accountability," Ms. Kagan said in the brief filed in her role as solicitor general. "The act expressly refrains from dictating funding levels, and instead grants states and [school districts] unprecedented flexibility to target federal dollars to meet state and local priorities."

The brief comes in School District of the City of Pontiac v. Duncan (Case No. 09-852), which stems from a major challenge to the federal law organized by the National Education Association. The brief rejects, in forceful language, the union's argument that the law illegally forces states and districts to spend their own money to comply with federal requirements. The case is awaiting a decision by the justices on whether they will grant review.

Ms. Kagan's brief in the Pontiac case is the second in a K-12 education case before the high court that bears her signature. The first was filed in March of last year in a special education case soon after Ms. Kagan had been confirmed as solicitor general.

Though she didn't argue the case of Forest Grove School District v. T.A., and likely had little to do with the brief's preparation, her office's position—that students need not have received special education services in a public school before becoming eligible for private school tuition reimbursement under the proper circumstances—was upheld by the Supreme Court last June.

A 'Trailblazer'
In nominating Ms. Kagan on Monday, President Obama praised her as a "trailblazer," a "superb" solicitor general, and "one of the nation's foremost legal minds."

"Someone as gifted as Elena could easily have settled into a comfortable life in a corporate-law practice," the president said during the East Room ceremony. "Instead, she chose a life of service—service to her students, service to her country, service to the law, and to all those whose lives it shapes."

Democrats in the Senate are hoping to hold confirmation hearings before July 4, although Republicans have yet to go along with that timetable. The president hopes to have a confirmed nominee in place by the opening of the court next term, which begins in October.


Ms. Kagan is a former dean of the Harvard Law School who has championed nondiscrimination in education and improved access to college. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she would be the first nonjudge to join the high court since Lewis F. Powell Jr. and William H. Rehnquist became associate justices in 1972.

"Through most of my professional life, I've had the simple joy of teaching—of trying to communicate to students why I so love the law not just because it's challenging and endlessly interesting—although it certainly is that—but because law matters; because it keeps us safe; because it protects our most fundamental rights and freedoms; and because it is the foundation of our democracy," Ms. Kagan said during the White House event.

Ms. Kagan noted that her mother had been a "proud public schoolteacher," and that her mother and two brothers were "the kind of teachers students remember for the rest of their lives."

Ms. Kagan's mother, Gloria, taught 5th and 6th grade at Hunter College Elementary School in New York City. She died two years ago. Ms. Kagan's brother Marc teaches social studies at the Bronx High School of Science, while her brother Irving teaches the same subject at Hunter College High School. Both were present at the White House on Monday.

Ms. Kagan, 50, is a native of New York City. She attended Hunter College High School, a selective public high school for girls, before graduating from Princeton University in 1981 and Harvard Law School in 1986. She also received a degree from Oxford University in England.

Ms. Kagan clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the high court during the 1987-88 term, in which the most significant education case was Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. In that case, the court held that school administrators had not violated the First Amendment rights of student journalists by ordering articles withheld from a high school newspaper. Justice Marshall joined a vigorous dissent written by Justice William J. Brennan Jr.

Ms. Kagan joined the University of Chicago law faculty in 1991. In 1995, she joined the Clinton administration, initially as an associate White House counsel. In 1997 she became deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council.

In 1999, Ms. Kagan joined the law faculty at Harvard, and she became the dean of the law school in 2003. She is credited with reducing longtime feuds among faculty members and recruiting conservative professors to broaden the school's ideological perspectives.

In a letter to the Judiciary Committee last year, John Payton, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, noted that Ms. Kagan decided upon becoming Harvard law dean to also take the title of Charles Hamilton Houston professor of law. Mr. Houston was a dean of the historically black Howard University's law school in Washington from 1929 to 1935 and was a mentor to Thurgood Marshall in the fight to end segregation in education.

Ms. Kagan's decision to take the chair named for Mr. Houston had "enormous symbolic value but also, more significantly, reflects the real content of her character," Mr. Payton said in his letter. "She combines intellectual depth with curiosity and dynamism."

Military-Recruiter Issue
Ms. Kagan has attracted attention for her handling of recruiting by the U.S. military at Harvard Law School. The federal "don't ask, don't tell" law that permits homosexuals to serve in the military only if they keep their sexual orientation private was challenged by a group of law schools and law faculty members. Harvard Law was not part of the group, but Ms. Kagan joined other Harvard Law faculty members in signing a friend-of-the-court brief in the Supreme Court opposing the policy.

Earlier, in keeping with a federal law known as the Solomon Amendment, the federal government threatened to withhold all funding from Harvard University when the law school briefly prohibited military recruiters. Ms. Kagan rescinded the prohibition, writing to students: "I have said before how much I regret making this exception to our antidiscrimination policy. I believe the military's discriminatory employment policy is deeply wrong—both unwise and unjust. And this wrong tears at the fabric of our own community by denying an opportunity to some of our students that other of our students have."

In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights that the Solomon Amendment did not place an unconstitutional condition on the receipt of federal funds and did not violate the law schools' freedom of expressive association.

Vol. 29, Issue 31

[Requia ☣]

Um, jen, with the exception of her spat over the Solomon ammendment (I'll grant her a couple points for that, which moves her up to about negative 9998), that's exactly what I'm talking about, its biographical information, praise from the Obama administration, plus a little bit from her time as solicitor general (teh NCLB bit).