I’m not impressed with the right-wing’s attacks on Kagan so far. I tend to think that the winger attacks about military recruiters, even though they are inaccurate, might work. But they’re not repeated much by the “respectable right” — Bobo, Kathleen Parker, and Michael Gerson are focusing on her “elitism”. That’s a mistake: I don’t think the “who would you rather have a beer with” test idea ever took hold in the public consciousness for Supreme Court nominees. Teh ghey doesn’t seem to be going anywhere either.
So far, this is looking like a snooze. Another three months of epic Andrew Sullivan wanks about “emotional orientation” while the Boboites wring their hands about sad it is that everyone on the Supreme Court went to a top-ranked law school.
Mike Kay
Kagan is the most right wing justice in US history.
Linda Featheringill
Kagan is probably all right. The Right Wing would hate anyone nominated by anybody. So there.
I think that most people view the Supreme Court as a haven for intellectuals and academics. They do rule on the philosophy of law. Bookishness on her part would not offend most folks.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Don’t you guys have some pull? Make Sullivan stop, in the name of everything holy, shut that asshole up.
flukebucket
How’s the left wing doing?
dmsilev
I’m disappointed that we haven’t seen more carping about her praising Thurgood Marshall’s “the Constitution as originally written was defective” speech. I’d really like to see the GOP get a negative fraction of the minority vote, and that seemed like a promising avenue.
dms
mistermix
@ChockFullO’Nuts: He gave up the ghost last night, about the same time that Ben Smith reported that Kagan’s friends say she entertains genital stimulation from the male member.
DougJ
@flukebucket:
I don’t have a good feel for that so far.
Southern Beale
They may not be repeated much by the “respectable” right but I just had to fire off an angry e-mail to my local morning news bot who told the entire Middle Tennessee viewing area that Elena Kagan “barred military recruiters from Harvard because she opposed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” I mean, there was so much wrong with that statement I didn’t even know where to begin.
Adam Collyer
I like Sully, but he’s been epically wrong about virtually everything since this pick was announced several days ago. This post is indicative of it.
First of all, the idea that putting her on the Court to sway Kennedy assumes that she’s “moderate” is false. Doctrinaire liberals can be consensus builders. So can doctrinaire conservatives. It’s about attitude and a willingness to compromise by using concurring and dissenting justice’s reasoning in order to bring them into the coalition. The most important rule in the Supreme Court, as Justice Brennan once said, is “five.” As in, with five votes you can do virtually anything. If that’s Kagan’s job (and it’s not clear that’s the primary reason that she’s been nominated, but it’s now become conventional wisdom), it’s not a requirement that she be a “moderate.” It requires that she’s accommodating.
And “radio silence?” Seriously? I realize that’s the DC meme on Kagan because she wasn’t a judge and the DC press corps has never picked up a book, but hasn’t this been debunked already by several people? Sully even mentioned her scholarship on presidential administration in his prior posts. She also has a several piece thesis on free speech that was published some years ago.
So, to sum up, what the hell?
Poopyman
I saw Laura Ingraham this morning on the Today show, but luckily I had the sound turned off. The graphic told me she was bloviating about Kagan, though. So clearly, NBC has to import somebody from Fox to provide criticism about the nominee. That seems like a good sign.
I hope Ingraham made an ass of herself.
beltane
Sullivan had quieted down somewhat at last check. This is what happens when enough of his readers scream at him, as was the case here. The only thing that distinguishes Sully from the rest of the wankers is that he does listen to his readers when they hold an intervention.
dmsilev
@ChockFullO’Nuts: Someone, somehow, managed to get through to him:
Whether he sticks with that is anyone’s guess, but he seems to have calmed down for now.
dms
Poopyman
@dmsilev: Look for Jeff Sessions to trot this one out in the hearings.
Hunter Gathers
Me thinks that the GOP has peaked. They’ll win their share of seats in November, but not enough to gain a majority in either chamber. The lesson they will take from this is that they still aren’t conservative enough, and will spend 2011 and 2012 turning the crazy up to eleven, leading up to Queen Sarah getting Mondaled in November 2012.
And yes, they can get crazier then they are now.
Mike Kay
Elena Kagan is worse than ann coulter
aimai
I think this new weirdness about how she went to an “elite law school”–and so did Sotomayor (!) is just sickening. Jews and (other) non whites fought incredibly hard to open up the doors of the elite universities to the rising meritocracy of non wasps. Just as they take their rightful place at the most elite institutions their struggles are put down to “affirmative action” and “diversity” and resentment filled beta males and females from the former majority, the former legacy shoe ins, start bitching about how they are taking all the good places.
My grandfather went to Harvard under the quota designed specifically to keep the number of Jews low. They were terrified that the jews would simply outperform everyone and embarrass the upper classes. Similarly with women. (My grandmother attended Radcliffe when the two schools shared the same professors and classes but the women had to take the classes separately). During the second world war
People like Kagan and Sotomayor and both Obamas fought to get to where they are on sheer merit–unlike those attending the various religious colleges/law schools which are nothing but a variant on the student loan scam for hairdressers.
aimai
El Cid
Right, they raised such a hue & outcry over John Roberts’ Harvard Law education.
beltane
@flukebucket: The left? There was a diary on GOS last night claiming that Kagan was worse than Bush and that her nomination was the end of Freedom As We Know It.
Hunter Gathers
@DougJ:
It’s not much different than the HCR debate towards the end. Harping about not being progressive enough and so on. No one who doesn’t camp out at the Fire Dog Lake really gives a shit.
aimai
@dmsilev:
I bet its the personal comment from a social aquaintance. Sully priviliges the personal over the factual, every time. Of course, I’m convinced by the same thing. Politico is reporting an interview with one “Sarah Walzer” who was Kagan’s roomate at Harvard Law. Since, as it happens, I knew Sarah a long time ago–we were playmates as children and she and her very famous father lived next door to us (Revolution of the Saints Walzer, to those who care about such things) I take the matter as closed, too. I wish Sullivan and everyone else on the gay bandwagon had taken five seconds to think through the whole hysteria and grasp how insulting it was to Kagan and to out gay women. Oddly enough women who don’t have boyfriends or husbands aren’t gay by default. Sometimes they are single by choice. Its a valid fucking choice to be non fucking for some or all of your life. Everyone doesn’t build their lives around finding and keeping a sexual partner.
aimai
El Cid
@beltane:
So what? When there used to actually be a left in this country, someone here or there would frequently declare crisis X the final crisis of capitalism or that it was time to rise up in revolutionary arms, etc.
Is someone expecting there to be some sort of disciplined ideological outlook on a website where anyone can post a ‘diary’ by just logging on?
ChockFullO'Nuts
@mistermix:
Ah. Well it would have been fine with me if she were on the other team, and the official position was “It’s nobody’s damned business.”
Which is what Sullivan would have said if he had a brain larger than a fucking walnut.
homerhk
The “elitism” thing seems to be a peculiarly American hang up. My God don’t you want your politicans, Presidents and Supreme Court Justices to be elite? Don’t you want them to be fucking brilliant, intelligent and just damn good at what they do? The last time you guys chose someone ostensibly not of the “elite” (although he couldn’t have had a more silver spoon in his mouth at the time of his birth…) you got GWB. Leaving aside the ideological issues I had with him – which were numerous – he just wasn’t very competent – in fact he was way in over his head.
These issues of the constitution, free speech, civil liberties, miranda rights etc are hard and are meant to be hard – if they were easy they wouldn’t end up in the Supreme court in the first place.
So, not impressed by the right wing criticisms of her; also terribly unimpressed with the left wing’s criticisms too.
Bobby Thomson
That’s kind of dog bites man.
I don’t expect them to oppose her nomination at all. She’ll be confirmed as easily as John Roberts.
However, a better nominee could have been confirmed as easily as Sam Alito. We wouldn’t have even had to bring in Mrs. Alito as a human shield.
I’m surprised more hasn’t been said about her unorthodox views of the First Amendment, where she is to the right of Scalia.
