GOP use Kagan hearings to trash American hero Thurgood Marshall

Gawker

You all see that Elena Kagan hearing yesterday? Too exciting, what with each senator giving a vapid, grandstanding speech, one after another, all day. And the Republican attack line was crisp: exploit her connection to history's greatest monster, Thurgood Marshall.

Elena Kagan used to clerk for Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice in history and a hallowed figure everywhere and to everyone. When Kagan's nomination was announced, RNC chairman and permanently stocked comedy arsenal Michael Steele went on to attack Kagan for this illicit "connection" of Kagan's, noting that he had once called the original Constitution, as written, "defective," and she had agreed. Yes, the Constitution — our Consitution! America's Document.

People eventually pointed out to Steele that Justice Marshall was explicitly referring to its protection of slavery and racial and gender discrimination as the "defective" parts, and he backtracked. At yesterday's opening hearing, however, as Dana Milbank writes in the Washington Post, the theme went back to "Crush Thurgood Marshall."

"Justice Marshall's judicial philosophy," said Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, "is not what I would consider to be mainstream." Kyl — the lone member of the panel in shirtsleeves for the big event — was ready for a scrap. Marshall "might be the epitome of a results-oriented judge," he said. [...]

Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the panel, branded Marshall a "well-known activist." Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Marshall's legal view "does not comport with the proper role of a judge or judicial method." Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) pronounced Marshall "a judicial activist" with a "judicial philosophy that concerns me."

As the Republicans marshaled their anti-Marshall forces, staffers circulated to reporters details of the late justice's offenses: "Justice Marshall endorsed 'judicial activism,' supported abortion rights, and believed the death penalty was unconstitutional."

Yeah she'll get confirmed.

Meanwhile, the single best line of the day, hands down, went to Republican Sen. John Cornyn: "Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man of war, and we're all the crew."

Apparently this quote comes from a creepy secessionist/survivalist author who writes novels about people from Wyoming trying to steal nuclear weapons to guarantee their state's independence.

So who is this monster, Thurgood Marshall? What are these un-American values he represents?

Center For History and New Media

After amassing an impressive record of Supreme Court challenges to state-sponsored discrimination, including the landmark Brown v. Board decision in 1954, President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In this capacity, he wrote over 150 decisions including support for the rights of immigrants, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy issues.

Biographers Michael Davis and Hunter Clark note that, "none of his (Marshall's) 98 majority decisions was ever reversed by the Supreme Court."

In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. Before his subsequent nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, Thurgood Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. Indeed, Thurgood Marshall represented and won more cases before the United States Supreme Court than any other American.

BASTARD!

check out the Thurgood Marshall A&E Biography

Supreme Court strikes down Chicago handgun ban

Liberaland

In a victory for gun owners, the Supreme Court has declared Chicago’s 28-year ban on gun ownership unconstitutional.

A conservative majority of justices on Monday reiterated its two-year-old conclusion the Constitution gives individuals equal or greater power than states to possess certain firearms for self-protection.

The court however said local jurisdictions still retain the flexibility to preserve some “reasonable” gun control measures currently in place nationwide.

The vote was 5-4, and was along party lines.

However, what I do think is..... interesting.... is a comment on the Liberland site. I wonder how the white bread gun nuts would react. Probably not well.

I say every black man in America should own a gun and we should show up at the next tea baggers klan rally and see if they will have the same heart to call black people ni&&ers as they did when they call John Lewis a ni&&er

Sorry....

Sorry about the 3 week absence. It's been a hell of a 3 weeks. Here's a recap:

The Republicans took Teddy Kennedy's seat with a former nude model who pledged to vote against the same health care bill that he supported when it passed in Massachusetts. Republicans rejoiced. Scott Brown then said he supported abortion rights. They've been kinda quiet about the whole thing ever since.

Obama was said to have lost his mojo. 8 days later, he found it again when he went after Republicans in the State of the Union address. And then he accepted an invitation to appear before the GOP House caucus - on camera - and went up and down the court on them for 90 minutes. This caused Fox to break away for the sake of the narrative.

