The Worst Argument for Elena Kagan That You'll Read Today

From Linda Monk at The Huffington Post:

As for critics of Kagan's nomination like Greenwald, who find her too cozy with national security absolutists, they should remember that Earl Warren himself oversaw the internment of Japanese Americans from California during World War II. Some constitutional scholars believe it was precisely because Warren had participated in such executive actions during wartime that he became even more devoted to protecting the rights of minorities. Perhaps Elena Kagan's experience crafting the Obama administration's wartime response to terrorists will help her draw a clearer line in protecting the constitutional rights of individual citizens against a natural security leviathan.

[Via Chris Bray.]

Comments

[MP]

After the Stalinist purges, there was more food for everyone else. Hooray Stalin!

[Episiarch]

I am continually reminded that being a partisan makes you so fucking stupid that even discussing things with one is not just a waste of time, but actually makes me stupider as well.

[joe]

God bless Linda Monk. She’s doing God’s work.

[BakedRepublican]

Wrong! It’s about Obortma choosing a Supreme Justice who will destroy all freedom! Wake up! If we don’t give the Republicans total power in 2012, all is LOST!

[Corduroy Rocks]

Using that logic, I shall Godwin this thread.

Himmler for Secretary of Health and Human Services!

[R C Dean]

Perhaps Elena Kagan’s John Yoo’s experience crafting the Obama Bush administration’s wartime response to terrorists will help her him draw a clearer line in protecting the constitutional rights of individual citizens against a natural security leviathan.

Why not?

[The Gobbler]

Why not, indeed.

[Pro Libertate]

Why not George W. Bush himself? Same logic applies.

[John]

Actually it applies better. Warren was a chief exectutive in California not a judge.

[Spartacus]

To restate: the best prohibionists are former junkies. Therefore, we should hire a junkie to be our chief prohibitionist.

[Rhayader]

Actually that would probably fit pretty well. Ever try to argue about drug policy with someone in recovery? All you get is a bunch of stories about all the stupid and/or evil shit the person has done in his life, as if the story makes the need for prohibition self-evident.

[wylie]

as if the story makes the need for prohibition self-evident.

Instead of just convincing me i need to get the hell away from that person as fast as possible.

[?]

That’s actually the best argument for Kagan that’s available to a Democrat sustaining the pretense of believing the things Democrats pretend to believe, now that they’ve decided to pretend her being gay is a shameful unmentionable not-true slur on lesbians like her (or something).

The next best argument for her is “She’s really Bob Costas. I mean, look at him.”

[Mike M.]

Seriously. If she likes men, then I’m the next Pope.

[wayne]

There is a very good chance the next Pope will like men, perhaps this is the hand of God striking a cosmic balance.

[Fluffy]

Corduroy is right. If abusing minorities makes you the best person to protect them later, we definitely need HITLER’S BRAIN to be the next Supreme Court justice.

[Earl Warren]

I actually did vote for the internment before I voted against it.

[Zombie Earl Warren]

BBBBBRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAIIIIIIINNNNNNNSSSSSSSS!!!!

[Mad Max]

As long last you realize the importance of having brains, eh, Earl?

[Dello]

Because past performance is no guarantee of future performance?

[Dello]

Because past performance is no guarantee of future performance?

[The Gobbler]

What a Zen-like double post.

[P Brooks]

Perhaps Elena Kagan’s experience crafting the Obama administration’s wartime response to terrorists will help her draw a clearer line in protecting the constitutional rights of individual citizens against a natural security leviathan.

“Natural” security leviathan? WTF?

Perhaps Jeffrey Dahmer would have made an excellent pediatrician.

[Ghost of Jeffrey Dahmer]

Pediatric urologist, proctologist and nutritionist. I truly was gifted. And I hear there’s a doctor shortage?

[Eric Robert Rudolph]

Nominate me! I’ll protect Roe vs Wade and declare the DOMA unconstitutional.

[Go Gadget Go]

You are right dude, that is pretty bad indeed.

Lou
http://www.r-u-being-logged.es.tc

[Rabbit Scribe]

“The Worst Argument for Elena Kagan That You’ll Read Today”

Oh, I can confidently predict it wins that race in a runaway, and it ain’t even lunchtime yet. It may be the worst argument for ANYTHING I’ll read EVER. I think I sprained something in my brain…

[peachy]

On the plus side, that qualifies you to be nominated for the Supreme Court. Congratulations!

