Kagan Not The People’s Choice

I’m not the biggest Elena Kagan supporter.  I don’t know why the President didn’t nominate a more progressive voice.  He could have.  There were a number of other candidates I’d have preferred over Kagan – Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, Sydney Thomas, Diane Wood.  And wouldn’t it be interesting, and highly entertaining if he had picked someone like Sean Penn, or Sean P. Diddy Combs?  Could you imagine the confirmation hearings?

My biggest problem is not the elitism argument, though I’d have preferred a man or woman of the people, a public school graduate, someone like a Judge Sydney Thomas of Montana.  There’s more to diversity than gender or skin color.  And I  don’t think the candidate has to have judicial experience to be a good judge.  Just because you’ve been one, doesn’t make you a good one.  And to use the experience argument is flawed because no candidate who has ever been put up had ever served  as a U.S. Supreme Court justice before.

My biggest problem with Kagan is that she may be too moderate, and that’s not what we need on the court at this moment in time.  I’m for balance, but a moderate is never progressive and being in the middle with little influence over the conservative ideologues would led to 6-3 rulings.   And that is a scary proposition.  Chock another one up for corporate America and the gun lobby.

Constantly touting the founding fathers, the zealots on the court are out of touch with twenty-first century America.  I’ve got news for them:  the founders are dead and they put into place a living document, not one forever fixed in time.  The Supreme Court needs to wake up and evolve with society, like the founders intended.  Or could it be that the 4 reactionaries on the court don’t believe in evolution?