On May 28, 2010, 15 days after Katyal sent Kagan this memo informing her that she had “substantially participated” in the Golden Gate case–and a month before Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings started–Kagan’s office submitted a 26-page brief to the Supreme Court in the case. The brief cited PPACA by name 12 times and referred to it more generally as “the federal legislation” or “the new federal legislation” an additional 6 times.

The justices — minus Justice Elena Kagan, who did not participate in consideration of the petition — said they will review a federal appeals court ruling that blocked several provisions in the Arizona law, including one that requires police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person’s immigration status if officers suspect he is in the country illegally.
Like the health care debate, the case adds another politically charged dispute between a Republican-dominated state and the Democratic administration to the court’s election-year lineup. On Friday, the justices also intervened in a partisan fight over redistricting in Texas. That case will be heard in January.

CNSNews.com and Judicial Watch were seeking public release of the emails through lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The “purely personal objective” cited by the judge was Kagan’s goal of being confirmed to the United States Supreme Court.

At issue is whether Kagan must recuse herself as a Supreme Court Justice when the cases challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare reach the court.

“On June 24, 2011, I received the enclosed letter from 49 Members of Congress,” Chairman Smith said in a letter sent today to Attorney General Eric Holder. “On their behalf, I write to request relevant documents and witness interviews in order to properly understand U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan’s involvement in health care legislation or litigation while serving as United States Solicitor General.
“In recent weeks, question have been raised about whether Justice Kagan’s prior work on what became the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) while serving as Solicitor General should disqualify her from hearing challenges to its constitutionality,” Chairman Smith wrote Holder.
“All parties agree the critical question is the extent of her involvement, as Solicitor General, in formulating the Administration’s legal position on PPACA, which was signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010,” wrote Smith.

“We respectfully call upon the House Judiciary Committee to promptly investigate the extent to which U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was involved in preparing a legal defense of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) during her tenure as Solicitor General,” the 49 lawmakers wrote in a letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R.-Texas), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Rep. John Conyers (D.-Mich.), the ranking member of the committee.
“Contradictory to her 2010 confirmation testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently released Department of Justice (DOJ) documents indicate that Justice Kagan actively participated with her Obama Administration colleagues in formulating a defense of PPACA,” the letter said.

The Media Research Center and Judicial Watch obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that was filed in February 2011.

In an email dated Jan. 8, 2010, then-Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal sent an email to Senior Counsel Brian Hauck and Deputy Attorney General Thomas Perrelli that indicates Kagan played a key role in coming up with a legal defense.

• Susan Collins (Maine)
• Judd Gregg (New Hampshire)
• Richard Lugar (Indiana)
• Lindsey Graham (no surprise) (South Carolina)
• Olympia Snowe (Maine)

All of a sudden, one Democrat is suddenly trying to distance himself from the party, but it’s too late. Ben Nelson of the Cornhusker kickback and Democrat from Nebraska voted no on Kagan. Ben Nelson becomes the first Democrat senator to vote against a Democrat court nominee since 1967 (Thurgood Marshall).

From The Hill

A Republican filibuster of Elena Kagan would be “an unheard of, dirty thing to do,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said Thursday.

Hatch, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told ABC News’s “Topline” today that his party won’t prevent an up-or-down vote on Obama’s SCOTUS nominee.

“Republicans aren’t going to filibuster her,” he said.

The ranking member of the committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), said last weekend that a filibuster of Kagan was “conceivable” depending on how this week’s hearings went.

Voters’ support for Kagan’s confirmation has changed little over the month of June, falling into a range of 33% to 36%. Meanwhile, the number of voters who are opposed to her confirmation has ranged from 41% to 42% during the same period. Voters were more divided on the question in surveys conducted in May.

While 62% of Democrats favor Kagan’s nomination, nearly the same number of Republicans (65%) oppose it. Voters not affiliated with either major political party are more evenly divided, but the plurality (49%) opposes.

The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on June 29-30, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Forty-one percent (41%) view Kagan favorably, while slightly more (46%) view her unfavorably. Those numbers include 16% who view her Very Favorably and 25% who view her Very Unfavorably, her highest negative rating so far.

Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters now view Kagan as politically liberal, the highest level measured since her nomination. Thirty-one percent (31%) see her as moderate and only 1% sees her as conservative. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure about Kagan’s ideology.

While voters’ opinions of the nominee have changed little since the confirmation hearings began, they are following news on Kagan more than before. Seventy-nine percent (79%) are following news on Kagan at least somewhat closely, up 10 points from last week. Twenty percent (20%) say they are not following news on the nominee closely, if at all.

A key event in the politics of partial-birth abortion was a report by a “select panel” of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a supposedly nonpartisan physicians’ organization. That report included this statement, which the Supreme Court found highly persuasive in striking down Nebraska’s partial-birth abortion ban:

ACOG declared that the partial-birth-abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” The Court relied on the ACOG statement as a key example of medical opinion supporting the abortion method.