Mike Kay
Elena Kagan’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.
America is a better and freer nation than Elena Kagan thinks. Yet in the current delicate balance of the Supreme Court, her rigid ideology will tip the scales of justice against the kind of country America is and ought to be.
No justice would be better than this injustice.
FlipYrWhig
@El Cid:
Why, it’s almost as though a political cause that relies on painting everything in apocalyptic terms might have trouble keeping itself going! If only there was some sort of folk wisdom to encapsulate such a notion…
ChockFullO'Nuts
@Mike Kay:
Your spoof-bullshit-fu is weak.
beltane
@El Cid: I would like to see substantive criticism from someone on the left which did not originate from the Greenwald/Hamsher corner of the room, which that diary and all the others like it, especially Cenk Uyger’s, did.
aimai
@homerhk:
It seems to me that the left wing’s criticisms of Kagan aren’t really about her at all. No one knows how far left of center she really is. The odds are extremely good that she is, in fact, quite left of the mainstream because she is ethnically, historically, educationally, culturally and emotionally from the single segment of American life (New York, Jewish, Female, child of an educator and a lawyer) which is quite likely to consider all those things a god damned birthright.
The left, such as it is (and I don’t think we can call everyone who writes an angry diary at Kos or FDL an actual leftist in a political or theoretical sense) is attacking her because she represents Obama’s refusal to nominate someone who would be out and proud as a liberal. There are very good reasons to want the administration and Obama to make dramatic gestures to the liberal left. But, as it happens, for pretty good pragmatic reasons he didn’t. He chose someone who would probably be all those good things but who doesn’t have enough of a paper trail to make the confirmation hearing a huge fight.
When you look at the payoff this strategy makes a typical Obamanian sense. If you could get a pretty good liberal on the court right away, without a damaging (but also without a triumphant) public battle over liberal v. conservative values why wouldn’t you? You lose the moment to make a dramatic and public statement of liberal values, and to rhetorically drag important judges like Diane Woods out of the shadows and into the limelight. But on the other hand you get forty years worth of good rulings. Its a tradeoff that has some downside for Obama with his own left flank, and some downside in terms of propaganda and (gasp) moving the overton window back to the left. But it has an upside which is that it will probably work and put her on the court.
Its Obama’s call, and he made it. And I think its probably going to prove, in the long term, to have been a good call. At any rate there’s no reason to hamstring or attack her from the left once the nomination has been made. Just no point at all.
aimai
Bobby Thomson
@aimai: Elitism is the sort of thing that only matters when Democrats do it. Still, it doesn’t seem to be asking too much to ask that maybe we could have an appointment without ties to Yale or Harvard. That’s not anti-elitism. It’s recognizing that there are more than two elite universities in the country.
And the University of Texas ain’t exactly Regent, either.
El Cid
@FlipYrWhig: This is just fucking stupid. Suggesting the entirety of the left are fevered apocalypticists is the statement of someone entirely with his / her head up their ass.
cleek
@homerhk:
GWB is every bit an “elite” as is Kagan, and not just by birth. GWB went to Harvard and Yale, and the Phillips Academy. it would be very hard to get more of an elite education in the US. and it’s impossible to ignore the fact that he is the son of a political dynasty.
but Bush was able to avoid the label by virtue of his party, which uses the label “elite” as a way to insult liberals, not because the label didn’t apply to him.
Adam Collyer
@homerhk:
There is a reasonable counter argument to this though. Of course Americans should want their Presidents and Supreme Court Justices to be elite. But the concept of elitism in this country can be ridiculously skewed. Most Presidents and Supreme Court Justices are being viewed as candidates for positions in the mid-40s at the very earliest. Someone needs to explain to me why his/her education, writings, and scholarship from over 20 years ago is a bellwether for future success.
One of the reasons I love Joe Biden is because he’s actually made something of himself. He went to the University of Delaware (a perfectly acceptable public university), then went to Syracuse Law (a perfectly acceptable law school). Then he only went on to be the Democratic foreign policy expert in the Senate. Joe Biden’s achievements are tangible and relevant. He’s no better off than had he gone to Harvard in the first place. We do need to get out of this cycle of only hiring graduates from the Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Columbia/Georgetown scene. It creates an echo chamber. All of these people have had the same professors with the same theories and the same conversations. Expanding that conversation to others can only help this government in the long run.
Of course, going to Harvard Law is a tremendous accomplishment. It clearly shouldn’t be held against a candidate. But honestly, I’m more impressed with her being Dean at HLS than I am with anyone’s attendance there. I know several people at HLS. If you’re telling me that they’re the only bright people in world, we’re in pretty sorry shape.
mai naem
I feel genuinely sad for this woman for whom it should be an incredible celebration to be nominated to the court and here people are discussing whether she’s gay, and part of it because of her looks, and, oh, because she played softball. Yes, there were rumors here and there about Condi but never like this, only because she had the more feminine look. Furthermore, she’s ten times more accomplished than Condi was. If Obama nominates a guy next time around I am going to question their sexuality regardless if they look like a bodybuilder and are married multiple times with six kids.
El Cid
@beltane: I haven’t looked yet, but I would suspect that some of the more academic left would be taking time thinking about the topic before commenting immediately.
However, there does seem to be some need for definition with a complaint such as that, because in order to it not to be from the GG/Hamsher corner, I’d have to know what one had in mind. I know some of the points that GG’s made (I don’t know about Hamsher outside the occasional quotes here), but it would be odd to rule out anyone else making any of the same points if he or she were to argue such a point.
dmsilev
@aimai: You’re probably right. It is, however, probably the first time in recorded history that Will Saletan talked someone off a ledge.
dms
Mike Kay
@mai naem: the moral of the story, obama’s next nomination should have a “lipstick” quality.
homerhk
Aimai – I think that is perfectly put save for the fact that there is always this underlying emotion of Obama “refusing” or making a “pragmatic” choice as if his choice was merely a cynical – last woman standing type affair. For all I know this might be the case but I think there should, in fact, be a recognition that this might not be the case and that Obama is nominating her because he genuinely thinks she would be an excellent Supreme Court Justice and she impresses him more than others on the list. Just saying…
Bobby Thomson: I really don’t understand the “ties to Harvard or Yale” thing at all. Do all people who go to Harvard/Yale have the same ideology?
I happen to know a fair few people from Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge. All are different people with different perspectives – their university experience is but one part of their lives. I would also say that if one has been a judge for a long time (or indeed for any period of time) that is also an extremely isolated and privileged position. It is so not likely that that person is going to have the everyday experiences that pretty much anyone else has. It’s a rarified position: I know people in the legal life who have “ascended” to the judicial positions and it’s just impossible to have the same relationship with them after ascension.
El Cid
Thurgood Marshall went to Howard U., though he was part of Charles Hamilton Houston’s strategy to defeat segregation (he argued & won Brown v. Board), and he went to Harvard Law.
aimai
Bobby Thomson,
I agree with you, in a way, but I’m not so certain that, for example, in a national market that there’s really any difference. Mysteriously Harvard and Yale undergrads can be from Texas, they can even go to an Ivy and go home to go to law school. And vice versa–UT undergrads can end up at Harvard or Yale for law school. If such a person clerks for a supreme court justice and years later gets nominated for the supreme court is it because of harvard/yale or because of UT Texas?
I think the reliance on lawyers and judges for the Supreme Court is actually slightly worse than the reliance on elite law schools–and actually, were any of them from Yale Law School rather than Yale undergrads? –but I’m not sure that at this point in time a left wing intellectual/activist who wasn’t a lawyer could have the slightest effect on the deliberations of the court. Everything has to be couched in legal language and framed a certain way to even be an argument. I’d love for people totally outside the law framework to be on the court but such a person wouldn’t have a hope in hell of making a dent in the actual decisions and would, in the end, be at the mercy of their law clerks.
aimai
homerhk
Cleek, you should have read my post. I called Bush “ostensibly” not elite (i.e. that was just a show). To be even more clear, I put the additional bit about silver spoon in brackets.
