I meant to post this earlier, but I’ve been distracted by a few things – including talking to a potential new addition to the EVC program in Pennsylvania. Woo hoo. But, I’ve also been trying to keep up with the Kagan hearings. What’s interesting is that as I was reading Dave Kopel’s testimony on Kagan, I heard his concerns brought up by Sen. Jeff Sessions.
The unfortunate lesson of the confirmation of Justice Sotomayor is that Senators who care about the Second Amendment cannot rely on platitudes about “settled law” or even direct promises to abide by Heller. Before this Committee, Ms. Sotomayor declared, “I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller.” And, “I understand how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans.
To the Senate Judiciary Committee, Justice Sotomayor repeatedly averred that Heller is “settled law.” The Associated Press reported that Sen. Mark Udall “said Sotomayor told him during a private meeting that she considers the 2008 ruling that struck down a Washington, D.C., handgun ban as settled law that would guide her decisions in future cases.”
Yet on June 28, 2010, Justice Sotomayor joined Justice Breyer‘s dissenting opinion in McDonald v. Chicago, and announced that Heller was wrongly decided and should be over-ruled. Apparently her true belief was not what she told this Committee, but instead: “In sum, the Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self defense.”
So by “settled law,” nominee Sotomayor seems to have meant “not settled; should be overturned immediately.”
Accordingly, statements from Ms. Kagan about Heller being “settled law” provide not an iota of assurance that as a Justice she would support Heller, rather than attempt to eliminate it.
I am not surprised! At all.
Stupid question, is her nomination locked up? Do the hearings actually mean anything or does the D majority mean she can just sail right in?
She held special admiration for how Judge Bork was treated…
Freiheit,
She first must get through the committee, and that requires at least one of the minority to vote her to the floor, so it’s theoretically possible for the R’s to keep her locked down, indefinitely.
But you can be assured that Lindsay Graham will vote with the D’s.
Is it genetic that these people exude such liberal stupidity? I do not get it. Either they or I must be from a different universe. The fact that such a percentage of the populous is still for the boy king makes me question who is from the different planet. Scotty, beam me up!
I don’t see how anyone with an ounce of brains doesn’t see through the charade.
But that’s politics. She’ll be confirmed.
You mean those deal cutting, sellout, jelly fish @ the NRA warned us that Sotomayor was anti-2A? NO WAY!
http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/NewsReleases.aspx?id=12702
Thats not how redstate.com and some self-proclaimed 3per bloggers have represented the NRA’s stance on Sotomayor & Kagan?
Contact Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Patrick Leahy, to whom Sotomayor lied directly in public during her confirmation hearings last year. Presumably he will not want to be made to look like a complete sap two years in a row. Hopefully Kopel will ask about THAT in his opening statement.