Obama Nominates Kagan For The Supreme Court
Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 10th, 2010
I hope all of you enjoyed time with your mothers, and all you mothers had a great time with your children yesterday.
I wrote about Elena Kagan last week. Today Obama announces Kagan as his choice to succeed John Stevens in the Supreme Court.
Do you think Obama made the right choice? Or do you think Diana Wood, would’ve been the better pick? Voting in another woman is certainly a historic step forward as women continue to take their rightful place on the high court.
But not all Democrat-affiliated groups are happy with Obama’s choice. Kagan is a moderate and some are concerned that replacing Stevens who is the leader of the court’s liberal bloc, with a moderate like Kagan, would have the net effect of making the court more conservative. Plus, Kagan, lacks judicial experience and her short time as solicitor general, arguing just six cases before the Court, concerns people. In my opinion, we certainly don’t need our high court to get any more conservative.
Known as sharp and politically savvy, Kagan has led a blazing legal career: first female dean of Harvard Law School, first woman to serve as the top Supreme Court lawyer for any administration, and now first in Obama’s mind to succeed legendaryJustice John Paul Stevens.
At 50 years old, Kagan would be the youngest justice on the court, one of many factors working in her favor. She has the chance to extend Obama’s legacy for a generation.
Kagan has clerked for Thurgood Marshall, worked for Bill Clinton and earned a stellar reputation as a student, teacher and manager of the elite academic world. Her standing has risen in Obama’s eyes as his government’s lawyer before the high court over the last year.
Yet Kagan would be the first justice without judicial experience in almost 40 years. All of the three other finalists she beat out for the job are federal appeals court judges, and all nine of the current justices served on the federal bench before being elevated.
On the other hand there is Diana Wood. I didn’t get the chance to blog about her. She is a better pick according to the progressives, and was considered a front-runner all along.
She is known for sparring well and being a persuasive force with conservative jurists, which could be a huge selling point for the president. Obama is eager to choose someone he thinks will not just interpret the law fairly but also help in forming a winning majority on a court that is often split down the middle.
Wood also offers the diversity of experience that Obama likes. She has been a Justice Department official, a lawyer in private practice, a teacher and a judge.
Yet, she has also drawn fire from conservatives for rulings that put her on the side of abortion-rights activists, which could be a factor in her confirmation hearings. She once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who in 1973 wrote the decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion in the United States.
Readers: What’s the consensus? Did Obama make the right choice or was he hesitant in nominating Wood, perhaps because he thought the Republicans might filibuster if he did?
Blog me, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts.
***************
Doug: A nice one. And definitely true.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my ‘loyal’(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the ‘Donate’ button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my ‘Donate’ page)
May 10th, 2010 at 11:50 am
Hi Mischa, I have to think on the q a little bit, ok I did, yes he feared a filibuster, and good enough reason to pass in my opinion (unfortunately).
Lily and I went to see Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, Joe was a man of muscle – Lily turns to me and says, he’s cute and has nice abs but he cannot sing, I said, ‘oh, he’s singing??’ we both fell apart laughing, great play and J’s white skirt with the gladiator sandals, thick gold cuffs and shoulder/head piece (pharoah style) was seriously – um – distracting. Made me want some ‘let’s dress up’ time : )
Oona, thanks for giving me the scoop on Brad : )
Joel, I’m at Gold’s Gym in Redondo Beach most mornings between 9-9:30-10:30-11 depending on yoga teaching that day. I’m not an after 5pm type of gym goer, too crowded and since I can work when I want to, I take advantage of that and go when it’s quiet. Should you choose to visit during those hours, you are welcome to approach if I don’t have headphones on : ) If I do, I’m on task and don’t speak.
Women of MM blog, how’s the sit up challenge going? here’s a sit up you’ll hate : ) lay on your back, legs extended, cross your ankles, lift your shoulders off the ground till you feel your belly muscles engage, then lift those crossed ankles off the floor about 18″, that’s your starting point, bring them up to 2″ – that’s a 6 inch movement, small yet effective if you are holding that tummy in towards your spine, exhaling on the way up, inhale down, do 3 sets of 10 and 1 set of just holding the legs at 2″ for a count of 30, yes you will hate this and love the effect later.
I have some supplements for you but today I’m only giving you the skin tighteners, yep…between these and the exercises you should be feeling f’in groovy in your swim suit or bday suit, depending on how you like to take your vitey D ; )
Alpha Lipoic acid – elasticity
Vitey A/C/E I take 100 mgs of each
DMAE – very long name…forget it now…elasticity
zinc
calium
iron
aloe vera (juice, extract or supplement)
…and that’s it for now, back to work, Luv, Zen Lill
May 11th, 2010 at 6:12 am
I am concerned with her ties to Goldman Sachs, Larry Summers and the rest of the Wall Street team. She was a professor at Harvard when Summers arrived there, from his work at The Treasury, under Bill Clinton, where he helped to deregulate banks and derivatives to get the gambling moving…subsequently, now guaranteed by the taxpayer. She worked with Summers when he was President of Harvard from 2001-2006 to which he made her full Professor, then Dean. She was a paid adviser to Goldman Sachs. She made Cass Sunstein, who is now an adviser to Obama, a full professor at Harvard. He has suggested the concept of marriage be discontinued, rather than stand the fight for equal rights to all in the Gay marriage fight. He is a Constitutional Law expert.
