Abortion and civil rights activists are worried Elena Kagan isn’t liberal enough

It appears as if Barack Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court is going to get a little more contentious than his last pick– Sonya Sotomayor. But the contention seems to be coming from both sides, not just the right.

This is what happens when you nominate someone who doesn’t have much of a written resume, you garner doubts from both sides– just ask George W Bush how it went with Harriet Miers. Both sides have their doubts about Kagan; the right is afraid that she– much like Barack Obama– has purposely created this blank slate from which to work from in order to hide how much of a leftist she is, while the left is afraid that she may not be as liberal as they hope she will be. Everybody THINKS they know who she really is and what she stands for, but nobody KNOWS for sure.

The issues that the right are focusing their attention on are the issues of the second amendment, the freedom of speech, and the fact that she worked to prohibit military recruiters at Harvard– something that Jeff Sessions claims broke the law. Eyebrows were raised by the right when it was learned that she was “not sympathetic” to a man who claimed his constitutional right to keep and bear arms was being violated. She also said that the second amendment as well as the right to free speech have “strong but not unlimited protection.” She has shown an aversion to the recent Supreme Court decision that ruled part of the McCain/Feingold campaign finance law unconstitutional.

But the fact remains that Elena Kagan will be confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice– that is unless the left raises too much of a fuss about the unknown aspects of Kagan’s stances, so I am going to focus this post on the two major issues that it appears the left may have with her.

The issues that appear to be most concerning to the left are her lack of activity on civil rights issues, and her stance on abortion.

Let us look at the issue of civil rights first:

Her resume notably lacks a stint doing the kind of traditional civil-rights work that other Democratic nominees could point to, as evidence of their liberal credentials.

This really should be a non-issue, especially in light of the fact that the NAACP has unanimously endorsed her but the fact is that her lack of a written record on these issues has many liberals concerned about her positions.

the issue of race is one reason some liberals fear Kagan’s confirmation would actually tug the court to the right, particularly on voting rights, immigration and racial profiling cases that could come before the justices

I am not even going to get into how insulting that position is– the fact that the liberals believe that a court which moved to the right would restrict voting rights stands on its own as outrageous– as if asking a voter to prove that he or she is actually the person they are claiming to be somehow violates their rights.

But the racial concerns that the left has about Kagan gets even deeper than that because while she was the dean at Harvard no minorities became tenured.

No African-American became a tenured or tenure-track professor at Harvard Law School while Kagan was dean

And then there is the following quote from a memo she wrote to President Clinton in 1997– one of the few times she is actually on record saying something:

“We believe that the central focus of the race initiative should be a race-neutral opportunity agenda that reflects these common values and aspirations. Of course, there is still a need for strong civil rights enforcement, narrowly tailored affirmative action programs and certain other kind of targeted initiatives….But the best hope for improving race relations and reducing racial disparities over the long term is a set of policies that expand opportunity across race lines and, in doing so, force the recognition of shared interests.”

This certainly seems to the average person to be an entirely respectable position for a person to have. The fact that all races should be treated equally without one race being lifted above another is what would happen in a perfect world– but she used the term “race-neutral” which to the left means that race would not even be considered when a company was hiring a person. While that would seem like a good thing to the average person, the far leftist views this as a racist position. They want people to notice race and they want to give certain races preferential treatment, they do not want “race-neutral” policies. To the leftist noticing race and hiring based on race– providing you hire the correct race– is non-racist, while not noticing a person’s race and treating everyone equal is in fact being racist. This is backwards logic, by putting one race above another– no matter which race it is– you are being a racist, while using “race-neutral” policies is actually the non-racist position.

So the left just isn’t sure about Kagan’s civil rights credentials, but that is not the only issue that may pose a problem for Elena Kagan with the left in this country.

There is her abortion stance– or stances. Again, because of her lack of courtroom experience and political writings, we just don’t know exactly where she stands on this issue as well. There has been some pointing towards an essay that she wrote in 1980, in which she seemed to chide pro-life candidates by sarcastically calling them “these avengers of ‘innocent life’ and the B-1 bomber.” That seems to indicate that she is pro-choice– and it has some Republicans up in arms- but then there is the memo that she wrote in which she urged President Clinton to compromise on a bill in 1997 and keep in place a ban on late term abortions.

And it is this memo that has the left wondering about her liberal credentials in general. The left will have trouble supporting a person that was willing to compromise on an abortion issue– even an issue as vile as late term abortion. Any compromise on this issue is considered a loss by the far left who feel that all abortions should be allowed, at any time, for any reason.

There may not be allot of political writing from Elena Kagan to this date, but the writings that we have seen seem to indicate that she may not be as far left leaning as the man who she is replacing was. This means the left will see this nomination as the court moving further to the right, and that is not acceptable to them. And her total lack of courtroom experience does nothing to alleviate the concerns that the left has with her. They probably should trust Barack Obama, I don’t see any way that he would nominate a person who did not share his beliefs. But there is always the chance that Barack Obama chose a more moderate candidate in an attempt to pick a person who would be quickly confirmed so that his domestic agenda wouldn’t get derailed by a long confirmation process. If this was his thinking, than it quite possibly backfire on him.

The left simply does not know enough about her to give her their full support and that could be the one problem that Elena Kagan faces during her confirmation hearing, she may be drilled harder by the left than she is by the right. I hope that the senate confirmation hearings push her hard, because a Supreme Court nomination is one of the most important decisions that a president has to make, and that decision is for life. We need to know where Elena Kagan stands on these issue. America needs to know, both sides and the middle need to know. As of right now, none of us know what to expect from her.

Barack Obama is calling for quick action on Elena Kagan, but it is because of all of these unknown factors that Elena Kagan deserves heavy scrutiny on the issues– Barack Obama said it best himself while talking about Harriet Miers’ lack of judicial experience when he said, “since her experience does not include serving as a judge, we have yet to know her views on many of the critical constitutional issues facing our country today. In the coming weeks, we’ll need as much information and forthright testimony from Ms. Miers as possible so that the U.S. Senate can make an educated and informed decision on her nomination to the Supreme Court.”

Those may be the truest words that Barack Obama has ever spoken, hopefully he will understand that the people who have these concerns today, are many of the same people that had the similar concerns over the nomination of Harriet Miers, because he was one of those people.