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July 13, 2010 6:23 pm | By Miranda Blue
The Next Frontier in Undoing Campaign Finance Reform
Since the Supreme Court decided earlier this year that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend however much they like to influence elections, groups have been attempting to use that decision to hack away at the core of federal…
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July 13, 2010 3:55 pm | By Miranda Blue
The Substance of the Kagan Hearings
Many viewed it as a foregone conclusion that Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings would lack any real discussion of law and the Constitution. In fact, People For’s Marge Baker argues in a new memo, Kagan’s hearings were more substantial…
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July 12, 2010 9:47 pm | By Rhee-Soo
Alexander Hamilton’s Plug for Kagan
For all the right wing talk of “strict constructionism" and the "original intent of the Founders," it’s important to bear in mind that the Founders themselves actually did envision the Constitution evolving to apply to new circumstances. Alexander Hamilton (who…
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July 12, 2010 4:14 pm | By Miranda Blue
Bush’s Courts
We talk a lot about the purely political motives Republican senators have in their efforts to slow down the confirmation process for President Obama’s judicial nominees. It’s easy to forget that who those nominees are—and when they start working— makes…
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July 9, 2010 10:20 pm | By Miranda Blue
A Hot Mess of Intolerance
In a new op-ed in the Huffington Post, Michael Keegan, People For’s president, asks why the GOP spent so much of Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings defending the nearly-dead Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. The answer? They just can’t…
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July 9, 2010 5:40 pm | By Miranda Blue
The “Irrational Prejudice” Behind DOMA
Yesterday, a federal judge in Massachusetts struck down a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act on two separate constitutional challenges. Judge Joseph Tauro, a Nixon appointee, ruled that the provision banning the federal government from recognizing gay people’s…
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July 9, 2010 2:45 pm | By Miranda Blue
Judges Order Drilling to Continue
It looks like oil drilling will begin again in the Gulf of Mexico. Yesterday afternoon, three appeals court judges in New Orleans agreed with a lower court ruling that struck down the Obama Administration’s Gulf drilling moratorium. The President imposed…
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July 8, 2010 7:27 pm | By Miranda Blue
The Oil Industry Ties of Oil Industry Judges
We’ve been worried about what will happen if liability suits from BP’s massive oil spill in the Gulf reach the Supreme Court. But it sounds like fans of justice might have more immediate concerns.When a district court judge halted the…
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July 8, 2010 2:35 pm | By Rhee-Soo
Epstein Echoes Sessions: “Massive Resistance” to Citizens United
Today I went back to the Heritage Foundation for their annual “Scholars and Scribes” panel reviewing the recent and upcoming activities of the Supreme Court. There was some discussion of judicial activism, but most of the panelists seemed to have…
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July 7, 2010 4:25 pm | By Miranda Blue
Legislature-Passed Civil Unions Bill Not Democratic Enough, Says Hawaii Governor
Hawaii’s governor, Republican Linda Lingle, has vetoed a civil unions bill that was passed by the state legislature in April. Her reasoning was interesting:Lingle said voters should decide the fate of civil unions, not politicians."The subject of this legislation has…
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July 6, 2010 9:39 pm | By Paul Gordon
Regulation and the 2010 Elections
The Washington Post is reporting that Wall Street contributions to Democratic campaign committees are markedly lower than this time in 2006 or 2008. The drop in support comes from many of the same bankers, hedge fund executives and financial services…
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July 1, 2010 10:19 pm | By Miranda Blue
A Lopsided Witness List
There’s an interesting pattern among the members of the military who are weighing into Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination. On one side, we have members of the military who were at Harvard when Kagan was Dean and have showed up…
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July 1, 2010 9:53 pm | By Drew Courtney
Jon Kyl Attacks Women, Older Workers, Baby Seals
Today, when questioning the first panel of witnesses for the Elena Kagan confirmation, Senator Jon Kyl decided not to ask questions, but simply to attack those who had agreed to testify.Instead of, say, listening to the witnesses, or even ignoring…
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July 1, 2010 9:17 pm | By Miranda Blue
Lilly Ledbetter Recounts Her Fight
Lilly Ledbetter just appeared in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to speak about the damage that can be done by a Supreme Court that’s not grounded in the realities of life for average Americans. When Ledbetter found out that…
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July 1, 2010 8:04 pm | By Drew Courtney
Jeff Sessions Comes Out Against Ideas
When I got to the office this morning, I turned on C-SPAN, which was rerunning the confirmation hearings all over again. While I was listening, I heard again something that caught my ear yesterday. Senator Sessions: I think that yesterday…
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July 1, 2010 8:04 pm | By Miranda Blue
The Immigration Misinformation Campaign
Last week, Arizona governor Jan Brewer further fanned the flames of resentment and suspicion around the immigration debate in her state when she announced her evidence-free view that the majority of people entering the United States illegally do so to…
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July 1, 2010 5:26 pm | By Miranda Blue
Joining the Club
Yesterday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar shot down her colleague Tom Coburn’s assertion that the American people are less free now than we were 30 years ago, offering up some powerful illustrations of the progress women have made since 1980. “I think…
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June 30, 2010 9:58 pm | By Miranda Blue
“A Judicial Philosophy that Keeps Faith with the Constitution”: Our Endorsement of Kagan
Here at PFAW, we were all eager to hear what Elena Kagan had to say in this week’s hearings, and have spent the past two days in the Senate hearing room or glued to CSPAN 3 listening to her testimony.…
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June 30, 2010 9:14 pm | By Miranda Blue
Whose Freedom?
After debating 1776, we move on to a conversation about 1980.In his long complaint about the Commerce Clause, Sen. Coburn declared that Americans had more freedom 30 years ago than we do now.Sen. Klobuchar then took the floor, and brought…
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June 30, 2010 9:11 pm | By Miranda Blue
Constitutional Fidelity, Except for the Other Stuff
First, Sen. Tom Coburn railed against Solicitor General Kagan for her refusal to agree to his skewed and narrow vision of the original intent of the Constitution.Then he switched tacks to rail against her for not subscribing to a view…