Home > Opinion > Peter Roff > The Tea Party's Test for Elena Kagan and the Supreme Court

The Tea Party's Test for Elena Kagan and the Supreme Court

Reader Comments
Back to blog

I find the hypocracy laughable. Everyone wants to treat corporations as entities when they sue for culpability and negligence. They want to treat corporations as entities for recompense and taxation. They want to treat corporations as entities and hold them responsible for providing or failing to provide jobs. And yet, suddenly, the corporation is no longer an entity when it comes to giving corporations a basic right of free speech? You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Either corporations are entities or they are not. If they are, as legal precendence has long established, then they should be permitted some basic rights, freedoms and expectation of responsibilies.
Tell me Muser of NM, what is your justification for permitting PAC the freedom of speech but can deny corporations a voice?
I suspect the sinister, underlying motive of those who seek to abridge a corporation's voice is that they perceive corporate speech will drown the voice of their precious liberal PACs.

david of ID 4:26PM May 19, 2010

Obama checklist for Kagan:
RADICAL....... .......check
feminist............. check
anti-baby..... ...... check
pro-lezbian...........check
anti- white male......check
fanatical liberal.....check
ideologue.............check
hyper partisan........check
ACLU drone............check
anti military.........check
obama worshipper......check
And to think that the indepedants in this country actually fell for "Obama the great" when he campaigned on the promise that he was a uniter not a divider. Kagan is an extreme, feminist, hack, who offends an overwhelming majority of this country. Thanks Obama, for representing mainstream America as you promised. I assure we will not forget come Nov 2010 or 2012.

steven of MD 3:46PM May 19, 2010

The Vatican City State is a runt on the world map as far as land mass is concerned, but it has vast influence. It's about the size of NY Central Park or the Warsaw Ghetto where Catholic Hitler starved the walled-in victims. A king rules the Vatican. He's ELECTED by a handful of old men who supposedly castrate themselves with vows of celibacy. They remove themselves from work & cost of being fathers, but all high church officials call themselves "Father." The pope, in his feminine long skirts, lacy shawls & slippers is obviously in drag, but world leaders pretend they deal with a normal male. The illegal Nam War was called "Cardinal Spellman's War." We lost 55,000 people and trillions of dollars to save the corrupt Catholic Pres. Diem. He was the protege of gay Cardinal Spellman. See "The Pentagon Papers" for details of heroin profiteering by Diem & Thieu governments. Howard Hunt (CIA) forged cables that fooled JFK & LBJ into that war. The Far Right is always intensely religious and always fanatically capitalistic. That's because it has always been the richest, biggest church, forcing members to produce ongoing generations of tithes and fee payers. Worldwide, It is deeply invested in capitalist ventures.

aura Veirs of CA 4:46PM May 18, 2010

I doubt Mr. Roff is a lawyer or has ever read a supreme court opinion without the blinders imposed by the hard right.
Its the Movement Conservatives (as opposed to judicial conservatives) who are imposing a radical agenda on the courts and unique forms of interpreting statutes altering 200 years of precedent. Strict constructionists seek to replace judges with historians, rather counter-factual historians who attempt to divine what the "founding Fathers" would have done if today's problems presented themselves in the 1790's. They ignore what 200 years of interpretation has produced- the modern constitution. The "Founding Fathers" and those who drafted subsequent amendments did not want or seek to impose their world view on us forever. They used words such as liberty, and freedom not "liberty and freedom as defined by us and based on our experiences". this clearly imposes a duty on courts to interpret liberty, freedom and whatnot in the light of contemporary life. This is not judicial activism- its common sense and its what the Supreme Court has done since its inception. Judges making law and judicial activism are the cries of those who seek to impose their world view on everyone else. Their calls should not be heeded and their theories of interpretation should be categorically rejected as unsuitable and ironically a-historic- judicial activism in its purest fiat!

raol of CT 2:59AM May 18, 2010

Let's go by what the founding fathers said in the constitution about corporations----you do know that was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING (meaning that the founding fathers did not somehow intend them to inherit the "rights" of people), don't you?

Muser of NM 12:26AM May 18, 2010

MK is right on the money in his essay.
If the Tea Party represents people trying to take back power from the elites, are you referring to the people who won the last election as elites. If you are, it's plain nuts.
I recommend an article about the overall political context of the Tea party, its development and likely evolution at:
http://funks2.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/the-trip-to-nowhere-on-the-tea-party-express/
I think you'll get the picture.

FunkUniversity of IL 10:25PM May 17, 2010

Since we don't see the teabaggers getting behind any wall street reform, we can dismiss any sentiment of fiscal responsibility - the only common thing all the assorted ragtag tea parties ever claimed to stand up for.
To suggest these teabaggers have any agenda other than repeating lobbyists astroturf slogans is a joke. Tea party rhetoric is coming from the same set of hooky corporate talking points roff is stealing from. Teabaggers take their marching orders for companies like BP and lobbyists like Freedom Works. Dick Armey and Freedom Works would lobby for Iranian Terrorist for enough money - that's right already did that.
It doesn't matter. No one cares what the crackpot teabaggers claim to believe. Kagen will be approved for the Supreme Court. This is more whining form the crowd hoping their slight of hand will distract you from the corporate corruption trying to buy off your attention.

Virgil of NV 8:22PM May 17, 2010

Kagan's thesis lamenting the defeat of socialism in the U.S. shows her early love affair with radicalism. Additionally, the fact that Obama, a U.S. hating Marxist, has selected her for the Supreme Court, demonstrates that she must still share Obama's goal with forcing socialism/Marxism on us.
The fact that Kagan lacks a "paper trail" and is "agreeable" just makes it easier for Obama and his comrades to fool people into believing that she is not dangerous.
It's is obvious, however, that if Kagan is nominated, she would do her best to help Obama transform the U.S. from a prosperous, capitalist, FREE country into another failed, poor, socialist, ENSLAVED country.

AntonioSosa of FL 7:58PM May 17, 2010

Kagan is just another garden variety Rad-Fem. There is no way to stop her confirmation by the left - so move on. Look at the "not so dark side", Obama could have foisted an even worse stinker on the nation - this thorny cactus is his idea of an olive branch. Losers can't be choosers.
Furthermore, both sides are guilty of legislating from the bench. However, the right retains some vestige of morality, honor and character - while unscrupulous ideologs, like Ginsburg, care absolutely nothing about truth or the Constitution - only their radical, progressive agenda steers their judicial whimsy.

R.L. Schaefer of CA 7:25PM May 17, 2010

Isn't the Tea Party screaming about it's interpretation of the constitution? Or am I to believe that this writer feels that those in the tea party know far more about the Constitution then say the rest of us. As for taking back power, what is Mr. Roff implying. President Obama did not sieze power he was elected, and not the shady type elections courtesy of Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. The tea party is a wing of the republican party and will always be until it starts screaming at it's republican benefactors also. As for missing the bus Mr. Roff. You better call a cab, because your nowhere near the bus route.

JDZ57 of WI 6:35PM May 17, 2010