Obama to Withold Documents on Supreme Court Nominee That Reveal Liberal Agenda?

Remember how this was supposed to be an easy shoe-in for Obama and how he was praised for picking a “moderate”, even by many Republican standards? Remember liberals whining she wasn’t liberal enough? Forget all of that!

Elena Kagan has kept her cards so close to the vest that in the days after President Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court, some on the left worried she was too moderate to replace liberal Justice John Paul Stevens.

But in documents obtained by CBS News, Kagan–while working as a law clerk to the late Justice Thurgood Marshall – made her positions clear on some of the nation’s most contentious social issues.

The documents, buried in Marshall’s papers in the Library of Congress, show Kagan standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the liberal left, at a time when the Rehnquist Supreme Court was moving to the conservative right.

They also provide a remarkably candid picture of her opinions, including on the most controversial issue Supreme Court nominees ever confront: abortion.

Check out some of the revelations:

The Marshall documents are legal memos summarizing cases the Court had been asked to consider. They cover the spectrum of hot-button social issues: abortion, civil rights, gun rights, prisoners’ rights and the constitutional underpinnings for recognizing gay marriage.

On abortion, Kagan wrote a memo in a case involving a prisoner who wanted the state to pay for her to have the procedure. Kagan expressed concern to Marshall that the conservative-leaning Court would use the case to rule against the woman–and possibly undo precedents protecting a woman’s right to abortion.

“This case is likely to become the vehicle that this court uses to create some very bad law on abortion and/or prisoners’ rights,” she wrote in the 1988 memo.

She also expressed strong liberal views in a desegregation case. Summarizing a challenge to a voluntary school desegregation program, Kagan called the program “amazingly sensible.” She told Marshall that state court decisions that upheld the plan recognized the “good sense and fair-mindedness” of local efforts.

“Let’s hope this Court takes note of the same,” she wrote in the 1987 memo. Just three years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a nearly identical plan.

Kagan also wrote a memo that senators could use to question whether she believes there is a constitutional right to gay marriage.

That memo summarized a 1988 case involving a prisoner serving a life sentence in New York. He argued the state of New York was required to recognize his marriage-by-proxy in Kansas – even though such marriages were illegal in New York.

The basis of his argument was that New York had a duty under the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause to recognize his Kansas marriage as valid. Kagan told Marshall his position was “at least arguably correct,” and recommended asking for a response from New York officials.

Then there was the recently disclosed memo on gun rights. In a case challenging the District of Columbia’s handgun ban as unconstitutional, Kagan was blunt: “I am not sympathetic.” The Supreme Court took the opposite approach two years ago, striking down the D.C. gun ban as unconstitutional.

Taken together, these documents are certain to provoke considerably more questions than the less controversial papers unearthed before her confirmation hearings for solicitor general.

Pretty straight forward stuff. She wants to take my guns and legislate from the bench. She has a pre-conceived agenda, and if Republicans don’t fight against her confirmation tooth and nail, they don’t care about the Constitution. Other dirt is beginning to surface as well.

In a carefully worded letter to top Judiciary Committee Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Obama administration says it might withhold some of the memos Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan wrote when she served in the Clinton White House.
The letter says Obama “does not intend” to assert executive privilege to block the release of the documents but neither does it foreclose the possibility. It says Obama is consulting with a representative of President Clinton to determine which documents to block.
“President Obama does not intend to assert executive privilege over any of the documents requested by the [Judiciary] Committee,” the June 1 letter from White House counsel Bob Bauer says. “Of course, President Clinton also has an interest in these records, and his representative is reviewing them now.”

What kind of talk is this? Ed Morrissey explains:

That has piqued Sen. Jeff Sessions’ curiosity. Why has the White House put Bill Clinton in the loop at all? He’s no longer the executive; the decision on executive privilege lies solely with the current President. In fact, as Strong notes, Obama’s own executive order from last year made that explicitly clear. Does the Obama administration intend to allow George W. Bush the same latitude in future cases, say, on reviews of war policy?
It’s not the only part of the explanation that has the ranking Republican scratching his head, either:
Bauer’s letter says there are two reasons: First, the documents might be requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the general public and, second, to prevent “classified national security information or personal privacy information” from being released, just like in the cases of the nominations of Justices John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor.
Republicans say the first rationale – regarding FOIA requests — is bizarre because, as the letter says, the Judiciary Committee’s request is privileged, unlike a FOIA request. In other words, while Clinton can block the release of documents requested under FOIA, he can’t block documents requested by the committee, so the relevance of FOIA is a mystery.
Bauer’s letter says Clinton’s review of the documents “will not prevent the Archives from producing these documents to the Committee in advance of June 28” – the day of Kagan’s first hearing before the Judiciary Committee.
Republicans say that Bauer’s language means Obama could release hundreds of thousands of pages of documents as late as June 27, the day before the hearing but still “in advance” of it.
If the White House executes some massive document dump on June 27th, there will be no time to review Kagan’s work in the Clinton administration before the confirmation hearing starts. That’s not the act of an administration that supports transparency and professional review. It’s the act of an administration that thinks it has something to hide.

Whatever happened to the Obama who said…”Supreme Court nominees being “extra forthcoming” when it comes to disclosures “in the absence of any judicial record” on the nominee’s part.”????