Bring Forth The Gays! Bring Forth The Jews! And.. RELEASE THE KAGAN!!

  

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
 Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
 His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
 The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
 About his shadowy sides; above him swell
 Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
 And far away into the sickly light,
 From many a wondrous grot and secret cell

 - from The Kraken, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

OK, I got the idea for the title from Jon Stewart's take on the Right's reaction to the nomination of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. Watch it below. He is, as always, spot on. Any fan of fantasy and science-fiction films is familiar with The Kraken, a mythical beast of the sea sometimes physically depicted as a giant squid. The Right takes Kagan's nomination as an  attack, directly hitting its "left" flank in the culture war.

But the Right seems confused in its counterattack: lesbian? no experience? anti-military? Harriet Miers? Intelligence? As Stewart put it: "She's a recordless entity with no paper trail."

The comparisons to Harriet Miers are, of course, ridiculous: Miers committed THE public relations suicide of the decade when she said of George Bush, "He's the most brilliant man I have ever met." So much for judgment. She also received her law degree at Pat Robertson's Regent University, so you could pretty well determine the direction of her  stances, especially concerning gay rights. Anyway, after her fifteen minutes, she was put back in her cage for two years, during which she was constantly  pressured by Johua Bolton to resign. She now works for the Dallas law firm known as Locke Lord Bissell Lamp, Liddell.  

Any comparisons come from desperate Right wingnuts or people who get their news from Fox. 

We Fear What We Don't Know

The Judicial Crisis Network is just coming out with an ad requesting that the Obama administration make every effort to make all of Kagan's records (and thoughts) from the Clinton administration public. They are obviously scared of what they don't know. That's understandable. What's not understandable is taking a "pre-emptive strike" stance by unleashing a video that calls into account her limited experience and her stance against military recruitment on college campuses. The latter is akin to a tempest in a teapot. Her knowledge of the Constitution and American law are never questioned. Neither are her presentations to the Supreme Court as Solicitor General.

The Intelligent Lesbian

The moment I saw a picture of Elena Kagan, I thought "Well, this will be interesting." Afterwards, I was struck by her impressive background and realize that Tony Perkins had a right to be afraid of her: she might become the most intelligent of the justices. Say what? An intelligent President picking an intelligent SCOTUS justice?  Horrors!! OMG! She's a shorter, stouter Rachel Maddow! What will become of us!

So with the looming passage of ENDA, the Christian Right has come forth in battle armed with the question of moral fitness: Elena Kagan is gay and she'll swing the Supreme Court towards acceptance of gay marriage and gay rights in general. It makes no difference that Kagan has already been quoted as saying she does not believe that the Constitution supports gay marriage, but the mere possibility that she might be gay makes her totally unfit in their eyes. And any position that she has taken is skewed toward the far left:

"As the Harvard Law School Dean, Elena Kagan tried to bar the military from recruiting on her law school's campus during the height of the Iraq War based on her opposition to the federal law restricting homosexuals in the military. 

"...Ms. Kagan's incredibly hostile view of the military suggests she is out of touch with mainstream sensibilities and obedience to the rule of law. President Obama promised a nominee committed to the 'rule of law,' but, instead, he appears to have nominated a hard-left activist to the Supreme Court.

Of course, Bryan Fischer of American Family Association is apoplectic:

... [They want] an activist on the bench, a crusader, and knows that a homosexual judge will tilt the playing field on behalf of the legalization and social endorsement of sexually aberrant behavior.

The day a homosexual is elevated to the bench, the end will have come for the principle of sexual normalcy, the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution. That's too big a price to pay.

So left, center-left, center, center-right? Like a chess player who can't make up his mind, the Right is all around the board with Kagan. The problem the Right has is that some of their clan support Kagan's nomination: she has been sympathetic to the woes of big business. The Court might find itself in  the position of deciding regulation or deregulation of businesses like British Petroleum, so the fate of the environment can rest in Kagan's decisions.

And then there's Pat Buchanan's take on the nomination: not enough African-Americans on SCOTUS and too many Jews:

If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats.

So there we have the Right's precise, well-informed, analysis of Elena Kagan's nomination to SCOTUS: she's a too-intelligent, military-hating, allegedly lesbian Jew who never saw the inside of a courtroom. 

Hey, that's better than Scalia, isn't it?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Release the Kagan
www.thedailyshow.com