Category Archives: Bush

Update IV: ‘Elena Kagan As Scholar’ (‘Racist!’)

Affirmative Action, Bush, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Race, The Courts

Eugene Volokh thoroughly and soberly assesses the scholarly record of BHO’s SCOTUS nominee, Elena Kagan, and concludes:

“Kagan, it seems to me, is a successful scholar whose interests have extended beyond scholarship, to government service and to educational institution-building. As a result, she hasn’t written as much as she would have had she only been interested in scholarship (though I suspect that her time in the Clinton Administration helped her produce her administrative law articles). But that reflects the breadth of her interests, and not any intellectual limitations.

… On then to my own evaluation of the First Amendment articles: I think they’re excellent. I disagree with them in significant ways (this article, for instance, reaches results that differ quite a bit from those suggested by Kagan’s Private Speech, Public Purpose article, see, e.g., PDF pp. 8–9). But I like them a lot.

The articles attack difficult and important problems (Private Speech, Public Purpose, for instance, tries to come up with a broad theory to explain much of free speech law). They seriously but calmly criticize the arguments on both sides, and give both sides credit where credit is due. For instance, I particularly liked Kagan’s treatment of both the Scalia R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul majority and the Stevens concurrence, in her Changing Faces of First Amendment Neutrality article.

As importantly, the articles go behind glib generalizations and formalistic distinctions and deal with the actual reality on the ground, such as the actual likely effects of speech restrictions, and of First Amendment doctrine. …

Kagan’s First Amendment work suggests a general acceptance of current free speech law, and an attempt to better understand it and make it more internally consistent rather than to radically change it. I can’t tell for sure whether this flows from a judgment about what’s more useful scholarship, from a largely precedent-respecting temperament, or from agreement with the underlying free speech caselaw. But my guess is that it at least in part reflects a general comfort with the current precedents, and a lack of desire to shift them much.

…On so-called ‘hate speech’ and pornography, the two First Amendment topics on which Kagan has most explicitly written, I likewise see little interest in moving the law much”

[SNIP]

Read the complete post.

“The enemy of my enemy may not be my friend,” writes Stephen Bainbridge, “but she’s probably acceptable”: “I don’t know very much about Elena Kagan other than that a couple of Harvard folks for whom I have a lot of respect think highly of her. When I look at some of the lefties who are opposing her and their reasons for doing so, however, I’m tempted to conclude that she’s the most acceptable–from my perspective–candidate Obama is likely to put forward for the SCOTUS. You can tell a lot about a person from who their enemies are.”

Yes, Old Olby doesn’t much like Kagan.

Update (May 11): The issue of Kagan’s scholarship, although narrow, is relevant as it goes to her intellect. I am pretty sure that if Volokh is impressed—if not necessarily in agreement—with some of her journal papers, that she is intellectually well-equipped. This is more than we can say about SotoSetAsides Mayor.

Kagan’s statism is, on the other hand, guaranteed too. I believe this is a prerequisite for a SCOTUS nomination.

Update II: I’m sorry that Kagan, “as dean of Harvard Law School, … aggressively restricted the U.S. military’s ability to recruit some of the brightest law students in the country” only “because Dean Kagan opposed President Clinton’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.”

She should have kicked the military bloodsuckers off campus as a matter of principle.

The lawful reach of army recruiters notwithstanding, I’d want to keep those body snatchers away from gullible university kids. The excellent series—it’s non-political but patriotic—“Army Wives” depicts the ugliness of recruitment. Granted, in “Army Wives,” the job of picking up vulnerable poor kids, pumping them up, and shipping them off to serve as cannon fodder in our wars is depicted as a noble one.

Update III (May 12): She’s a racist; the good kind—which is that she is more likely to privilege merit than skin color. And how do we know that she probably sins by trending toward meritocratic hiring? From the fact that as Dean and solicitor for BHO, she has hired few “blacks and browns,” as her detractors refer to themselves.

So that our hopelessly Republicanized and Palinized readers know, the hue and cry over Kagan’s “racism” is coming from the Stupid Party:

“31 of Kagan’s 32 Hires at Harvard Were White,” write the screeches at “RedState.com.” These people have few principles, but worse; they’re bereft of brains.

Besides which, if you are going to be a stickler for quotas, Kagan is probably in the color-coded clear, since her hiring practices no doubt comport, at the very least, with the proportional representation in the general population of the groups she has affronted.

“Wingnuts Furious About …. Kagan Not Hiring Enough Black People/Women,” notes Wonkette. It doesn’t take much—one feeble-minded fem—to recognize Republican frailties.

I quite like that she’s failing the wise Latina test.

Update IV (May 13): What I observed tongue-in-cheek about Bush and the left actually applies to all the actors in the farce of our politics:

“Left-liberals … believe a judicial activist is someone who reverses precedent. George Bush thinks a judicial activist is someone who disobeys the President.”

