Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The World Is Kagan’s Battlefield


Why she shouldn’t join the Supremes

by Justin Raimondo, May 12, 2010

".....Kagan backs the Obama administration’s policy of indefinite detention, a blatantly unconstitutional and dangerous position that continues the Bush era assault on what is left of our liberties – and she would even extend it, if we take seriously her colloquy with Sen. Lindsey Graham. Asked by the Senator if she would apply “battlefield law” instead of criminal law to someone suspected – suspected – of providing material support to a terrorist organization, such as al Qaeda, she answered that she would indeed.

Going further than even the Bush administration, Kagan insisted that the “battlefield” extends far beyond any war zone – including the Philippines, in the context of Senator Graham’s question, and, theoretically, even the US. So if, for instance, some little old lady is bamboozled into giving to a charity that supports, say, Hamas – designated a terrorist organization by the US State Department – she could be charged with giving “material support” to a terrorist entity, and held indefinitely, without trial, for the rest of her natural life. If the whole world’s a battlefield, then there’s bound to be a lot of collateral damage......

The final nail in the coffin of the Kagan nomination, as far as I’m concerned, is her close association, for a number of years, with the firm of Goldman Sachs, serving on its legal “advisory board.” This board is being portrayed, by Kagan’s defenders, as a chiefly ceremonial body, which held a few conferences and did nothing much else. This is given as a reason to downplay the Goldman Sachs connection, but it doesn’t ameliorate the moral meaning of her role in putting a legalistic face on the naked avarice and influence-buying engaged in by those crooks.

Glenn Greenwald calls Kagan Obama’s “natural choice,” which is true enough, including in ways Glenn probably never thought of. After all, it’s only natural that the biggest contributor to Obama’s presidential campaign would be rewarded in this way: it’s a natural development of the kind of crony capitalism the Obama administration – and the Bush administration before it – exemplify."

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