BUT, elite doesn’t just refer to the schools that people go to but is meant to convey a too-cerebral approach to things (guts vs. facts); and by that measure I don’t think Bush was an elite at all.
Ash Can
@Linda Featheringill:
Voila.
TR
They sound like Senator Roman Hruska, defending Nixon’s Supreme Court nominee Harold Carswell against charges that he was a mediocre judge:
“Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”
TR
@El Cid:
Actually, Thurgood Marshall went to Lincoln for undergrad, and got his law degree at Howard. He never went to Harvard.
R-Jud
@Mike Kay:
A transvestite? Too bad Eddie Izzard isn’t American.
cmorenc
The Supreme Court would hugely benefit from having at least two or three members with significant regular-world nonacademic experience, and by that I mean people who founded a successful business, had some sort of nonlaw career first, or in the case of the law, worked for a significant time in the ground-floor echelons (like a county district court as both D.A. and Public Defender, with some small civil cases and divorce cases mixed in). Teaching law in a law school or practicing law in some mega-big-business firm don’t give you that kind of perspective.
This is also why elevating some highly respected politician by both sides of the aisle (a vanishing species I know) would be a very good idea. I may not agree with ex-Senator Alan Simpson R-Wyoming, for example, but if you’re going to have a conservative on the bench, at least he isn’t full of his own ideological bullshit and understands the practicalities of the real-world and isn’t an arrogant hardass prick like Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas are.
El Cid
@TR: No, I didn’t say that, or maybe wasn’t clear: Charles Hamilton Houston, the man behind the NAACP’s strategy, went to Harvard Law. Marshall got his law degree from Howard.
Mike Kay
@R-Jud: I was thinking Justice Jenna Jameson.
cleek
@homerhk:
i did read your post. that’s why i decided to reply to it.
i take it you think i was trying to argue with your point. i wasn’t.
slippy
Who? Is that someone I should know?
TR
@El Cid:
Ah, yes. Sorry for my confusion.
FlipYrWhig
@El Cid: Lighten up, Francis. I didn’t say the whole left was apocalyptic. I was mocking nostalgia for the glory days of apocalyptic rhetoric.
El Cid
Obama should have just entirely confused the right wing by nominating George W. Bush Jr.
aimai
Homerk,
Well, I think that’s stretching the word “elite” to make it synonymous with intellectual, or thoughtful. I really don’t think that is what elite means, in the context of the American Aristocracy of which Bush was a constituent part. Its more complicated when you get to a place like France, or maybe the Chinese dynasties in which scholars tested upwards into the civil service and there is a clear pathway marked from the financial and social base of the hierarchy right up to the top. Then we can talk about elites being the product of a scholarly or meritocratic tradition, and also about the limitations of that tradition. In the french case the leadership really are pretty elite in every sense of the word, but this elite also deliberately leaves out poor, minority, non white or non male citizens. The situation in the US is much more confused, with elites of various types competing for positions at the top of the political and social hierarchy.
aimai
FlipYrWhig
@El Cid: Lawyers, Guns, and Money has been analyzing Kagan in ways that look to be at least slightly outside the Axis Of Greenwald. But still there’s too much meta talk, IMHO, about how Obama’s picking Kagan should be interpreted as a willing refusal to pick a “more liberal” alternative.
(Edited to add: That seems to be Digby’s gripe too.)
Mike Kay
kagan makes bob bork look like a haight-ashbury flower child
Die Fahne hoch
Ash Can
@El Cid: Nah, the RW has long since declared him not a real conservative. That’s their story, and they’d stick with it.
geg6
@aimai:
This. You’ve said it all exactly right. There is nothing more to add.
El Cid
@FlipYrWhig: Whether or not it’s an argument made successfully, or will prove correct in the case of Kagan, I don’t think people are wrong to worry that the Court’s huge rightward shift may not quite be being reversed. I just wish something would make Scalia retire, but he’ll probably be in their until the next century.
Jim C
Ah, yes, the populist, blue-collar touring David Brooks. This must be the David Brooks who went to Oakton Community College, not the University of Chicago graduate.
Davis X. Machina
How long did the lie take?
How long would the refutation take?
Mission accomplished.
Bulworth
I wonder if anyone at Fred Hiatt’s crayon scribble page thinks for a tiny moment about the virtue of running conservative columns from former W speech writer Michael Gerson and Kathleen Parker on the same day on the same subject (Kagan)?
At long last, have you no decency, Sir?
Davis X. Machina
It can’t not be reversed, provided only we keep electing Democratic presidents. The mortality rate for humans, including Supreme Court Justices, is 100% — or as my old Jesuit moral theology professor used to say “Life is a sexually transmitted, invariably fatal, disease”.
TR
@Jim C:
If you’d ever been to the salad bar at an Applebee’s, you’d know what a regular guy he is.
El Cid
@aimai: Social scientists have actually looked at the degree and originating factors of diversity within U.S. power elites.
Tazistan Jen
@Bobby Thomson:
I agree. California has some acceptable law schools as well. ANd several other states. The choice isn’t between Yale and Harvard on the one hand and Regent and Liberty on the other.
I think the change in mindset has to start lower though. How many Supreme Court clerks come from non-ivies?
mr. whipple
I find it odd that some of the same people complaining about her lack of a paper trail also insist she’ll move the court to the right or is less liberal than x.
Personally, I would like the validation of Obama picking an ‘out’ leftist, as the conservatives seem to have no problem picking conservatives and this strikes me as unfair, but don’t know the value of fighting fights that probably won’t be won.
El Cid
@Davis X. Machina:
Well, yes, there’s that minor obstacle, but I’m thinking more of the damage that the ultra-right 5 can do in the meantime.
homerhk
cleek, my apologies I misunderstood your post – duh – doing things that you accuse others of doing (i.e. misreading comments) NOT good form…
Joey Maloney
@ChockFullO’Nuts: Which is what Sullivan would have said if he had a brain larger than a fucking walnut.
Hey! A cat’s brain is the size of a walnut. My cats are plenty smart, and they certainly would never be so rude as to speculate on my sexual preferences. They’d just tear out my jugular while I slept and eat my eyeballs if I stopped feeding them.
Now apologize to Izzy and Colonel Panic.
El Cid
@mr. whipple: I wish someone with the ability to do so had convinced the TeaTard right that Obama was going to nominate Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright, or maybe even Ward Churchill.
geg6
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah, because it’s so awesome when a president nominates someone who will never, ever, ever receive the Senate’s advice and consent and who will be excoriated publicly for months on end because the far left of the party needs their fee fees validated. Their fee fees are much more important than a ruined career or public humiliation for whomever they’ve decided is their new “liberal lion.”
The fact that so many of them are calling Stevens a “liberal lion” tells me how little they pay attention or know about SCOTUS. Stevens is a moderate to slightly center right justice who is appalled by the judicial activism of his more conservative brethren. He’s no liberal and never was.
I’m gonna laugh my ass off at these assholes when Kagan turns out to be your garden variety liberal.
Davis X. Machina
There is no damage the ultra-right 5 can do with four moderates in dissent that they couldn’t also do with four Justices (Duncan) Kennedy, or a minority composed of a Justice Lessig, a Justice Guinier, a Justice (Elizabeth) Warren and the aforementioned Justice Kennedy.
Quantity has a quality all its own.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Davis X. Machina: So what exactly is the official statement on this, because I know I’ll have to rebut this at some point?
jeffreyw
OT, BWTF? This is the perfect NY Times story.
Morbo
@beltane: Scott Horton wrote that she would probably be pretty happy to bow to executive power. That said, he pretty solidly gave endorsement.
mr. whipple
And was appointed with a long record as a conservative, only to disappoint the right. Hmmmm.
Chyron HR
@El Cid:
What about Saul Alinsky? As far as I can tell, they think he’s still alive.
Adam Collyer
@Tazistan Jen:
From the New York Times article with Scalia by Adam Liptak:
It’s self-reinforcing. The only Justice that makes it a point to have a preference for non-Ivy League (or T-14, really) graduates is apparently Justice Thomas.
