Evans Liberal Politics
July 2, 2010
Kagan Reminds Senators:
Legislation Is Your Job
Kagan Reminds Senators: Legislation Is Your Job, The New York Times, July 1, 2010, by Adam Liptak, photo of Elena Kagan from Wikipedia, excerpt quoted verbatim:
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court confirmation hearings are usually designed to probe a nominee’s conception of the role of the justices. But this week’s questioning of Elena Kagan turned into a tutorial on Congressional responsibility.
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Over and over, Ms. Kagan reminded the senators questioning her of their own duty to pass cogent, sensible — and constitutional — laws. The Supreme Court, she said, was not created to strike down foolish measures.
On Tuesday, for instance, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, asked what should happen if Congress enacted a law requiring Americans “to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day.”
“It sounds like a dumb law,” Ms. Kagan said. But she would not commit to striking it down. “I think that courts would be wrong to strike down laws that they think are senseless, just because they’re senseless,” she said.
Ms. Kagan repeatedly said she would show “great deference to Congress.” Perhaps surprisingly, that was not what many senators seemed to want to hear. They appeared to want the Supreme Court to save them from themselves.
Richard H. Pildes, a law professor at New York University, said Ms. Kagan’s attitude toward Congress amounted to tough love. “Elena is a hard-minded person,” he said. “She’s lucid and clear and demanding of herself and demanding of others.”
“The deference to Congress that she’s talking about,” Professor Pildes added, “brings with it a real sense of the responsibilities of Congress as well.”
Asked on Wednesday by Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, why, in her role as solicitor general, she had made an aggressive argument in defending a federal statute outlawing the sale of dogfighting videos, Ms. Kagan said poor legislative craftsmanship had left her little choice.
“I hesitate to criticize Congress’s work,” she said, “but it was a statute that was not drafted with the kind of precision that made it easy to defend from a First Amendment challenge.”
Ms. Kagan aligned herself with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who held his nose in the early years of the last century while voting to uphold statutes he thought were foolish.
Justice Holmes, Ms. Kagan said, “hated a lot of the legislation that was being enacted during those years, but insisted that if the people wanted it, it was their right to go hang themselves.”
In his memorable dissent in Lochner v. New York, a 1905 decision that struck down a New York work-hours law, Justice Holmes wrote that the Supreme Court should work hard to stay out of the way where economic legislation is concerned.
“A constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory,” he wrote. “It is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar, or novel, and even shocking, ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States.”
That is essentially the answer Ms. Kagan gave, in a kind of confirmation jujitsu, to questions from senators of both parties eager to see their views made into law by the courts rather than Congress.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, asked about opportunities for female lawyers. Ms. Kagan agreed that society had far to go. “But this isn’t the court’s role,” she said. “This really is Congress’s role.”
What about the disparity between sentences imposed for trafficking in crack and powder cocaine, one that tends to produce racially skewed punishment? asked Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois.
“It is a policy issue, quintessentially,” Ms. Kagan responded. “There’s nothing that the Supreme Court or that any court can do about it. It’s really one that Congress has to decide.”
Like judges, members of Congress also swear to uphold the Constitution, Ms. Kagan said, and they should not look to the courts to save them from their folly.
“They ought to be the policymakers for the nation,” Ms. Kagan said of legislators and other elected officials. “The courts have an important role to play, but it’s a limited role. It’s essentially sort of policing the boundaries and making sure that Congress doesn’t overstep its role, doesn’t violate individual rights or interfere with other parts of the governmental system.” ….
Read the full article here.
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Now the Truth Comes Out… July 3, 2010
Evans Liberal Politics
July 3, 2010
Now the Truth Comes Out…
Evans Liberal Politics, July 3, 2010, by “A Rather Vocal Critic”, quoted verbatim: Note by Paul Evans: This writer has been a friend of mine for many years. Although initially a supporter of Obama, he has felt obligated to be somewhat against the President in recent months. These opinions are his and not necessarily the opinion of Evans Liberal Politics. We felt he should have a voice. (chart by CNN money, editing by Paul Evans)
See 7.9 million jobs lost, many forever, CNN Money hosted on Yahoo, July 2, by Chris Isidore.
Why is it so hard for Republicans to understand that the majority of jobs lost (today or yesteryear) are not coming back? This is really not a “loss” contributed only by Democrats. These job losses started back in the 80s and probably earlier. Of course, NAFTA, CAFTA etc. didn’t help. I can remember working at Grumman and we were doing "collabrorative work" with foreign countries in 1979 and that cost jobs then here in Ohio. Krogers pulled out of Northern Ohio (late 1970s?) because they decided it was too expensive for workers because of the unions. I remember when they closed all their stores in NE Ohio. It was big news back then. Now there is rumor that Honda may take the majority of its production over to Indiana. The Ohio Honda plant has threatened to unionize. Honda said, "you do and we are out of here."
This Yahoo article addresses some of the issues of jobs that are lost forever. So who do you blame, the unions?, Congress, Republicans, Democrats, Presidents, workers for being so greedy in the past? When Bank One pulled its headquarters from Columbus as well as so many other companies why is the support from Columbus people still there for these companies?
The talk is that DFAS is going to be shut down when Gates get through with the Defense budget. The various services of the military want control back of their accounting services. This will affect many cities, St. Louis, Denver and many others.
The report today on the unemployment numbers (+83 thousand business, -208 thousand government, -125,000 overall) was skewed. There are so many who dropped off the unemployment roles — that is one reason the number went down. Plus, I hope every last Congress person gets voted out when their term is up (no matter what party) leaving DC without voting either up or down on the unemployment for 1+ million Americans. That is shameful.
How many of you or people you know rushed out and bought a street policy for health insurance? What the news is saying is what I posted several days ago….the cost is too high. Those who need it can’t afford it. Oh well, now they will have to pay a tax penalty for not getting insurance.
For all you Sherrod Brown and Dennis Kucnich lovers, DSCC and DFAS are still letting people go based on poor credit and other issues as far back as 20 years ago. They were NEVER able to stop the process that has been ongoing for over two years now. POOF…..these workers are gone in an instant, never to return.
I have decided NOT to pursue the following fun fact because I have other issues I am tackling. A major pharmacy offered to the State of Ohio and many other states to offer generics to people on Medicaid to help keep health care costs down of Ohio and other states. The answer was “NO. We want brand name only for people on Medicaid”. Hell, I can’t afford to keep up with co payments of some brand names. Medicaid, as Congress alluded last week, is out of control spending in each state. WHY WHY WHY would the State of Ohio and others NOT allow generics to those who PAY NOTHING (no co payments) for their medications? Again, I have not fully researched this. It was told to me by a regional manager for a large store. It would make a great investigative story. I thought generics were safe? If generics are good for old people and the disabled, why not people on Medicaid? Think of the cost savings that could happen. Hmmmmm What is the states’ hidden agenda? (Or do the states have a choice? Maybe there is some federal mandate. At any rate this law needs to be changed. There is an opportunity for someone to do some investigative journalism here, too. ~ Paul Evans)
See The Jobs Just Aren’t Out There, Daily Kos, July 2, 2010, by bmaples, excerpt quoted verbatim:
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