The Supreme Court turned our political campaigns over to corporate America, paving the way for "Palin 2012, brought to you by Monstanto".

The Republicans are using the filibuster, of the threat thereof, as a blunt weapon.



Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) is holding as many as 70 of Obama's appointments hostage until he gets his pork projects (earmarks) passed in the Senate. To break his hold, the Senate needs - you guessed it - 60 votes. It's time to bring on the nuclear option and change the filibuster to a more reasonable procedure - one that doesn't cripple the business of the nation.

As Steve Pearlstein opines:

After all, if the only things the party in power can accomplish are those that the minority power can agree with, then what is the point of having an election? No matter which side won a majority, "common ground" -- the things they all agree on -- would still be the same.

And it appears that "Don't ask, don't tell" is going away, paving the way for gays to openly serve their country. For years, the GOP said they'd leave it up to the military high command. I guess they figured that generals and stuff would never let fags serve. Well, last week they did. Adm. Mike Mullen told Congress that gays should be allowed to serve openly in uniform, arguing that it is "the right thing to do." And many, many Republicans lost their shit. John McCain backtracked on his comments of 3 years ago and Ollie North told Sean Hannity that if we let gays serve, the next steps was NAMBLA members. That's the North American Man-Boy Love Association, the group that advocates legal sodomy with minors.

Right.

Oh irony, you magnificent bastard!

By BCAB Chief Ironies Delighter-Inner Elvis Hussein Dingeldein.

I’m no kind of religious person. I think The Bible® is HIGH-larious family fun, if you live in the Third Century and list “punching women in the uterus” and “the stonings” as favorite hobbies. And I loathe nothing more than Teabagging Christian Wingnuts trying to force their bullshit Hobbit stories on us Nones, the ones who like our Democracy Jesus™-free the way The Founders explicitly set us up by Oh-So-Purposefully nixing the words “God” and “Jesus” from the Constitution.

Having said that, I’ll get down on my knees and start praying to any Angry Magical Cloud-Lord who will listen if this actually pans out when McDonald v City of Chicago hits a Supreme Court near you:

A finding that the Second Amendment protects individuals’ right to own a gun could therefore have the unexpected outcome of also providing more solid ground for recognition of the right to abortion, to sexual privacy, to gay marriage, and to a wide variety of other rights that conservative justices on the court and “originalist” constitutional scholars have long opposed.

Oh, please Flying Spaghetti Monster! Oh, I beseech thee, Freakishly Disneyesque Indian Elephant God! Let me rub thy fat, fat belly with oils, Buddha You Fat Bastard! I shall tithe what little I have left after paying for healthcare and two bullshit wars, O Mangar-kunjer-kunja, whatever the fuck you were! Just let this be so!

Honestly, I will have an ironygasm and take a month off from work to do nothing but drive around Republican neighborhoods pointing and laughing and possibly waving my genitals at AARP members if this happens. Finally a SCOTUS case we can all believe in, as long as it swings our way. With our Activist Judges and whatnot.

Update: Redmond and I are discussing the social consequences of this conundrum, and he points out that while we get our Gay Marryings and Abortitudes, the Right gets more unfettered gun-totage. So we should expect more gay couples being shot at during their wedding festivities and abortion doctors might want to invest in Kevlar underpants.

Update II: The Sequel : Abortion doctors may just want to go ahead and invest in that Kevlar underpants now, really.

The funny: Stewart mocks GOP hatred for empathy; Letterman takes on Cheney

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Justice Is Bland
thedailyshow.com

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Three-Minute Confirmation Stick
thedailyshow.com

David Letterman - "Dick Cheney: How'd He Do?"

GOP lashes out against court pick which is unknown and weeks away

The GOP continued it's circular-firing squad techniques by lashing out at President Obama's pick to fill Justice Souter's seat on the Supreme Court - weeks before Obama is set to make said pick.

The lack of a resume to rail against has not stopped the GOP. Why let pesky things like facts get in the way of a good lynching?