Posted on 11/26/2011 10:37:39 AM PST by Enosh
WASHINGTON – Conservative interest groups and Republican lawmakers want Justice Elena Kagan off the health care case. Liberals and Democrats in Congress say it’s Justice Clarence Thomas who should sit it out.
Neither justice is budging — the right decision, according to many ethicists and legal experts.
None of the parties in the case has asked the justices to excuse themselves. But underlying the calls on both sides is their belief that the conservative Thomas is a sure vote to strike down President Barack Obama’s health care law and that the liberal Kagan is certain to uphold the main domestic achievement of the man who appointed her.
The stakes are high in the court’s election-year review of a law aimed at extending coverage to more than 30 million people. Both sides have engaged in broad legal and political maneuvering for the most favorable conditions surrounding the court’s consideration of the case.
Taking away just one vote potentially could tip the outcome on the nine-justice court.
Republican lawmakers recently have stepped up their effort against Kagan, complaining that the Justice Department has not fully revealed Kagan’s involvement in planning the response to challenges to the law. Kagan was Obama’s solicitor general, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, until he nominated her to the high court last year.
“The public has a right to know both the full extent of Justice Kagan’s involvement with this legislation while she was solicitor general, as well as her previously stated views and opinions about the legislation while she was serving as solicitor general,” the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said Tuesday in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.
(Excerpt) Read more at oddonion.com ...
Neither will. Perhaps they should but they won’t.
I wonder how many maggots on Capitol Hill have spouses who are going to make millions BECAUSE of the passage of Barry’s “Healthcare” law. This crap with Justice Thomas is just a bunch of communist bovine scatology.
Kagan has to recuse. She was directly involved and openly biased. Thomas does not have to recuse, the attacks on him are a smoke screen with no no basis done by democrats to cover for their real problem with their Obamacare pushing judge.
Thomas? No Way! He has absolutely no reason to recuse himself. He wasn’t part of drafting the bill, nor was he on the WH staff writing the defense for it, as was Mzzz. Kagan.
Kagan has to recuse. She was directly involved and openly biased. Thomas does not have to recuse, the attacks on him are a smoke screen with no no basis done by democrats to cover for their real problem with their Obamacare pushing judge.
It is a bit like a teenage girl throwing the kitchen sink worth of arguments in order to get her way, leaving the rest of us wondering what the hell she just said.
The GOP has to impeach if she won’t recuse.
The design of the Supreme Court is not pretty. I haven’t thought about what the answer really is, but it’s lacking. But perhaps there is no better answer; perhaps that ugly solution is the best. It’s unwise to make changes when one really does not know what one is doing.
But it’s almost like perhaps during their terms, Supreme Court Justices should be sequestered, have no access to news, whether via TV, internet, print, radio - anything.
They have always been too aware of the politics of the day.
This is a good design in some ways, like much of the government design, that results in an imperfect mechanism but allows for continual correction. They don’t decide cases in a vaccuum, they are aware of the societal context of their decisions.
It’s just frustrating that so many opinions are politically motivated and simply a rationalization of the desired results.
Thomas's wife is not in government. Kagan was directly involved in the legislation
Kagan is the only one of the two with an actual conflict of interests. Justice Thomas has no conflict whatsoever.
Well I said neither will leave so it does not matter who leaves and who stays. They both will stay.
The only reason they made her an issue is because they knew there were grounds for Kagan's recusal so they made something up for our side to make it sound like is it a case of moral equivalancy.
It's not.
Elena Kagan is on the Supreme Court bench for one reason only: as a cheerleader for the Obama agenda, most of which will be tested by court challenges for many years to come. The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” is only the first of many to be presented, but by no means the last.
She does not have judicial temperment, nor sufficient practical experience in Constitutional law, to rule competently on ANY issue concerning the interpretation of existing law, precedents, and ramifications of rulings relating to the constitutional basis for any of the Obama agenda.
With no clue as to the meaning of most of the Bill of Rights, or the spirit behind which these provisions came to be included in the Constitution, she is unfit for the office to which she is appointed.
Harriet Miers would have been a far better choice to be placed on the Supreme Court, but she was threatened with a much more rudely applied anal exam than Kagan has ever been subjected to.
The left pulls the “moral equivalence” card yet again.
I am really, really angry that the Republicans refuse to speak out on this. Clarence Thomas basically has been left to defend himself, ever since he was first appointed, even though he is one of the soundest judges who has ever served on SCOTUS.
And what is Kagan’s qualification? That she is an extreme leftist who wrecked the program at Harvard Law School?
Seems obvious Kagan should excuse herself...she’s already done so on several other instances. I don’t know about Thomas...that looks like a grey area to me. I can kinda see their point about Thomas but I’m not so sure its a strong one.
The MSM will go after Thomas. The MSM won’t see any conflict for Kagan even if she wrote the thing. lol
I'll bet you're right. That's what so sickening about this. This commununist regime is completely unaccountable--lawless, actually. And, where are the people who apply the law to Obama's regime? I guess they're scared.
Why should Justice Thomas recuse himself?
Because the left doesn’t like him?
Kagan actually advocated for the new law. It was her job. She was paid to lobby for the law. She favors it.
She is beyond biased and needs to recuse herself
Thomas is none of those things. He has no relationship with the case.
Liberals are insane.
Thomas shouldn’t have to. His “involvement” is via his wife.
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