Davis X. Machina
@Belafon (formerly anonevent)
IIRC, military recruiters were on campus at HLS every year that Kagan supposedly had had them banished, invited by an organization of HLS grads who are military vets, instead of at the invitation of the school’s own career-and-placement operation, because while the latter was bound by the university’s non-discriminatory policy, the former were not.
El Cid
@Davis X. Machina: I know. That’s why I mentioned the ultra-right 5. I was counting. I didn’t suggest that this would be any different if Vladimir Lenin was one of the new justices.
Davis X. Machina
@El Cid: You perhaps haven’t, but that’s the very heart and gravamen of the argument that until we know how liberal Kagan is, she shouldn’t be confirmed that is being made elsewhere.
Tazistan Jen
@Adam Collyer:
Huh. Well, I finally have something good to say about Thomas.
jwb
@Hunter Gathers: Yes, they are only at about “3” right now, so they still have considerable room to dial up the crazy. On the other hand, the last month or so, I’ve sensed a bit of crazy fatigue setting in even among the MSM that has so far supported it. It makes me wonder if the ratings for the crazy have begun to erode. I know it finally pushed even my mom and dad, who used to have the news shows on constantly, to turn off the TV.
The November elections still depend greatly on what happens in the economy. If we continue to get good numbers through the summer, the Dems will do fine. If the European situation pulls the economy back into recession, the Dems are toast.
Adam Collyer
@Tazistan Jen:
Indeed, as much as I hate to link to this page:
geg6
@mr. whipple:
Actually, I have found no evidence in Stevens’ background that he was any sort of conservative as it would be defined today. Everything points to him having been moderately conservative his entire career and I can’t believe being an anti-trust crusader is big among staunch conservatives.
I believe poor Justice Stevens is a victim of the legendary rightward shift of the Overton window. Way back when, his philosophy would have been “solidly conservative.” Unfortunately, by the time he was appointed to the Court, his philosophy was rapidly moving into DFH territory.
someguy
The “elitism” thing is pretty funny.
I think it plays on the well-founded Republican fear that they are stupid and not good enough to make it any longer. Not everything the Republicans fear is based in irrational belief. They are too stupid, and their kids are too stupid, to continue owning any part of control of this country any longer. Make way for the meritocracy. You really think some assclown from Regent or Iowa or UC Boulder knows fuckall about how to run the country? Yeah, sure they do, but with about 50% of the intellectual wattage of a Harvard grad, they’re going to misfire a lot more.
Don’t get me wrong. Most of you people are clueless mouthbreathing fucktards compared to the typical Harvard/Yale law grad. I know I sure am – and all that money wasted on a top 10 lawschool. [shakes head… shoulda been born smarter, a lot smarter]. But it shouldn’t be a source of resentment that, contra Senator Smalley, we just aren’t fuckin’ good enough. It seems like we should want our betters to be running things, particularly the supreme court, and we should be grateful they are willing to run shit for us rather than going the full-tilt greed mode in the private sector.
I mean really, are these beltway navel-gazers seriously arguing we need some stupider people on the Supreme Court? C’mon, you already have Thomas and Alito…
aimai
El Cid,
Thanks for the link to the 2006 study.
I think its important to grasp that with a solid phalanx of right wing assholes on the court it isn’t going to swing very fast–but there are a number of scenarios in which it starts to move faster in one direction or another. Kagan isn’t the last appointment that Obama may be able to make even in his first term. But any/all first term appointments will simply be replacing elderly liberals and not the worst of the worst. Putting Kagan forward instead of a well known liberal/Diane Woods could be a great choice if it
a) influences Kennedy’s votes so he more consistently votes with the liberals
or
b) encourages Kennedy to resign because he sees that Obama is appointing very “reasonable” people and/or gets disgusted with the batshit craziness of the right wing.
or, going back to (a) sets the stage for replacing someone else with a very strong, out, respected liberal jurist after the back of Republican opposition has been broken.
So Kagan may be a good choice even if she’s not all that liberal, or she may be a lost opportunity if at a slightly higher price in right wing wailing we could have gotten someone in who would have served the same function but been a stronger liberal vote. We won’t know.
I don’t think its “meta” or somehow wrong for people on the liberal side of things to want Obama to make his appointments and his public statements *both* with an eye on strategic compromise and with an eye to building up his own left liberal flank socially, intellectually, academically, and emotionally. Politics is all of these things at once. He’s not just a technocrat whose job is to bloodlessly and silently fill a set of seats regardless of the feelings and ideas of his own supporters. He actually has to continually satisfy both the demands of the job and his supporters. That’s just the way it is. Politics isn’t what happens when you take politics out of politics. Losing your voters is what happens when you expect people to be satisfied with mere competence or unstated good intentions.
aimai
aimai
@someguy:
Ann Althouse. Glenn Reynolds. Just sayin’. There’s a whole lot of stupid in law schools of all kinds. And, more importantly, a whole lot of assholes (Charlie Fried. *cough cough*). I’m pro elitism in lots of ways and I actually went to both Harvard and Yale (though not to law school) but there’s no way that all of the people who went to Harvard and Yale at any level are better than all of the people who went to any other school. Not on an intellectual level. And certainly not on a moral level.
And there’s the rub– The judiciary is a weird grey area in which we really want to have people who can operate at a high level both intellectually and morally. And a lot of great people practise law, certainly many kinds of law, because they want to serve a higher moral good. But a hell of a lot of people end up in law school because it is, in fact, less difficult than med school or graduate school in the sciences. And even more end up there because its good for making money. Just because some schmuck who tests well went to Harvard Law doesn’t make him a good candidate for humanely and thoughtfully excercising power on the supreme court. Just look at *&^% the right wing of the court right now. Moral pygmies–especially Scalia whose opinions are often riddled with inconsistencies and sheer ugliness and spite.
aimai
Cerberus
Back to the post, “Emotional Orientation” is a new one on me and I come from the tiny subgroup that actually needs a phrase for the general pattern they fall in love with people without sexual attraction or orientation. Seems kind of infrequently used (in his sense anyways) on google as well so I guess it’s a rarely used term.
Most of the asexual community seems to just use romantic, adding the same prefixes that sexual orientation does, i.e. biromantic, homoromantic, heteroromantic, aromantic.
On the rest of it, it just gives me a headache. It’s nice that this weak sauce is all they can come up with (seriously, every successful woman is accused of being a dyke and running with it with Hillary Clinton fervor doesn’t really begin to rise to the level of starting a months-long campaign against the very concept of empathy), but still, oy, it shouldn’t have needed multiple people coming up and going “yup, she takes dicks, every which way to sunday” just to shoo away the swarms of flies.
Brian J
It’@Linda Featheringill:
I’ve never understood the idea that we want regular people in these positions. I suspect there’s a point beyond which too much intellectualism can be, well, almost debilitating to being effective in government, but I’d rather be at that point than at the point of having people who may be successful in normal regards but completely out of their depth otherwise. That’s exactly what we had during the Bush years. The results pretty much speak for themselves.
It’s probably a big leap of faith on my part, but I’m going to trust Obama that she’s going to be someone we’d like at least most of the time.
twiffer
remember when “elite” was a good thing? can we take that word back?
NobodySpecial
@aimai:
Thanks for that post. It’s a perfect summary of the whole thing.
My only question is when will we ever shift from keeping liberalism/progressivism off the back burner to directly confronting conservative ideals with our own. There’s a distinct lack of people willing and able to take the slings and arrows on our side and an oversupply of those who insist that there never is a good time to be liberal in public.
mcd410x
No one is worried about the Supreme Court and abortion?
Great gray ghost, we’ve gotten complacent on the Left.
Brian J
@aimai:
I don’t know anything about him, or at least not enough to have an opinion, but why is Charles Fried an asshole?
cpt
It’s not just that every member will have gone to a “top-ranked” law school. It’s that they all will have gone to either Yale or Harvard. Are there really no other schools producing great legal minds? OK, maybe not St. Paul’s School of Law in East Jesus, but surely there are bright graduates from a few of the other top ten or fifteen schools.
