An internal memorandum from the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) reveals that Justice Elena Kagan “substantially participated” in a health care case in San Francisco in which the Justice Department argued over the effect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). This raises grave new doubts about the appropriateness of Kagan’s participation as a justice in the Obamacare lawsuit scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court in March. There has been a lot of debate over Kagan’s direct involvement in defending the PPACA while she was …
Yesterday, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) spoke at Heritage on the urgent need to rein in federal spending and reform the budget process. As Thune explained, there are 26 committees and subcommittees dedicated to spending, but not one to cutting spending. Afterward, he sat down with us for a short interview about his proposal, his position on the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, and the new START treaty.
We have posted several videos from this summer’s Second Amendment Task Force this week. Today’s final installment is of remarks by Dave Kopel, Research Director at the Independence Institute. During his address, Kopel discussed the Kagan nomination in the broader context of the fight to protect gun rights. He specifically discussed the development of the Fourteenth Amendment and the role it can play in the defense of the Second Amendment.
This Tuesday voters in Missouri, by a 40-point margin, approved a ballot measure rejecting the individual mandate at the core of President Barack Obama’s health care law. Asked what the vote meant to the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs said: “Nothing.” Yesterday in San Francisco, federal judge Vaughn Walker gave the exact same weight to a California ballot measure that affirmed marriage as an institution between one man and one woman. Specifically Judge Walker overturned the California Marriage Protection Act after concluding, as a matter of fact, that the …
Yesterday, we shared a video of our own Hans von Spakovsky speaking at a Second Amendment Task Force event earlier this summer. Hans focused on Kagan’s record and how her inaction on certain Second Amendment-related issues speaks volumes about how she would deal with them on the bench. In today’s video, Stephen P. Halbrook, a 30 year veteran of litigation on 2nd Amendment rights, explains some cases that he worked on relating to the Second Amendment while Kagan was the point person on gun control during the administration of President …
The Senate today commenced debate on the nomination of Elena Kagan to serve a lifetime appointment on the U.S. Supreme Court. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) opened the proceedings with a strong statement of how conservatives should assess nominees to the High Court. Senator Sessions started with a discussion of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and Elena Kagan’s efforts to bar the military from recruiting on campus in her role as Dean of the Harvard Law School.
At a Second Amendment Task Force held earlier this summer, Hans Von Spakovsky, Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, explained that Elena Kagan’s lack of action in her current job as Solicitor General with regard to the 2nd Amendment speaks volumes about how Kagan would rule on similar cases that would appear before the Supreme Court. As Hans explained to the audience, “”A lot of the discussion and speculation about Kagan’s legal philosophy is limited by her very thin record of scholarship and her complete lack of experience in …
The Senate today commenced debate on the nomination of Elena Kagan to serve a lifetime appointment on the U.S. Supreme Court. The debate opened with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee setting the tone for liberals in the Senate. The debate expected to last until the end of the week. Senator Leahy led off with the following statement: More than 12 weeks ago, President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. …
7:30 Alt on Kagan’s Activism and Willingness to Interpret the Constitution based on Foreign Law Robert Alt entered into the record a written statement in support of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this evening. Alt’s statement explains why Kagan’s activism calls into question her fitness for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the nation. The key question for any nominee is how will they approach the judicial process—what is their judicial philosophy. There is a reason that critics of the Roberts Court have chosen the nomenclature …
This Sunday, our nation will celebrate Independence Day, which commemorates the Continental Congress’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration preamble reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The fact that we as a nation came together every year to celebrate this document might lead many Americans to believe that a Supreme Court Justice should …
