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May 14, 2010
Kagan Shielded Saudis From 9/11 Lawsuit and Komrade Kagan By Mark Alexander
Kagan shielded Saudis from 9/11 lawsuit
Sided with kingdom in case brought by victims of terror attacks
Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, helped shield Saudi Arabia from lawsuits filed by families of 9/11 victims seeking to target countries and leaders who helped finance al-Qaida.
"I'm very concerned about her views on executive power and her views with respect to the separation of power," Stephen A. Cozen, the lead attorney in the case for 9/11 victims, told WND.
"I believe she must be asked questions about whether or not citizens who are attacked inside the U.S. have the right to file suits domestically against terrorism financiers," said Cozen, the founder and chairman of Cozen O'Connor, a Philadelphia-based law firm with 24 offices throughout the country.
Cozen recounted to WND an April 2009 meeting he held with Kagan to present the case for his clients – thousands of family members and others affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks who sought damages from the Saudi kingdom, Saudi high commissioners and the country's rulers.
Cozen's suit documented evidence the Saudis funneled millions of dollars to al-Qaida prior to the 9/11 attacks and that the kingdom continued to finance terrorism thereafter.
He was arguing to bring his case to the Supreme Court after it was dismissed by a lower court and an appeals circuit, which had cited the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 as barring lawsuits against leaders of foreign governments.
Cozen, however, documented how both the Supreme Court and U.S. government briefs allowed for such lawsuits in the past, finding the Immunities Act did not hold in similar cases.
Kagan's friend-of-the-court brief argued Cozen's case would interfere with U.S. foreign policy. She urged the Supreme Court not to hear the case.
In her brief, Kagan acknowledged inconsistencies with the lower court rulings and even conceded there were legitimate questions about whether the Immunities Act should apply in Cozen's case for the 9/11 victims.
Still, she sided with the Saudis, who had presented their case directly to Kagan that the terror victims lawsuit was harming U.S.-Saudi relations.
The Supreme Court sided with Kagan and refused to hear the case.
Kagan's brief prompted Sens. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to submit a bill to amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
Specter at the time strongly denounced Kagan.
"She wants to coddle the Saudis," he said.
Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband was killed in the 9/11 attacks, told the Philadelphia Inquirer last year, "I find this reprehensible."
"One would have hoped that the Obama administration would have taken a different stance than the Bush administration, and you wonder what message this sends to victims of terrorism around the world," she said.
Cozen, meanwhile, told WND he believes Kagan is "eminently qualified" for the Supreme Court. Still, he said he is concerned about her decision in his case and hew views on the separation of powers.
WND recently reported Kagan has advocated for an increased presidential role in regulation, which, she conceded, would make such affairs more and more an extension of the president's own policy and political agenda.
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Komrade Kagan
The Patriot Post
" The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not ... would make the judiciary a despotic branch. ... [T]he germ of dissolution of our federal government is ... the federal Judiciary ... working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped. ... They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone." --Thomas Jefferson
Obama has nominated his Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
Since this is a lifetime appointment, we should consider the implications for our Constitution and for liberty.
Will this Ivy League academic be an advocate for Essential Liberty and Rule of Law, or does she subscribe to the errant notion of a "living constitution"?
According to Obama, Kagan "is widely regarded as one of the nation's foremost legal minds," and he's right -- if by "widely" he means among elitist Leftists.
In fact, Obama's assessment of Kagan mirrored that of her über-Leftist Princeton prof Sean Wilentz, under whose tutelage Kagan wrote her glowing thesis on socialism in the early 20th century. "Kagan," said Wilentz, "is one of the foremost legal minds in the country."
In her thesis, Kagan lamented the fact that free enterprise overcame socialism and concluded, "A coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories than of socialism's greatness."
"Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force?" wondered Kagan. "Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation's established parties? Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP [Socialist Party] exhausted itself..."
In her thesis, Kagan lamented the fact that free enterprise overcame socialism and concluded, "In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories than of socialism's greatness. ... In unity lies their only hope."
Ah, yes, the "hope and change" necessary for Obama to make good on his promise to "fundamentally transform the United States of America."
Just as Obama was mentored by Marxists, Kagan has been steeped in socialist doctrine, and is no doubt rejoicing in the resurgence of socialism in the U.S. under the leadership of Obama and his water boys in the legislative and judicial branches.
As for her qualifications for a seat on the Supreme Court, Obama insists that Kagan "is an acclaimed legal scholar with a rich understanding of constitutional law."
In fact, she has exactly no judicial experience and very limited litigation experience. Legal authority Ken Klukowski writes that Kagan is an ideal nominee for Obama: "She's a liberal without a paper trail."
