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The House Judiciary Committee is launching an investigation to probe the involvement that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan had in “health care legislation or litigation” when she was serving as President Barack Obama’s solicitor general and was responsible for defending the administration’s position in federal court cases. The investigation will look at whether Kagan is required by law to recuse herself from judging cases challenging President Obama’s health-care law and whether her answers to questions posed by the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation process were accurate.

Forty-nine Republican members of Congress have asked the House Judiciary Committee to “promptly investigate” Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s role in preparing a legal defense for President Obama’s health care law when she served as solicitor general. In a letter to committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, and the panel’s ranking Democrat, John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the lawmakers said that “contradictory to her 2010 confirmation testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee,” recently released Justice Department documents show that Justice Kagan “actively participated with her Obama administration colleagues in formulating a defense” for the law. The lawmakers, including 10 doctors...

Full title: Citing Evidence They Call 'Contradictory' to Kagan's Confirmation Testimony, 49 Lawmakers Call for Judiciary Committee Investigation Forty-nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives--including the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee and two presidential candidates--are pointing to evidence they say is "contradictory" to Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan's confirmation testimony and calling for the House Judiciary Committee to investigate the matter. The lawmakers also say they believe that evidence already made public shows that Kagan must recuse herself from any court cases involving the health care bill signed into law by...

Did Elena Kagan mislead the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing when answering questions about her level of involvement in ObamaCare? Forty-nine House members have signed a letter to the House Judiciary Committee demanding an investigation of that question, as new documents suggest that the now-Supreme Court Justice helped the Obama administration craft legal defenses for the law. The signatories argue that this should require Kagan to recuse herself from considering the appeals that will likely arrive at the Supreme Court from three different appellate circuits: Forty-nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives are calling for the House...

When Elena Kagan became solicitor general of the United States in March 2009, she applied a high standard in recusing herself from her job as the administration's top advocate in federal court disputes. This standard was exemplified by the case of Horne v. Flores. Horne v. Flores, in which a school superintendent contested the efforts of federal courts to micromanage how his state's public schools helped Spanish-speaking students learn English, came out of Arizona. Kagan came out of Cambridge, Mass. -- a long way geographically and philosophically from Arizona. So why did Kagan recuse herself from representing the Obama administration...

Judicial Watch, a public-interest watch dog group, just unearthed a cache of e- mails showing that Elena Kagan participated in preparing the government's defense of ObamaCare during her time as President Obama's solicitor general. By all precedent -- and her promise to the Senate Judiciary Committee she'd abide by "letter and spirit" of the law -- this should oblige Justice Kagan to recuse herself when the ObamaCare cases come before the Supreme Court. Before joining the court, Kagan said she was not involved in the Justice Deparment's preparations for the inevitable legal challenges to the health-care "reform." But the e-mails...

Documents Raise Questions about Supreme Court Justice Kagan’s Role in Obamacare Defense as Solicitor General Kagan Directs Staff to “Be Involved” in Crafting Defense of Obamacare; Scolds Justice Colleague on the Issue of Her Participation: “This Needs to be Coordinated…You Should not Say Anything about This before Talking to Me.” Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents suggesting Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan helped coordinate the Obama administration’s legal defense of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) while she served as Solicitor General. Kagan has said...

She won’t recuse herself, needless to say. Defending their signature domestic “achievement” when it’s under mortal threat from a constitutional challenge is much, much more important to the left than observing ethical rules. Which is why, of course, they’ve been hassling Clarence Thomas about a supposed conflict of interest in his own right vis-a-vis ObamaCare. They know Kagan is compromised, so they’re setting up a “tu quoque” rejoinder for when, not if, the GOP takes up this point in earnest.I wonder if they know how compromised she is. On March 21, 2010, Katyal urged Kagan to attend a health care...

Video of 30 minute interview at link. (CNSNews.com) - Virginia Del. Bob Marshall, the state legislator who sponsored the law that forbids any government from forcing individuals in Virginia to buy health insurance, says that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from judging Virginia’s suit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare because she was President Obama’s solicitor general when the suit was filed and when the Obama administration first took steps to oppose it. “She should recuse herself before she makes a decision on this case,” Marshall told CNSNews.com’s Online With Terry Jeffrey. Marshall, a Republican who represents Prince...