I’m not anti-elitist, but I do think there should be some diversity on the court(s) in this respect.
I don’t usually read David Brooks (unless it’s excerpted and commented on by Taibbi) and I didn’t read the piece(s) DougJ is referencing, but I guess I actually agree with Bobo on something. FML
Brian J
@Poopyman:
On a completely unrelated note, what, exactly, did both Keith Olbermann and Larry Summers see in Ingraham that made them date her? Sure, she’s pretty, but she’s got a personality that is like a dog being sick after eating chocolate.
stuckinred
@Brian J: Hidden talents?
El Cid
It’s about time we got away from all these so-called pointy head “intellectuals” and nominated some Real Americans from the Heartland to serve on the Supreme Court, somebody like Ted Nugent.
patrick II
Many here (and at other blogs) seem to hold that Obama is appointing a person without much of a paper trail so that conservatives don’t have much ammunition to use against her and she ends up appointed without too much of a political fuss.
My own feeling is close to the opposite. Obama is apointing a person without much of a paper trail so that liberals don’t have much ammunition to use against her and she ends up appointed without too much of a political fuss.
Obama is a moderate, is appointing a moderate, and it is the progressive/liberals that he is sneaking her by as much if not more than the conservatives.
someguy
@aimai:
Harvard Law, I agree with you sometimes, it’s a slightly mixed bag with a few lazy ass good test takers sprinkled in there. Haven’t yet met a Yale Law grad who wasn’t brilliant. I don’t like practicing around either because I’m reminded by them regularly – intentionally and unintentionally – that I’m dumber. I’m cool with that; if you’re an olympic sprinter and you get beat by a guy who runs 9.85, it’s not because you’re a bad person, it’s because you aren’t as fast. Being good at starts – test taking – doesn’t get you to the finish line first. You have to be able to run and very few HLS or Yale Law grads are poor runners.
As for moral compass – if you’re using an appellate judge’s incoherence and spite as a measure of morality, I think you’re using the wrong measure. I’d like a liberal version of Scalia, only much meaner and more results oriented. I’m in it to win it. There’s no such thing as neutral legal principles – screw that phony fig leaf. There are just political wins, and political wins delivered by the courts. That’s why the appellate courts issue is all red meat and appealing to the base; both parties’ bases know the deal, and all the rest is window dressing. Appeals to neutral applications of the law are losers’ arguments, their way of politicking the courts in a manner that sounds plausible to the middle, in a vain attempt to stop teh lozing. Our side will get equal justice if and only if we can capture the courts, and frankly, if we can take them, then screw the other side. We’ve had 250 years of preserving white racist economic hegemony. Time for a change, time to get broke by the wheel of fortune rather than ride the top of it, bitchez.
chopper
kagan’s so white she makes bryant gumbel look like flava flav.
Brian J
@stuckinred:
Maybe I’m just atypical in this regard, but she’d have to be really, really good at that stuff for me to get past her obnoxious personality. Unless they just skipped the relationship part, I don’t see how it could work.
If Olbermann can see Hannity and a baseball game and be pretty civil to him, perhaps it makes sense that Ingraham and Olbermann date. Of course, having someone lie on top of you is different than sitting next to them in the stands. Or so they say.
aimai
Patrick II,
I’m of the opinion that Obama is way more moderate that I am, but that’s not saying much since I’m pretty radical. However its clear that Kagan is just one of several people that he seriously considered and the others all have perfectly good paper trails and are, at least in terms of modern american jurisprudence, more or less obvious liberals. I think we can’t overstate just how much damage was done to our judiciary by Republican intransigence from Clinton on up–Kagan herself was denied a seat on the bench by Republicans killing her nomination back in the Clinton years. I also have to say that nominating Kagan instead of a judge means that there is one less open judgeship, deprived of a solid liberal vote, for the Republicans to fuck us over with on the next round. I mean, isn’t that what would happen if Obama elevated a good, liberal, judge from a high position right now? How would that vacancy get filled if the Republicans shot that one down? Maybe I’m too pessimistic and the Dems have their mojo going but I’d hate to lose a good liberal judge from the lower courts given how narrow those numbers are.
aimai
John
I don’t know, this does seem like something worth worrying about, at least a little.
Scalia, Kennedy, Breyer, Roberts, and Kagan went to Harvard Law.
Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor went to Yale Law
Ginsburg graduated from Columbia Law, but she actually started at Harvard and switched to Columbia when her husband got a job in New York.
It’s not so much that they all went to “top-ranked law schools.” It’s that, apparently, only Harvard and Yale law grads need apply. Are Stanford, or Michigan, or Virginia or NYU or Penn really so inferior that one can only find competent supreme court justices from Harvard or Yale? It just seems like it leads to an incredibly narrow outlook, where everybody kind of thinks the same way.
All of these justices are, I’m sure, quite smart people. But has that really done us so much good? Hugo Black went to the University of Alabama Law School. Robert Jackson went to Albany Law School. John Marshall Harlan went to the New York Law School. Thurgood Marshall went to Howard. John Paul Stevens went to Northwestern. Is it really so much to ask that every single supreme court justice not be a graduate of Harvard or Yale Law?
Wow, seriously? You’re lumping Iowa and Colorado with Regents? And saying that someone who went to one of those schools has 50% of the intellectual wattage of a Harvard grad? You’re a fucking prick. I guarantee you that there are people at Iowa and Colorado who are smarter than 95% of the people at Harvard.
I’ve taught classes at both elite and not-so-elite universities, and one thing I’ve learned is that the differences aren’t so vast. The range between the smartest students and the dumbest is about the same. The proportions are somewhat different, but not extraordinarily so. There’s people who are dumb as rocks at elite schools, and incredibly smart people at non-elite schools, especially the big flagship public schools like Iowa and Colorado.
Are there really people who think that a diploma from Harvard or Yale guarantees one’s intellectual superiority over the rest of us?
Downpuppy
@mcd410x: It’s not that anybody’s complacent about Roe, its
1) not an area where there’s any real doubt about Kagan
&
2) not the first thing to worry about in an era when rights that go back to 1215, like not being thrown in a dungeon forever with no recourse or being killed on a whim of the president are gone
Corner Stone
@patrick II:
This is too funny for words. You honestly think Obama is taking into consideration what liberals think of Kagan?
John
@Brian J:
Ingraham’s public persona isn’t necessarily an accurate reflection of what she’s like in private. Ann Coulter is meant to be quite charming when you meet her in person, for example.
Jim C
@someguy:
Corner Stone
@ChockFullO’Nuts:
Personally, if I were in some randomly similar situation, I would be pretty pissed that my closest friends said anything at all, one way or the other.
aimai
Brian J.
I can’t find any good links at the moment, and he seems to have mellowed a bit in his later years (articles say he voted for Obama, for example, in protest at Palin as VP) but I’ve hated him ever since he was Reagan’s Solicitor General. He was a total asshole then, in many important cases. I went to school with his son, who was and remains an absolute doll of a person so Fried can’t be all bad. And he is certainly very smart.
aimai
Corner Stone
@beltane:
And they would immediately be painted with the same brush, no matter how cogent and on point said criticism was.
Corner Stone
@homerhk:
May I ask how many?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Fixed.
Corner Stone
@NobodySpecial:
And this feeds into something someone here quoted from Lawrence O’Donnel – along the lines of “we’ll see liberals start burying their paper trail so no one can accuse them of being a liberal”
And pragmatists will say it’s because the reality is liberals can’t get confirmed. But to your point – accepting this version of reality benefits people who believe in liberal ideals how, exactly?
celticdragonchick
@aimai:
But a hell of a lot of people end up in law school because it is, in fact, less difficult than med school or graduate school in the sciences.
Really? I am starting the search for my where to go for my masters program in geology this month. How would law be easier?