Sounds like the Obama model.
Most of Kagan's experience is academic (read: "deficient"), at the University of Chicago Law School and as dean of Harvard Law School, where she attempted to boot military recruiters off campus at the height of the war in Iraq. Her reason for this frontal assault on our nation's ability to defend itself was the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which Kagan called "a profound wrong -- a moral injustice of the first order."
Even The Washington Post concludes that her qualifications "can only be called thin," noting further, "even her professional background is thin."
While media profiles of Kagan paint her, predictably, as a moderate "consensus-builder," Kagan is, in fact, a genuine, hardcore Leftist, a former legal counsel to the Clintonista regime who began her political career in earnest as a staffer for liberal Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis's presidential run back in 1988.
Her liberal roots were firmly entrenched by the time she graduated from Princeton in 1981, the year Ronald Reagan took office. A New York Times profile of Kagan notes, "On Election Night, she drowned her sorrow in vodka and tonic as Ronald Reagan took the White House."
More recently, the thin legal trail she has established as Obama's Solicitor to the Supreme Court raises serious questions about Kagan's commitment to the plain language of the First Amendment.
In a 1996 law review article, Kagan wrote that the "redistribution of speech" is not "itself an illegitimate end," which is another way of saying that the court has a responsibility to level the playing field for various ideas, including the Internet, talk radio, etc.
She recently offered a similar argument before the High Court in regard to the government's authority to regulate print materials under campaign finance laws, a notion that Chief Justice John Roberts concluded, "As a free-floating test for First Amendment coverage, that [proposition] is startling and dangerous."
Says Kagan, "Constitutional rights are a product of constitutional text as interpreted by the courts and understood by the nation's citizenry and its elected representatives."
She undoubtedly came to that errant conclusion while clerking for Justice Thurgood Marshall, of whom she later wrote admiringly, "In Justice Marshall's view, constitutional interpretation demanded, above all else, one thing from the courts: it demanded that the courts show a special solicitude for the despised or disadvantaged. It was the role of the courts, in interpreting the Constitution, to protect the people who went unprotected by every other organ of government -- to safeguard the interests of people who had no other champion. The Court existed primarily to fulfill this mission. ... The Constitution, as originally drafted and conceived, was 'defective.' The Constitution today ... contains a great deal to be proud of. But the credit does not belong to the Framers. It belongs to those who refused to acquiesce in outdated notions of 'liberty,' 'justice,' and 'equality.' Our modern Constitution is [Marshall's]."
Setting aside her utter disdain for our Constitution and its authors, Kagan is flat-out wrong about the role of the High Court. It exists to safeguard the unbiased application of our Constitution's original intent.
In 1987, the year before Kagan clerked for Marshall, he delivered a lecture entitled, "The Constitution: A Living Document," in which he argued that the Constitution must be interpreted in a way that succumbs to the contemporary political, moral and cultural climate.
That is the very definition of the "living constitution" upon which judicial activists have relied in order to amend our Constitution by judicial fiat rather than its prescribed method in Article V.
No doubt, Kagan will advance that heretical and treasonous interpretation.
Obama claims that Kagan understands the law "not as an intellectual exercise or words on a page -- but as it affects the lives of ordinary people."
Not as "words on a page"?
It is precisely that rejection of the plain language of our Constitution that led President Thomas Jefferson in 1804 to call the court "the despotic branch."
Indeed, since the very founding of our constitutional government, the judiciary has worked "like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped."
Back in 1987, during confirmation hearings for Judge Robert Bork (one of the most qualified jurists ever nominated to the High Court), one Leftist senator commented, "The Framers intended the Senate to take the broadest view of its constitutional responsibility," especially in regard to the nominee's "political, legal and constitutional views." That senator was Joe Biden, who rejected Judge Bork because he was a "constitutional constructionist," precisely the attribute our Founders wanted in jurists.
Perhaps those in the Senate today will rightly consider Kagan's "political, legal and constitutional views," and reject her nomination in order to preserve Essential Liberty and Rule of Law.
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher, PatriotPost.US
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Wild Thing's comment.........
Freom RedState blog has her thesis , Elena Kagan is an open and avowed socialist.
CLICK here if you would like to read it,
TO THE FINAL CONFLICT: SOCIALISM IN NEW YORK CITY, 1900-1933 by Elena Kagan ( PDF file)
The woman declares that socialists must stick together instead of fracture in order to advance a socialist agenda, which Kagan advocates.
Kagan wrote her thesis at the height of the cold war praising a group that collaborated with our enemies .
