Supreme Court

As the MRC’s Tim Graham documented yesterday, ABC and NBC's morning and evening newscasts have so far refused to tag Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as a “liberal,” with CBS’s Jan Crawford offering the sole ideological label of the nominee on Monday's Evening News: “Her career has put her solidly on the left.”

In contrast, all three networks made a major deal out of the last person nominated by a Republican President for a slot on the Court, Justice Samuel Alito. Out of the first 21 stories on the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows after Justice Alito’s selection, correspondents conveyed ten explicit “conservative” labels during the first 36 hours of coverage. In contrast, Graham documented just one “liberal” label in 14 Kagan stories during the equivalent time period after her selection...

Elena Kagan, the President's choice to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, begins courting Senators from both parties as she makes the rounds on Capitol Hill Wednesday. Kagan who currently holds the post of U.S. Solicitor General, will meet with leaders in the Senate, Harry Reid (D-NV) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) before sitting down for formal meetings with individual senators who will decide her fate during confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In addition to Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ranking Member Pete Sessions (R-AL), Kagan will also spend her afternoon talking to Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Herbert Kohl (D-WI), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- While mainstream media outlets misrepresent a legal memo Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan wrote during her tenure with the Clinton administration, a pro-life group says the reality is that Kagan's memo helped ensure partial-birth abortions stayed legal six years longer.

At issue is a memorandum Kagan wrote to President Bill Clinton advising him to support a phony partial-birth abortion ban that actually prohibited no abortions.

The memo is presented by some as showing Kagan urging Clinton to support a late-term abortion ban, sponsored by pro-abortion ex-Sen. Tom Daschle....

(CNSNews.com) – Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan said the high court should be focused on ferreting out improper governmental motives when deciding First Amendment cases, arguing that the government’s reasons for restricting free speech were what mattered most and not necessarily the effect of those restrictions on speech.

Kagan, the solicitor general of the United States under President Obama, expressed that idea in her 1996 article in the University of Chicago Law Review entitled, “Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine.”

In her article, Kagan said that examination of the motives of government is the proper approach for the Supreme Court when looking at whether a law violates the First Amendment. While not denying that other concerns, such as the impact of a law, can be taken into account, Kagan argued that governmental motive is “the most important” factor...

At her first opportunity to do so, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan banned military recruiters from campus during her tenure as dean of Harvard Law School, in protest over the Pentagon's policies on gays.

Ms. Kagan's defenders insist the nominee was simply following the law as it worked its way through the courts, but Ms. Kagan banned the recruiters as soon as an appeals court in 2004 struck down a law tying federal funding to allowing military recruiting on campus. She acted despite the court's order that the ruling not take effect until the Supreme Court reviewed the case...

The fact that Elena Kagan never served as a judge is being touted as an asset by her supporters -- but for the Senate Judiciary Committee members who need to vet her Supreme Court nomination, the lack of a paper trail makes their job that much harder.

The other eight justices on the Supreme Court all served on the bench at some point in their lives and came to Capitol Hill with a portfolio of opinions to present to the Senate before answering questions.

But Kagan has none of that. The material she submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee last year for her solicitor general nomination covered about a dozen articles, including two book reviews. The rest of the background material was made up of e-mails and a slew of speeches and interviews she gave....

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- To hear mainstream media outlets like the Associated Press and Washington Post tell the story, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan once urged President Bill Clinton to back a ban on partial-birth or late-term abortions. The take from the stories is that Kagan's rock solid pro-abortion views aren't that strong.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Post indicates "activists on both the left and the right seek to better understand how the solicitor general might rule on a right to privacy [read: unlimited abortion] if she is confirmed to the court"...

The 7-foot-tall metal cross that has stood in California's Mojave Desert for 75 years and withstood a hard-fought battle in the Supreme Court was ripped down and stolen Sunday night, according to state officials.

"This is an outrage, akin to desecrating people's graves," said Kelly Shackelford, president of the Liberty Institute, which represents the caretakers of the Mojave Desert War Memorial. "It's a disgraceful attack on the selfless sacrifice of our veterans. We will not rest until this memorial is re-installed."

The National Park Service says someone cut the metal bolts holding the metal-pipe cross to the top of Sunrise Rock and made off with it Sunday night or before dawn on Monday...

As Elena Kagan's liberal stance has been noted among conservatives, the nation's largest public policy women's organization says President Obama's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court considers her own views more important than national security.

Concerned Women for America (CWA) expressed its concerns about Kagan even before President Obama announced her nomination to the high court Monday. CEO Penny Nance notes that rather than name someone who would unite opposing sides, the president chose an extreme leftist who is best known for banning military recruiters from the Harvard University campus when she was dean of the law school there...

(CNSNews.com) – Solicitor General Elena Kagan, nominated by President Obama to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, has called the military’s ban on homosexuals “a profound wrong” and “a moral injustice of the first order.”

Kagan made the comments while serving as dean of Harvard Law School during the 2005 controversy over whether Congress could withhold federal funding from universities that discriminate against the military. Kagan joined a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the government.

“I abhor the military’s discriminatory recruitment policy,” Kagan wrote in an email to Harvard Law students on October 6, 2003. “This [policy] is a profound wrong – a moral injustice of the first order. And it is a wrong that tears at the fabric of our own community, because some of our members cannot, while others can, devote their professional careers to their country”...