Nice to see you btw, aimai :)
Corner Stone
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Thank you so much for fixing that. You’re doing good work there.
burnspbesq
@mistermix:
He gave up the ghost last night, about the same time that Ben Smith reported that Kagan’s friends say she entertains genital stimulation from the male member.
There’s a potential “South Park” episode lurking in here somewhere.
gbear
Did TBogg have a major falling out with FDL over his Kagen post? He hasn’t posted since monday evening and his last post title was more than a bit foreboding.
celticdragonchick
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
I take it you don’t agree with his vociferous demands that we stop torture, or his oft stated conviction that much of our previous administration consists of war criminals?
homerhk
Corner Stone, why do you ask?
LD50
@cleek:
‘Elite’ serves the same function in GOP discourse that ‘Jew’ used to serve.
Viva BrisVegas
@burnspbesq:
Ah, but is she a switch hitter?
This is a question that MUST be asked.
FlipYrWhig
@aimai:
I agree in principle, but I’m less sure in the actuality. It’s certainly not “wrong,” but it seems to me an unnecessary ego-stroking, and it keeps getting trumped up into deliberate acts of spite: on Kagan, people got it into their heads that she wasn’t all that liberal (based on what seems like not all that much), started angsting about it, then when she was picked they could only feel it as a slap in the face to liberals like them. It’s when “I want to see Obama do X and will be disappointed if he doesn’t” becomes “If Obama doesn’t do X when I want him to it means he doesn’t care about X at all” that the whole thing becomes toxic, and it’s been happening for two years.
burnspbesq
@Bobby Thomson:
The last two justices from Stanford Law were Rehnquist and O’Connor. Sure you want to play that card?
LD50
@someguy:
Your faith in Harvard as some kind of magical place bestowing brilliance is quite bizarre.
gwangung
@celticdragonchick: Well, in post-academic life, you aren’t quite as strenously tethered to reality as you are in the sciences….(it’s bookwork and study….)
Brian J
@Adam Collyer:
Isn’t it true that Georgetown, much like NYU, has only become an elite university in the last three decades or so? Not that it was a complete dump before, say, 1980, only that it wasn’t considered top be among the top universities in the country.
Tazistan Jen
Maybe, but since someone on this thread pointed out that Thomas was a Yale grad, it obviously isn’t a guarantee. Because he is an idiot. Not just wrong – stupid.
celticdragonchick
@Viva BrisVegas:
Epic right wing wanker and not-so-closeted racist Dan Riehl will get around to that
After all, it would be irresponsible not to speculate…
Brian J
@someguy:
Iowa and UC-Boulder both have great law schools. Iowa is regularly featured in the Top 25, or just outside of it, just off the top of my head. They might not be truly elite like Yale or Harvard, but to compare them to Regent is insulting to a lot of people.
Corner Stone
@homerhk: It’s an interesting list of highly praised institutions that aren’t exactly a hop, skip and a jump from each other.
You indicate you know a fair few number of people with histories at these institutions and it interests me enough to ask. Through work associations I’ve had an orbit with a handful from HLS and a couple Yalies. No one I’m sure of from the other two unless you want to include LSE.
But on a personal level I only know one HLS grad, and that’s because I went to undergrad with her.
So, shorter me:
I was curious.
celticdragonchick
@gwangung
Heh!
Something about geology and staying “grounded” with the facts!
I actually was considering law, and there is an LSAT prep class at Guilford College were I go. However, my neighbor is a twenty year veteran defense attorney who is running for Superior Court Judge this fall.
He really advised against going into law. C’est la vie…I like geology and history anyway.
burnspbesq
@celticdragonchick:
Take that advice seriously. Law school is a brutal grind, and unless you love it, practicing law sucks (it sucks some of the time even if you do love it). I’m fortunate in that I love it, but I know a shitload of miserable lawyers.
gwangung
@celticdragonchick: Just FYI…former geologist here (I even have a publication to my name).
But I have to say…I was a terrible scientist, and not suited for it, even though it’s a cool field…
Bobby Thomson
@John:
This. Though I wouldn’t put it at 95%.
Paul L.
Kagan On The Gay Ban – In Her Own Words
Bobby Thomson
@Tazistan Jen: I gotta stick up for Thomas again. I don’t think he’s “stupid.” I think he has a very different view of how the world works than most people
here. I get the sense that he’s much brighter than fellow Yalie and malevolent fuckstick Sam Alito.homerhk
Corner Stone – fair enough.
I work for a law firm that has a diverse mix of people from many different types of backgrounds.
I was also stationed in Hong Kong for about 5 years where my closest friend was a Yale law graduate (by way of India and Austin texas).
I was born in the UK and studied there (tho’ not at Oxford or Cambridge). My family is originally from India and most of my extended family is now in the US where at least some of my many cousins went to Harvard or Yale.
All in all, I’d say (although don’t quote me on this) I know about 150 people who went to Oxford or cambridge (some better than others, natch) and about 50 people who went to Harvard and/or Yale. They are doing such diverse things as doctors, lawyers, human rights activists, aid workers in Haiti, members of the Red Cross, bankers, playwrights, authors, journalists and of course lawyers again.
They are not defined by their professions (save possibly for the human rights activists for obvious reasons).
geg6
@burnspbesq:
I was advised the same thing by my undergrad advisor. I had always planned on going to law school, but he talked me out of it. He said my love of the law and for argument/advocacy would be crushed by the soul destroying practice of the law.
Bobby Thomson
@burnspbesq: The last justice from Yale was Alito. Hey, drawing sweeping conclusions from limited sample sizes is fun!
celticdragonchick
@burnspbesq:
Ouch.
That is hardly a ringing endorsement, I must admit.
celticdragonchick
@gwangung:
I would be interested in seeing the publication you mention.
My biggest fear is that my physical limitations (I have degenerative disc disease and various joint problems) will really make it hard or impossible to do field work…and I love field work. I really, really enjoy being on the outcrop with my mapboard and field book.
burnspbesq
@Bobby Thomson:
And any number can play!
Brian J
@John:
Rush Limbaugh is supposedly a sweet guy in private, too.
someguy
Yeah, they’re great schools, if you want to practice in Denver or the Quad Cities and be a state district court judge or maybe state court of appeals judge. Sorry you feel insulted. I went to a law school that is also often insulted by graduates of better schools. I got over it. Don’t you find it slightly amusing that you’re willing to sneer at Regent, but take offense when people who are truly elite would sneer at your school? Top 25 in law schools is to Harvard and Yale as a MAC basketball team’s brief appearance in the AP Top 25 is to Duke. To grads of the top couple schools, the rest of us went to shit schools. Iowa or Regent or Vandy or Case Western is all the same to them. Non-hackers. Get over it.
Going to HLS or Yale Law doesn’t guarantee brilliance, but I’d be happy to stack up their LSATs, grades, and the success of their graduates against any other schools. Yeah, networking plays a bit of a role, and so does tokenism, but on the average their students are brilliant. This idea that everybody is born equal is crazy. You could take a room full of a thousand people and, train them however you like, the odds are perhaps one or two of them are even capable of pulling off a 175 on their LSATs. They don’t do that because of persistent cultural bias, it’s because as a group, they are smarter than the rest of us, like Mensa members. That there are a few students who are probably two standard deviations below the norm (Thomas, GW Bush at HSB) is an outlier, not a good representative of the center mass.
It goes back to a 2005 Outback Bowl game that buggered up a parlay bet on me that worked out pretty sweet otherwise. The Hawkeyes get no breaks from me. Ever.
Ash Can
@Paul L.: No, she was not “speaking of herself.” But heaven forbid you should spend 30 seconds on Google like I just did to check whether a bastion of truth like Hot Air had this right.
Seriously, is it too much to ask of you that you at the very least get your facts right? And you wonder why your ass gets kicked around when you try posting here?
