Elena Kagan Emerging As Supreme Court Front-Runner

[caseymoz]

Source: Huffington Post

Elena Kagan, President Obama's solicitor general, is rapidly emerging as a frontrunner to replace retiring Chief Associate Justice John Paul Stevens. Kagan is widely praised as an accomplished and intelligent attorney, but is far more conservative than Stevens and could shift the political dynamic of the high court.

Conservatives are responding favorably to the potential of a Justice Elena Kagan while liberals worry that, by choosing her, the administration would miss the opportunity to elevate a genuine progressive.

John Manning, a conservative professor at Harvard Law School, where Kagan served as dean, told HuffPost that he would firmly support a Kagan nomination. Professor Charles Fried, a Reagan administration solicitor general, also said that he'd support a Kagan pick.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/09/elena-kagan-emerging-as-s_n_532319.html

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What is this, he's shifting the court to the right? It's time for the liberal-progressives to go into rebellion. First Obama expands executive power, tramples on constitutional rights, and: gives assassination orders for an American Citizen (why hasn't that been discussed here?) Now he's leaning toward appointing a more conservative justice to the court?

I know the article soft-pedals this by saying that John Paul Stevens didn't look all that liberal when he started out. Which means we ought to gamble with her, too. When he doesn't have to throw the dice to please Conservatives, Democrats control the Senate.

I don't know if the message here is that Obama is a centrist, I mean, we already know that by now, or whether this one is simply a middle finger to the liberal-progressives. We should be insulted either way.