skippy the bush kangaroo: release the kagan!

Monday, May 10, 2010

release the kagan!

separated @ birth?

scotus nominee elena kagan, and

david mitchell of that mitchell
and webb look?

of course, the hardly-ever-right is doing everything it can to smear obama's supreme court nominee; if by "everything it can," you mean "call her a lezzie and imply that slavery was a good thing."

think progress:

the right wing has been hammering kagan over the fact that while she was dean, harvard law school “refused to help the nation’s military recruit its students, because the armed services discriminated against openly gay soldiers.” conservatives have been using this episode to unjustly portray her as being anti-military and to add fuel to the speculation over whether or not she is a lesbian. in a blog post for the far-right american family association (afa) today, bryan fischer comes right out and says that the media should pointedly ask kagan, “are you a lesbian?” and if she is, according to afa, she shouldn’t serve on the court:

it’s time we got over the myth that what a public servant does in his private life is of no consequence. we cannot afford to have another sexually abnormal individual in a position of important civic responsibility, especially when that individual could become one of nine votes in an out of control oligarchy that constantly usurps constitutional prerogatives to unethically and illegally legislate for 300 million americans.

the stakes are too high. social conservatives must rise up as one and say no lesbian is qualified to sit on the supreme court. will they?

americans for truth — a group “devoted exclusively to exposing and countering the homosexual activist agenda” — also put out a statement saying that kagan needs to answer, “are (or were) you a practicing homosexual or do you consider yourself homosexual (gay)?” last month, focus on the family also said that it would not be open to a gay supreme court justice.

not low enough for the gop to go? what about pining for those good ol' days when blacks were 3/5 of a human being? washington monthly:

republican national committee chairman michael steele, hoping to inject some ugly attacks into the political bloodstream quickly, issued a statement this morning attacking supreme court nominee elena kagan. like most of the things steele says, he neglected to think the attacks through.

in particular, the embarrassing rnc chairman bashed kagan for a record that includes "support for statements suggesting that the constitution 'as originally drafted and conceived, was 'defective.'"

the problem, of course, was the context. kagan supported the statement because it was used by her hero and mentor, supreme court justice thurgood marshall, who was talking about a "defective" constitution in reference to the document treating a slave as three-fifths of a person.

in effect, steele's rnc statement was indirectly pro-slavery. marshall was calling out a disgusting flaw in the constitution; kagan was endorsing marshall's analysis; and steele was bashing the sentiment. not smart. it was almost certainly unintentional -- i find it hard to believe the rnc actually supports slavery -- but steele either didn't realize what he was saying, hoped we wouldn't notice, or both.

we hopt this sort of nonsense doesn't continue...but we aren't holding our breaths...

posted by skippy at 8:11 PM |

5 Comments:

Even Republicans seem to have figured out that the "defective constitution" meme was stupid.

commented by

Mad Kane, 12:49 PM PDT

I suggest the AFA incorporate the findings of this site.
http://www.republicanoffenders.com/index.html

commented by

Anonymous, 6:10 AM PDT

If the wingers are that afraid of gays in public service, maybe they should start asking the question of their own leadership.

commented by

Anonymous, 8:25 AM PDT

You find it hard to believe that the Republican National Committee endorses slavery?

Wait a couple more years. I promise you that on their current trajectory, they will be doing exactly that. Many of them are already implicitly doing it through code language about states rights, etc, and their currently fashionable radical revision of the history of the civil war. It will only take a little more shrinking in their share of the American people to get them to come out of the closet altogether.

commented by

Green Eagle, 12:12 PM PDT

It's not just that the slaves were only counted as 3/5 of a person, but the whites in the south got extra representation because of it, and the slaves were not allowed to vote. After the civil war the former slaves were counted as full persons, but after 1876 were not allowed to vote, so the southern whites got extra representation and they considered it their birthright. The civil rights movement "stole" this power from southern whites, and it really pissed them off.

commented by

arkieology, 12:15 PM PDT

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