Adam Collyer
@John:
We love reppin’ that around here. Trust me. :)
4jkb4ia
I report that 4jkb4ia’s Dad has endorsed Kagan. He mentioned the “consensus builder” point but also said that Kagan has the “intellect and stamina” to fight Scalia when Scalia has to be fought. Then we agreed that Kagan knows how to say nothing and appear to have said something at her hearing.
And it was good to see that John read that Volokh article, but it seemed condescending to mention that in one word when the post was fresh.
Adam Collyer
@Brian J:
Unsure. Given your timeline, it’s definitely been an elite university in the 26 years that I’ve been alive. :)
Brian J
@someguy:
As someone who is going to law school in the fall, and at a place that is slowly rising but still “worse” than the other schools being discussed here except for Regent (we’ve gotten those punks beat by several miles, no contest) I think I have a pretty good grasp of the distinctions between schools. (I also don’t feel insulted.) That’s why I said that while Iowa and Boulder were good, they weren’t truly elite. Few schools reach the stature of a Harvard or Yale.
Maybe I have this slightly wrong, but as far as reputation goes, which is somewhat different than the ability to get someone placed in a job, Iowa and Boulder are pretty well regarded. The public may not know that Iowa has a great law school, but who cares what the public thinks? My guess is, it’s a lot like academic specialties, where a relatively no name school is well regarded by people who matter–in this case, lawyers and law professors at other schools. In other words, unless you have a truly pompous ass, a law professor at Harvard isn’t going to think a law professor from Iowa is truly substandard.
And yes, I am sneering slightly at Regent, because while it’s not quite on the level of Liberty, it’s not that far away from it. Perhaps it’ll change; it’s still quite young, and maybe the people there want it to be a legitimate school, as opposed to a diploma mill with a Christian bent. Yet so far, everything I’ve seen suggests it’s only slightly different from that.
Brian J
@Adam Collyer:
So you go to NYLS?
Corner Stone
@homerhk: Sheesh. I’d say the UK part of you indulged in a little classic understatement when you said “a fair few”.
FlipYrWhig
@Brian J:
Patrick Ewing made that place. :P
Brian J
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s who it was. I was going to say Jordan, but that clearly wasn’t right.
gwangung
@celticdragonchick: Eh. It was a Bouger gravity map of San Bernadino; got a secondary author credit because I was willing to do the hard work of measurement in hard-to-reach, hard-to-pinpoint areas. (You know, things that fresh-out-of-school whippersnappers are willing to do).
Agh. The possibility of losing fieldwork just tears the heart out of a geologist; that’s heart and soul to a geologist. Being anchored to the office is just…soul numbing. Hoping you can figure out a way to get around it…
slippy
@Brian J: I will never know that, because if I meet him in private I will unload on him so virulently that his head will spin off and explode. I hold him personally responsible for chipping a canyon-sized divide between myself and my father for the last 20 years. His blustering, ravening bullshit led my father, who I know is proud of my abilities, to level some of the most unforgivable insults at me in his defense of Rush.
I would just as soon grab him by the ears and puke into his face as have a discussion with him. He’s one of the vilest human beings alive.
Adam Collyer
@Brian J:
Yessir. In fact, I’m sitting upstairs on the 5th floor lounge at this very moment overlooking lower Manhattan.
And, to the rest of the thread watchers here, we’re very proud of our school and our justice. My education has been terrific, I’m employed post-graduation, and I’ve studied with some interesting and diverse people in some of the best clinical programs offered in the country. So no, NYLS may not “be” HLS, Yale, or Columbia as far as LSAT scores or “grades” (whatever that means, since many elite institutions are graded as “low pass,” “pass,” and “high pass”), but people’s perceptions are far too skewed by flawed magazine rankings (yes, I’m looking at you, US News and World Report) and the self-perpetuating class of people who only hire from “elite” law schools because they went to “elite” law schools.
Brian J
@slippy:
That’s kind of my point. Perhaps people like Coulter, Limbaugh, and Ingraham really are different in private. But they are so toxic in public that they’d have to be really, really different in private for it to make a difference, and even then, I am not sure if I could get over it.
@Adam Collyer:
The reason I ask is because I have a friend from college who goes there and is about to graduate (he supposedly did very, very well). I don’t know how many students go there, so I am not sure if you’d know him.
Adam Collyer
@Brian J:
I’m pretty well acquainted with the student body here. I’d ask you what his name is, but given the blog’s nature, it’s a little strange. Shoot me an email at [email protected] and I can know for sure.
Obviously you can be creative and replace my.name with, you know, my actual name.
someguy
@Brian J:
Two pieces of advice for you, Brian. If you’re a gunner, go anywhere you want, and do anything just short of killing yourself or somebody else to make law review and get a good clerkship. Second, if you don’t feel capable of a backbreaking level of hard work and dedication and determination, go someplace that will pay you to attend their school and graduate debt free, so that you can explore your options without a $1500/month student loan hump every month.
Most of private practice is a beauty contest, at least for new lawyers; if you don’t have the candy you’ll have a tough time making it for the first few years, and your mobility later on may be limited unless you have a book of business or some weird and valuable skillset – like an M.D. in a med-mal practice, or an MS in EE for a patent practice. It’s unfair but you just signed up for a meat market and you should approach your decisions from a standpoint of commercial viability rather than of noble thoughts about serving people. It’s tough to serve people when you have a $1500/month student loan nut to crack. Graduate with little debt or work a few years of BigLaw to kill off the debt, and you’ll have options. Otherwise you’re going to be a nervous wage slave, like the rest of us.
Jim C
I knew it had to be football – unless it was some ancient Eddie Horton beef.
Brian J
@someguy:
I guess it’s a good thing I used to work at Abercrombie & Fitch as a model and was voted to have best ass and nicest eyes in those senior superlative things, then, right?*
I’m sorry if this a little obtuse, but what, exactly, do you mean by “candy”? Surely, you can’t mean mostly looks.
*Only one of those is only kind of true.
Brian J
@Adam Collyer:
It would help if you told me your actual name. What am I, a mind reader?
slippy
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Fixed your fix.
slippy
@Brian J: Second that, Brian. “It’s just an act” doesn’t cut it when one’s made jokes about poisoning people and called others traitors.
Corner Stone
@someguy: Some of us have discussed this issue before with Brian J. Personally, I still believe it to be a poor choice, but to each his own.
https://balloon-juice.com/2009/09/23/one-day-everything-will-be-socialist/
patrick II
@Corner Stone: I think he likes to play to the crowd as more liberal than he is.
celticdragonchick
@gwangung:
LOL! Yes, I know.
I did my initial schooling at Cal State Fullerton and my hometown is Yucaipa, just next to Redlands. (I was born in San Bernardino)
My first job in geology as a student was at Earth Technology in San Bernardino in an office building near the I-10/91 interchange (the one that notoriously was built on sandy liquifaction prone sediment that happens to overlay an active fault trace. Brilliant!)
Adam Collyer
@Brian J:
Ha. I had assumed. It’s the same as my name on here.
Corner Stone
@Brian J:
Someguy means you should buy a nice sized crystal glass bowl, put it on your desk and then fill it with different styles of chocolate candy.
Partners looking to assign young lawyers work enjoy chocolate and are more apt to stop by your office if you have candy there.
Brian J
@Adam Collyer:
Which is what?
celticdragonchick
@John:
An awful lot of people believe that 2/3s of Ann Coulter’s schtick is performance art for profit.
Even if she doesn’t believe in half of what she says, that doesn’t make it any better.
Corner Stone
@Brian J: Please tell me you’re doing extended satire or something here.
Brian J
@celticdragonchick:
I have no doubt she’s in it for the money, at least half of the time. Of course, this doesn’t really mean she’s doesn’t believe the insane things she describes. She does. They money is just a nice side benefit.
Adam Collyer
@Brian J:
Adam Collyer.
Adam Collyer
Just wanted to note that I’m truly enjoying this thread today. That may be because I’m half-procrastinating on completing this theory paper, but it’s still true nonetheless.
Brian J
@Adam Collyer:
I know, I know. I am just messing with you. I am trying to strike that great balance that is required for snark, but I am not quite there just yet.