Bush, BHO and their respective political gangs and judicial picks don’t go by the Constitution; they go by judicial precedent. That’s the thing that is revered. To reverse precedent is considered a heretical.

Freddie & Fannie Come Calling … Ad Infinitum

Affirmative Action, America, Bush, China, Debt, Economy, Fascism, Sarah Palin, Socialism

“Spare some change, please? Forget that. Hand over another $8.4 billion to “Fannie Mae and sister company Freddie Mac.” “The Obama administration,” reports “My Way,” had “pledged to cover unlimited losses through 2012 for Freddie and Fannie, lifting an earlier cap of $400 billion.”

This via Jeff Tucker, in case you forgot who and what contributed to this affirmative-action driven downturn, here’s a New York Times’ story from 1999:

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates — anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans….
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

Back in 2008, some analysts had quipped that only North Korea and Cuba were more socialist than the US in the wake of the Fannie and Freddie bailouts. This space has regularly excoriated Republican hacks for referring deceptively to our cherished “American freedoms.” (Also see BAB’s “Fascism Rising” series of posts.)

As Jim Rogers pointed out, you have a free market in housing in China. If you watch this clip, be reminded not only of Bush socialism, but of the socialism of Palin, “Bush In A Bra.” Rather than shutting F&F down, a solution to which Repbulicans are now paying lip service, Palin wanted to fine tune the mortgage miasma; make it smaller and smarter.

I would add that, as a prelude to the discussion of our economic woes, it has become fashionable for commentators to condemn socialism for the rich; this makes one look benevolent. As execrable as corporatism is, it is no reason to ignore the massive wealth transfer from taxpayers to the poor in the context of F & F, a commitment that has contributed immeasurably to the economic meltdown.

Freddie & Fannie Come Calling … Ad Infinitum

Affirmative Action, America, Bush, China, Debt, Fascism, Sarah Palin, Socialism

This via Jeff Tucker, in case you forgot who and what contributed to this affirmative-action driven downturn, here’s a New York Times’ story from 1999:

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates — anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans….
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

Update III: Tell Establishment Media A Dog Died On The Border

Barack Obama, Bush, Crime, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, IMMIGRATION, Nationhood, Private Property, Republicans, States' Rights

The excerpt is from my new, WND.COM column, “Tell Establishment Media A Dog Died On The Border”:

“In response to CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux’s concern that the Arizona immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070, has made “a lot of people very angry, very upset” [a life threatening condition, apparently], the upstanding Antenori demanded: “What about my constituents whose homes are ransacked? What about the ranchers who’re shot at while patrolling their fence lines; whose cattle are being slaughtered ? there are millions of dollars of economic damages ? what about them? What about their civil right?”

Bad move.

Although not as rude as Chris Matthews and his malevolent MSNBC colleagues, Malveaux was only mildly interested. To grab her attention, Antenori ought to have begun what to Malveaux was a white, hot, racist rant with the story of a dog ? a dog that was shot by one frequent “visitor” to Arizona.

The same marauder who beat a retreat to Mexico killed the dog’s faithful companion, Rancher Robert Krentz. A pillar of the Cochise County community, Krentz had for decades raised cattle along the Arizona-Mexico border.

The violent death of a dog on the border is more likely than that of his owner to rate a mention in mainstream media.

State Senator Russell Pearce might also have mentioned a mutt—or even better, a Mulato family member—to justify the ‘racist’ law he sponsored

Washington does not want immigration laws enforced. And it matters not that its open-house policy is costing American lives and livelihoods. This applies to Barack Hussein Obama as well as to his predecessor, George W. Bush. …

Put more accurately: Arizona is doing the work Washington doesn’t want done. …”

The complete column is “Tell Establishment Media A Dog Died On The Border.”

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

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Update I (April 30): BREAKING. Coincidence or way of life? Arizona “deputy shot by illegal immigrant.”

Update II (May 1): In my column, I mentioned that “One of the finest minds on matters pertaining to immigration and the Constitution is Kris W. Kobach.” The NYT, no less, ran an op-ed by Kobach, “Why Arizona Drew a Line,” refuting the misinformation put out by bimbos and politicos who’ve not read the law—the former because they can’t read (Shakira); the latter (American Civil Liberties Union/The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund) because they can get away with lying. He concludes:

President Obama and the Beltway crowd feel these problems can be taken care of with “comprehensive immigration reform” — meaning amnesty and a few other new laws. But we already have plenty of federal immigration laws on the books, and the typical illegal alien is guilty of breaking many of them. What we need is for the executive branch to enforce the laws that we already have.

Update III (May 2): While the activists make demands, patriotic residents of the “The Grand Canyon State” “Clean up our trashed border.” Via Michelle Malkin.