[Rabbit Scribe]

I’m afraid I’d be insufficiently sensitive to citizens’ First Amendment right to post a bunch of syllogistic folderol on HuffPo.

[ClubMedSux]

Using that same line of reasoning, I also nominate Chemical Ali to head the UN’s weapons inspection program. (And yes, I know he’s dead, but that will only make him that much more concerned with protecting the living.)

[CoyoteBlue]

Fuckit, nominate Dick Cheney. I’m sure he’s feeling guilty enough about all that torture and shit.

[JW]

Paul Reubens for head of the Movie House Usher’s Union!

[Corduroy]

+1

[mitch]

It takes a thief to catch a thief!

[P Brooks]

“syllogistic folderol”

Very nice.

[Rhayader]

Joe Arpaio for ACLU president!

[John in Nashville]

The next best argument for her is “She’s really Bob Costas. I mean, look at him.”

I was thinking Brendan Fraser.

[Linda Monk]

Interesting that Chris Bray, as an alleged historian, wants to throw out Earl Warren’s landmark civil liberties rulings because of his involvement as California governor in Japanese American internment in WWII. History’s heroes are rarely unidimensional: First Amendment stalwart Hugo Black was a former member of the Klan; Thurgood Marshall informed to J. Edgar Hoover about alleged Communists in the civil rights movement. That I compared Elena Kagan to Earl Warren as a possible Supreme Court nominee was meant to enlarge the historical context of her nomination, which a true historian should have understood. Idealogical purity never makes for accurate history.

[Chris Bray]

Linda Monk hurts my brain.

[Chris Bray]

The Washington Post
May 1, 2009 Friday
Regional Edition

Not ‘Scapegoating,’ Simply Justice
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A20

It is dismaying that a man of David S. Broder’s wisdom and integrity would imply that a president is above the law [“Stop Scapegoating,” op-ed, April 26]. We did not accept that argument for Richard Nixon, and neither should we for George W. Bush or Barack Obama. The main job description of the president is to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” He does not have the discretion to turn his back on massive violations of the law.

The Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture are, under the Constitution, “the supreme law of the land” and require signatories to prosecute those who commit torture. Ronald Reagan endorsed the U.N. convention against torture enthusiastically, and our highest military officers support those standards. Lawyers, too, take an oath to “defend the Constitution of the United States” in their government service as well as in their admission to the bar. If anyone should be accountable for upholding legal standards, it is the lawyers in the Justice Department who are sworn to enforce the law, not just for their boss the president but for the American people, whom they represent. Those torture memos were not mere intellectual debates by academics; they were legal opinions rendered by practicing lawyers who are subject to the standards of the profession. It is just as illegal to advise someone to commit an unlawful act as it is to commit one.

The real scapegoats in this ugly scenario are soldiers such as then-Pvt. Lynndie R. England, who went to prison in 2005 for her role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, although, according to her lawyer, she suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome resulting in a below-average IQ. Now it is clear that Abu Ghraib was the predictable result, as some military lawyers warned at the time, of loosening standards for torture at Guantanamo. So why shouldn’t lawyers suffer the same consequences as the soldiers they imperil?

LINDA R. MONK
Alexandria

—

Linda Monk in 2009, talking about Bush administration lawyers: We have to hold government lawyers responsible for what they did in the service of the national security state!

Linda Monk in 2010, talking about an Obama administration lawyer: It’s shocking and outrageous to say that we should hold government lawyers responsible for what they did in the service of the national security state — just think how their prior experiences might make them more sensitive to later abuses!

Hack, hack, hack, hack, hack. What a joke.

[Linda Monk]

Elena Kagan has never supported torture or authorized torture, and if you had a brain that could get beyond insults you would realize that. Nothing I wrote in 2009 contradicts that. The main point I made at HuffPo, that the next SCT nominee has to marshall at least one conservative vote, as Stevens did, was adopted by GG in his analysis of Diane Wood. That’s how you influence opinion, not just hurl garbage in food fights.

[Chris Bray]

If anyone cares, my brain gets beyond insults with Linda Monk here:

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/125626.html