Brian J
@Corner Stone:
I am.
celticdragonchick
@Brian J:
That may well be.
I actually used to like her about 15 years ago before she became a certified pit viper. She has gotten progressively more venomous and nasty as her audience has done likewise.
celticdragonchick
@Adam Collyer:
I see I am not the only one who has used this blog to put off schoolwork…
Brian J
@Adam Collyer:
I’m trying to get myself in the habit of turning off electronic devices. One of the hardest parts of studying for the LSAT was ignoring my iphone and all of the great blogs I read. (Yes, Balloon Juice, I am looking at you!)
Adam Collyer
@Brian J:
I had assumed, but since it’s the internet, you never really know…
And don’t bother turning off electronic devices. Keeping yourself attached to the real world will make you a much more normal and well-adjusted law student. Admittedly, not many of those exist.
Brian J
@celticdragonchick:
What was she like 15 years ago that made you like her? This is a legitimate question, by the way, because I am unsure of what she was like 15 years ago.
Brian J
@Adam Collyer:
I just meant while I was trying to get work done.
Phoebe
@beltane: It’s true. Sullivan has a tendency to jump to a conclusion, then ride the confirmation bias train to the end of the line, albeit with an entertaining and cogent writing style.
BUT, I think he knows this, and knows that it leads to giant mistakes, like his backing of the Iraq war, and this experience, plus the fact that he was forged in the British debate-your-way-to-truth furnace, make him extremely receptive to opposing points of view. And he often changes his mind. I dig it.
John
I’m glad you’re doubling down on the assholery, but how does this demonstrate anything? Yeah, people from Iowa and Colorado aren’t going to get the top clerkships, or go to the top New York firms. All that indicates is that we have a system that gives the top clerkships, and the top jobs at New York firms, to people who go to elite law schools, and especially Harvard and Yale. This is because everyone “knows” those are the top schools, and that other schools aren’t as good. It doesn’t say anything about the intelligence of people at any of these places.
So people at Harvard or Yale are assholes who think they’re better than everyone else? I don’t think anyone disputes that. Your original point was that they think this because they are better than everyone else. Asserting that they think they’re better than everyone doesn’t really prove that.
Well, obviously their LSATs are higher than everyone else’s, because they make sure they have the highest minimum LSAT requirements of any law school. Law school (and undergraduate, for that matter) grades are completely meaningless, because you can’t really compare between schools. And of course their graduates are more successful – there’s a whole system that is designed to clear the way and make HLS and Yale Law graduates successful. Like the fact that all the Supreme Court justices went to one or the other, for instance.
Look, obviously HLS and Yale Law students are, for the most part, very smart. Their median is going to be smarter than the median of any other law school. And their bottom is probably going to be smarter than the median of a lot of law schools. But your argument appears to be that the guy who graduates 500th in his HLS class is not just smarter than the woman who is #1 in her class at Iowa, he is actually at a whole other level of intelligence from her. That’s not just bullshit, it’s obviously bullshit.
I don’t have much experience with law schools, but I can’t imagine that the spread is that much different from the way it works in undergraduate institutions. I’ve taught undergrads at Penn, a very elite institution, and at Temple, not an elite institution. Even taking out the very dumbest kids at Penn as outliers, my A students at Temple were far and away smarter than the students at Penn who I should have been giving C’s, but ended up giving B-‘s to. There weren’t as many A students at Temple as there were at Penn, and there were more students who were below that grade-inflated B- level of adequacy. But the idea that students at elite schools are just “smarter” than those at non-elite schools is ridiculous. On average, of course that’s true, but between any two individuals it’s total nonsense.
FlipYrWhig
@John: What subject were you teaching at Penn? Extensive family ties to that place since the ’90s.
John
@FlipYrWhig: History.
celticdragonchick
@Brian J:
She was definitely right wing, but she was also funny and acted exasperated (almost in a ohmygawd valley girl way) rather than the humorless, venom flecked caricature she has become.
liberal
@aimai:
Not sure I buy that. From what I’ve read, some very conservative legal scholars and justices would have gone to bat for Wood. I.e., she would have been confirmed.
Furthermore, I’ve read that Wood has an excellent track record of moving the conservatives on her court to her side by the force of her opinions. Nothing like that can be said of Kagan.
Yes, the one thing K has over W is that she’s younger. But you don’t know how good the rulings will be. With Wood, you pretty much know exactly what to expect.
Except that Wood would probably have been confirmed, too.
Nonsense. People like me to the left of Obama, who voted for him and gave him substantial support in 2008, are faced with difficult choices when it comes to trying to influence Obama’s course: for all we complain about Obama, the Republicans are the party of the devil. Bitching when he does things we find objectionable, like nominate Kagan when he could have nominated Wood, is one of the things we can do which wouldn’t appear to help the Republicans and yet let him know we’re not content with his actions.
Corner Stone
I still have a comment on this thread in moderation from 12:31 today. I linked to a BJ thread that had the dreaded sockalism word in the thread title.
aimai
Liberal,
maybe this thread is dead so there’s no point my responding to your post up above but I think I’d like to, anyway.
Look, *I’m* to the left of Obama, waaaay to the left. And I’m a much more agressive, game playing type person, too. So–that means that he and I disagree on strategy, tactics, and sometimes on goals, too. But just because I don’t agree with him on the Kagan pick doesn’t give me, or anyone else on the democratic left the right to attack Kagan personally as an illegitimate pick, a stealth republican, a bad person. That’s just immoral. And its incredibly destructive. There are a whole lot of good people out there who could serve with distinction on the Supreme Court. And not all of them, or any of them, will rule the way I think they ought to on every thing that is going to come down the pike. That’s not any kind of reason to smear and defame not only Kagan but Obama. As FlipYrWhig pointed out upthread, while disagreeing with me, there’s a leap from criticism of *this pick* to criticism of Obama’s bona fides as a good Democratic centrist president.
Obama’s not a flaming radical–but he’s pretty darned good as a Democratic President trying to get stuff done on a number of levels: economic, administrative, judicial, ecological. There’s zero point undermining him in order to try to force him to the left of where he’s going. There’s a lot of point in trying to outgrassroots organize him to pressure him and his staff before a decision has been made. There’s a lot of point in trying to organize the left as a whole to be more effective at the local level, to try to pull the party as a whole to the left, to try to educate and radicalize voters and to try to show voters where and how their interests are better served by democratic policies. But you can’t do that by jumping over or past the democratic president we have now.
And you really can’t do it by attacking and demeaning people like Kagan–not that you are, but the left wing hysteria about her is generally defaming—who are, in fact, lifelong democrats and liberals even if they aren’t exactly where you want them to be.
And no, none of us can know that Wood would get confirmed. Or that she won’t get the *next nod* from Obama.
aimai
someguy
@Brian J:
Nice little things that attract attention. Editorial board position on the main law review, or at least membership. *Appellate* moot court experience (f*** the Negotiation Moot Court). High enough grades to get Order of the Coif. You were a D-1 All American in some sport. You were a local celebrity. You won a grammy. Your daddy owns Berkshire Hathaway. You have, or at least are willing, to blow every partner on the hiring committee. You took a year off from undergrad to bring peace to the Congo, preferably not by killing thousands.
By “candy” I mean stuff in and outside of the law that says “I piss excellence” even if that statement is patently untrue. Something that makes you more legally excellent-marketable to prospective clients than your average fellow student, at least more interesting/marketable. After all, those mutts all got A grades in undergrad lit and a 167 on their LSAT too.
Mnemosyne
@celticdragonchick:
JPL? Getting to study formations on other planets might ease some of the psychic pain of not being up to fieldwork. A friend’s girlfriend was a PhD candidate in geology who worked for JPL, so I know they use quite a few geologists.
bob h
Boboites wring their hands about sad it is that everyone on the Supreme Court went to a top-ranked law school.
A lot of people never get over their rejection from Ivy schools, and spend their lives trying to get even with “the Harvards”.