I read her thesis, It is very boring. Drab is a good description. It is basically a historical documentary of the Socialist movement in the early 1900s. ......the conclusion. She opines about the failure of the movement and suggests why the Socialist Party never succeeded. HER ENTIRE PREMISE IS GROSSLY FLAWED (in my opinion). She blames the American people (duh). There is no mention, what so ever, of the United States Constitution and how Socialism is in direct conflict with what the founders of this nation intended and scribed.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at May 14, 2010 07:48 AM
Comments
The classic Communist Bull Dyke!!!
Posted by: Jack at May 14, 2010 10:22 AM
What a pig.
Posted by: TomR at May 14, 2010 01:08 PM
They always have a shield. Either race, sexual orientation or whatever. This person is obviously a socialist but will hold up the shield to deflect any dissent on her confirmation. Political correctness is going to start the next war, one way or the other.
Posted by: Jim at May 14, 2010 02:31 PM
The more I learn about her, the more I fear what she may do to this nation.
Posted by: BobF at May 14, 2010 04:51 PM
She needs to be defeated and tossed out like Judge Bork was, then maybe Barry will get the message, No menagerie's on the supreme court.
Posted by: Mark at May 14, 2010 10:01 PM
Being a graduate from an Ivy League school is not a negative. The negative is that the Supreme Court is losing Educational Diversity amongst its members. A very simple example could be vanilla ice cream. Everyone likes vanilla ice cream. The problem arises when you limit your diet exclusively to vanilla ice cream. You get lots of calcium, but you lose out on all of the other needed vitamins and minerals to live a healthy productive life. The same can be said about losing the diversity of knowledge and diverse perspectives that people from other institutions can provide. The majority of the Supreme Court Judges should not be Ivy League graduates.
I am of the opinion that the Supreme Court is setting itself up for a challenge, as to whether or not 1) their opinions are in fact biased due to their common Ivy League education, and 2) they are engaging in discrimination, by limiting the Court to Ivy League Graduates.
The following applies to Kagan, just as it did to Sotomajor.
This editorial was created by 160 Associated Press readers under a Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution License 3.0 using MixedInk's collaborative writing tool. For more about how it was created, see here. It can be republished only if accompanied by this note.
Obamas Appointment of Sotomayor Fails to Offer Educational Diversity to Court.
Sotomayor does not offer true diversity to our Supreme Court. The potential power of Sotomayor's diversity as a Latina Woman, from a disadvantaged background, loses its strength because her Yale Law degree does not offer educational diversity to the current mix of sitting Judges. Once she walked through the Gates of Princeton and then Yale Law School she became educated by the same Professors that have educated the majority of our current Supreme Court Justices, and our Presidents.
Diversity in education is extremely important. We need to look for diversity in our ideas, and if our leaders are from the same educational background, they lose the original power of their ethnic and gender diversity. The ethnic and gender diversity many of our current leaders possess no longer brings a plethora of new ideas, only the same perspective they learned from their common Ivy League education. One example of the common education problem is that Yale has been heavily influenced by a former lecturer at Yale, Judge Frank, who developed the philosophy of Legal Realism. Frank argued that Judges should not only look at the original intent of the Constitution, but they should also bring in outside influences, including their own experiences in order to determine the law. This negative interpretation has influenced both Conservatives and Liberals graduating from Yale. It has been said that Legal Realism has infested Yale Law School and turned lawyers into political activists.
A generation of appointees with either a Harvard or Yale background, has the potential to distort the proper interpretation of our Constitution. America needs to decentralize the power structure away from the Ivy League educated individual and gain from the knowledgeable and diverse perspectives that people from other institutions can provide. We should appoint Supreme Court Justices educated from amongst a wider group of Americas Universities.
Harvard -
Chief Justice John Roberts
Anthony Kennedy
Antonin Scalia
Stephen Breyer
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Harvard, Columbia)
Yale
Samuel Alito - Yale JD 1975
David Souter
Clarence Thomas - Yale JD 1974
Sonia Sotomayor - Yale JD 1979
Northwestern Law School.
Justice John Paul Stevens
The Presidents we have elected for the last twenty years, have themselves been Harvard or Yale educated. This has the potential to create an even more closed minded interpretation of our laws.
Yale - Bush Sr. - 4 years
Yale Law - Clinton - 8 years
Yale - Bush, Jr. - 8 Years
Harvard Law - Obama - 4 - 8 years
When we consider that our Nation has potentially twenty - eight years of Presidential influence from these two Universities, as Americans, we should look long and hard at the influence Yale and Harvard have exerted on our nation's policies. Barack Obama promised America Change, but he has continued the same discriminatory policy by appointing a Yale graduate over many qualified candidates that graduated from other top Colleges and Universities in America.
Posted by: hjp at May 15, 2010 12:02 PM