Liberals launch media attack on Justice Thomas in an attempt to alter ObamaCare ruling. The once-venerable New York Times has lived off its reputation for worldclass professionalism despite its recent yield of a veritable mountain of liberal slant. Why was it that a Feb. 12 hit-piece, “No Argument: Thomas Keeps Silence,” which aimed squarely at denigrating Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, saw fit to quote a third-year law student?

Elena Kagan Nominated to the Supreme Court - Political Hotsheet ... May 10, 2010 ... President Calls Kagan `One of the Nation's Foremost Legal Minds` Read more by Stephanie Condon on CBS News' Political Hotsheet. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20004540-503544.html

When President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court in May, we and many others reported out that she’d likely have to recuse herself from a handful of cases for the upcoming term. The reason: she was the Solicitor General for the U.S. So she’d be conflicted on a number of cases, having already served as an advocate on many of them.

Anyone who thinks the vaccine case now before the Supreme Court is merely a matter of giving injured plaintiffs their day in court has misconceived the stakes for those who reap the benefits of vaccines. The U.S. Supreme Court has just heard oral arguments in the case of Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, in which the parents of a severely disabled child wish to sue the manufacturer of a childhood vaccine for causing their child’s disability. At this stage, the dispute is over a purely legal issue: the scope of federal preemption. The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act largely removed childhood...

Justice Elena Kagan cast her first recorded vote on the Supreme Court late Tuesday, joining the liberals in dissent when the high court cleared the way for the execution of an Arizona murderer. The 5-4 ruling overturned orders by a federal judge in Phoenix and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that had stopped the execution by lethal injection of Jeffrey Landrigan. A judge had put the execution on hold because she said she was "left to speculate" whether this drug was safe for its intended use. "There is no evidence in the record to suggest...

I’ve obtained a copy of an interesting letter that Harvard law professor Larry Tribe wrote to his protégé, President Barack Obama, in the immediate aftermath of Justice Souter’s announcement of his decision to retire from the Court. I will post a PDF of the letter shortly. [Update: Here’s the letter.] In the meantime, I’ll call attention, in this post and two or three others, to some of its highlights. The express purpose of Tribe’s letter is to urge that Obama nominate Elena Kagan to the Souter vacancy. But before making his affirmative case for Kagan, Tribe argues strongly against the...

One wonders how Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center managed to get a hold of a private letter sent to President Obama by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe advising him against nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, but be that as it may, its contents are quite interesting and show just how nakedly political Tribe’s view of a justice really is and also how little he thinks of Sotomayor. In the May 2009 letter (PDF link here), Tribe advises Obama to refrain from choosing Sotomayor because “she’s not nearly as smart as she seems to think...

Sen. Harry's Reid's support for President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominees has cost him the endorsement of the National Rifle Association in his re-election bid. The NRA is a force in rural states like Nevada where many voters own guns and hunt. The absence of the NRA's blessing represents a setback that Reid's campaign was quick to address Friday by noting that NRA executive Wayne LaPierre once called him a "true champion of the Second Amendment." Christopher W. Cox, chairman of the NRA's Political Victory Fund, said Friday that the organization strongly opposed the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the...

Mysterious Group Buys Building Next to Ground Zero For Mosque Wednesday, December 16, 2009 Jim Hoft A mysterous Muslim group with unknown sponsors has purchased a building steps away from Ground Zero. Hudson New York reported: An identified group with unknown sponsors has purchased building steps away from where the WorldTrade Center once stood — to turn it into potentially one of the largest New York City mosques. At the moment the building, the old Burlington Coat Factory, already serves as a mini-mosque: an iron grill lifts every Friday afternoon for a little known Imam leading prayers a few yards...

One of the odd dichotomies in the academic career of recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan is her militant opposition to the U. S. military’s ban on homosexuality and her equally fervent embrace of the Shariah law of the Mideast that proscribes death for homosexuals. Offhand, the only link between the two seems to be a hostility to western traditions. We have gone to some lengths at Accuracy in Academia to cover the former. Over at the Center for Security Policy, Christine Brim exhaustively documents the latter. Among other things: 1. “With Kagan’s direction, Harvard’s Islamic Legal Studies Program...

http://www.PriestsForLife.org Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests For Life, gives very clear reasoning on why Elena Kagan should not be confirmed to the Supreme Court. In this video, he uses the words of the abortionist themselves, documented in Supreme Court testimony, to describe the procedure that Elena Kagan herself, supports: "The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled through the cervix." (This is from the Supreme Court's 2007 abortion decision.) Abortionist Martin Haskell said, under oath, "We would attack the lower extremity first, remove, you...