Here is the shocking part: the ACOG report, as originally drafted, said almost exactly the opposite. The initial draft said that the ACOG panel “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.” That language horrified the rabidly pro-abortion Elena Kagan, then a deputy assistant to President Clinton for domestic policy. This is what Kagan wrote in a memo to her superiors in the Clinton White House:

Todd Stern just discovered that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) is thinking about issuing a statement (attached) that includes the following sentence: “[A] select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which [the partial-birth] procedure … would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.” This, of course, would be disaster — not the less so (in fact, the more so) because ACOG continues to oppose the legislation. It is unclear whether ACOG will issue the statement; even if it does not, there is obviously a chance that the draft will become public.

So Kagan took matters into her own hands: incredibly, she herself appears to have written the key language that eventually appeared in the ACOG report. Coffin writes:

So Kagan set about solving the problem. Her notes, produced by the White House to the Senate Judiciary Committee, show that she herself drafted the critical language hedging ACOG’s position. On a document [PDF] captioned “Suggested Options” — which she apparently faxed to the legislative director at ACOG — Kagan proposed that ACOG include the following language: “An intact D&X [the medical term for the procedure], however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”

Kagan’s language was copied verbatim by the ACOG executive board into its final statement, where it then became one of the greatest evidentiary hurdles faced by Justice Department lawyers (of whom I was one) in defending the federal ban. (Kagan’s role was never disclosed to the courts.)

The 5 to 4 decision does not strike any other gun control measures currently in place, but it provides a legal basis for challenges across the country where gun owners think that government has been too restrictive.

“It is clear that the Framers . . . counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the conservatives on the court.

Martin Ginsburg was an expert in tax law and taught at New York University, Columbia University and Georgetown University over the course of his career.

Survivors also include two children, Jane and James.

A private burial will take place at Arlington National Cemetery.

By comparison, just before Senate hearings began last summer for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, 37% favored her confirmation, and 39% were opposed.
Two weeks ago, 33% thought Kagan should be confirmed, and 41% disagreed. Support for Kagan’s confirmation was highest in mid-May, when 39% felt that way. Still, the same number (39%) did not think she should be a Supreme Court justice.
Whether or not voters want to see it happen, a solid majority believe she is likely to be confirmed. Eighty-three percent (83%) say Kagan will be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, including 54% who say it is Very Likely. Only six percent (6%) say it is unlikely she will be confirmed. Voters have been very confident about Kagan’s confirmation since her nomination.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWibqh0De50

“And I, like Professor Toulouse, I loved what happened in the Bork hearings. I wrote a review of Stephen Carter’s book recently where I said, “no, he has it all wrong. The Bork hearings were great, the Bork hearings were educational. The Bork hearings were the best thing that ever happened to Constitutional Democracy.” So, I share that view with Professor Toulouse.”

Two documents discovered at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and obtained by National Review suggest that Kagan was involved in these discussions. One does not contain her name, but the handwriting appears to be hers. (You can see an example of Kagan’s handwriting here.) It has the name of administration colleague Fran Allegra at the top, and lists two “Bad guy orgs” that might be covered — the NRA and the KKK.

The second does have Kagan’s name on it; it is a memo from Allegra to Kagan. Allegra reports that he checked the IRS’s “Cumulative List of Organizations Described in Section 170(c)” — the list of tax-exempt organizations, which, he says, are the only organizations the bill would cover — and that neither the NRA nor the KKK was on it. “If you have other names you want me to run down in the Cumulative List, I would be glad to check them out,” he adds, suggesting that Kagan requested the initial check of the NRA and the KKK.

Is Kagan so hostile to gun rights that she would compare the top gun-rights organization in the United States with a viciously racist hate group? It sure looks that way. We look forward to her explanation.

The thesis proved Elena Kagan is an open and avowed socialist. The woman declares that socialists must stick together instead of fracture in order to advance a socialist agenda, which Kagan advocates.

“She answered it, I felt, very honestly, and it was very clear to me after we spoke about it at length that she is supportive of the men and women who are fighting to protect us and very supportive of the military as a whole,” Brown told reporters after the meeting.

“I do not feel that her judicial philosophy will be hurting men and women who are serving,” Brown added.

The Massachusetts Republican would not say whether he will support Kagan.

“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.

Aaron Klein’s exposé of Barack Obama’s notorious connections with extremists and America-haters is scorching the best-seller lists. Order your copy of “The Manchurian President” today.

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.

“The Government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech. It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern,” wrote Roberts. “Its theory, if accepted, would empower the Government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations—as the major ones are. First Amendment rights could be confined to individuals, subverting the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy.”

Justice Kennedy described the law Kagan had defended as an illegitimate attempt to use “censorship to control thought.”

“When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,” Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. “This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”