SCOTUS Nominee Kagan On Free Speech Issues

DesScorp submitted one of a few stories I've seen about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, whose confirmation hearings are supposed to start today (despite being a formality, given that she has the votes pretty much locked up). "SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan hasn't left much of a paper trail during her legal career, which may make gauging her ideas and opinions somewhat difficult. But there are some positions she has made clear statements on, among them, pornography and 'hate speech.' In a 1993 University of Chicago seminar on the subject, Kagan argued that the government wasn't doing enough about the spread of porn or hate speech. She argued that new approaches were needed to fight their spread, as well as taking a fresh look at old approaches, such as obscenity laws. Kagan included herself among 'those of us who favor some form of pornography and hate speech regulation,' and told participants that 'a great deal can be done very usefully' to crack down on such evils."

Comments

Re:Science disagrees with you Kagan

[Devout_IPUite]

Reading, math, geography, history, these things are actually useful. I know how to communicate with other humans, how to take a derivative, and what happens if you give a fire oxygen. People who don't have access to the school system of America often don't know these things. If we left schooling to parents only, many kids would not learn math, science, reading, history, or geography.

There's a few.

[FatSean]

We didn't invade Iran like McCain promised. We're not staying in Iraq for "100 years if need be " as McCain promised. DADT is going away. He's gotten the federal gov't to lay off pot users where states have allowed pot us.

Obama is a moderate, we knew that when he campaigned, he was just the lesser of two evils.

Re:There's a few.

[gambino21]

Just wanted to add a few items to your list.

1 - Stop snatching people off streets. Provide a Right to fair trial. (REALITY: No longer have Miranda rights even for U.S. citizens.) (Obama's advisers say americans can be held indefinitely w/o trial)
2 - Protect our Right to Privacy. (REALITY: They now spy on us via warrantless wiretaps and track our cellphones.) (Patriot Act renewed by Obama and the Pelosi Democrats.)
3 - Stop interrogation. Close Guantanamo. (Revoked - Club G is still open and now they interrogate US citizens too, not just foreigners.)
4 - End the war. (Nope. Instead it's been extended two more years and apparently involves killing children & journalists not soldiers (see wikileaks))

5 - Protect whistleblowers. (Instead of protecting them, Obama has decided to attack whistleblowers more strongly than any previous president. For example, Thomas Drake and Bradley Manning).
6 - Government transparency. (Obama negotiated away the public option in secret meetings with the big pharma companies)
7 - Obama has taken punishment without trial to a new level by authorizing assassination of US citizens who are no where near a battlefield.

Obama said a lot of great stuff during his campaign, it's too bad he has reversed himself on a lot of the most important issues.

Re:Yay, Obama

[Domint]

Dred Scott was part of "the law" at one time. This line about respecting precedent is utter BS when the precedent was wrongly decided to begin with.

It is the sole responsibility of the SCOTUS to interpret existing laws, just or unjust. If a law is "wrong", it is the sole responsibility of Congress to rewrite/revoke it.

Re:Yay, Obama

[fishexe]

No, that is wrong.

The Constitution is to protect the people from the government.

The Law is to protect the government from the people.

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;"
--US constitution, article VI, clause 2. When even the Constitution refers to itself as the Law, you can't really argue the two are distinct.