May 11th, 2010 at 7:22 am
What Doctors Don’t Want You to Know
David H. Newman, MD
St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital
Doctors today use sophisticated tests and treatments that would have been unimaginable a generation ago. This benefits many patients, but there’s also a downside.
By focusing too narrowly on technology, there’s a temptation for doctors to always do something even when they’re not entirely sure why they’re doing it — or when doing nothing might be a better choice.
The truth is, doctors guess a lot of the time. They order tests even when they don’t know what they’re looking for. They perform procedures that are unlikely to help.
They give drugs that have been proven to work in general but are unlikely to help a particular patient.
What doctors don’t always admit — or don’t know…
Fact: Tests may not help. Doctors used to spend a lot of time with patients. They asked questions about their personal lives as well as their medical histories. They often could make a diagnosis before the patient left the office.
That rarely happens today. The usual approach is to quickly order tests. Example: Several years ago, my mother went to the emergency department with severe stomach pain.
Within a few hours, she was given chest and abdominal X-rays and tests for liver disease, gallstones, internal bleeding and pancreatitis.
After all that, she was diagnosed with “undifferentiated stomach pain,” a fancy way of saying that she was probably fine, but no one could figure out what had caused the pain. Did she need all of those tests? Probably not.
The tests were at least partly warranted, but doctors sometimes order tests because they don’t know what else to do. Tests should be used mainly to confirm a hypothesis, not merely to “fish” for possible problems.
Self-defense: If your doctor orders a test, ask what he/she is looking for. If the answer seems nebulous — “We’re looking for something that might explain your symptoms” — get more information.
What you want to hear is something specific, such as, “I’m pretty sure you have a lung infection, but I don’t want to start treatment until I’m sure.”
Fact: Most infections clear up without treatment. It’s estimated that at least 80% of all outpatient antibiotic prescriptions don’t help. Reason: Most infections are caused by viruses, not bacteria — and antibiotics have no effect on viruses.
The vast majority of upper respiratory infections, for example, are viral. Yet half of patients who see a doctor with one of these infections are given antibiotics.
Even when patients do have a bacterial infection, such as strep throat, antibiotics may not be necessary. Infections often clear up on their own.
Antibiotics are not harmless. They kill beneficial organisms in the body that help curtail harmful microbes. Also, the unnecessary use of antibiotics may be responsible for an estimated 24,000 life-threatening allergic reactions annually.
Self-defense: If you have an infection, ask your doctor if it has to be treated. Take antibiotics only if an untreated infection — something such as bacterial pneumonia or a wound with spreading redness — is likely to cause serious complications.
Fact: Herniated discs rarely cause back pain. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the test of choice to evaluate back pain. But there’s a secret about MRIs and back pain.
The most common problems physicians see on MRIs and attribute to back pain — herniated, ruptured and bulging discs — are seen almost as commonly on MRIs of healthy people without back pain.
This means that herniated discs usually have nothing to do with back pain. They are a normal finding, suggesting that discs rupture with some frequency and our bodies repair them uneventfully.
Surgery to fix or remove a disc usually is performed in the hope that a herniated disc is compressing a nerve and causing the pain, but it carries a poor overall success rate.
Even after the nerve is decompressed or freed by removing the disc surgically, half of the time the patient’s low back pain is not relieved.
Self-defense: Studies show that most people with back pain will improve within six months with standard medical care, such as physical therapy and the use of anti-inflammatory drugs.
Surgery should be considered mainly for patients with a herniated disc that clearly is causing a neurological deficit, such as foot weakness or a loss of bowel or bladder control, in addition to pain.
Fact: Prescription drugs may not help. There’s no question that modern medications represent some of the most important developments in medicine. Yet few doctors understand that commonly used drugs are unlikely to help certain patients.
Example: Doctors routinely recommend a daily aspirin to prevent heart attacks. This is reasonable advice for a select group of patients.
Among those at high risk for heart attacks and strokes, a daily aspirin will help about one patient out of 100. The other 99 won’t benefit.
This isn’t an optimal situation, but the risk for a heart attack is so serious that it is probably worth it even if 99 patients get the drug who don’t need it.
There is a statistical concept called the number needed to treat (NNT) that researchers use to measure the impact of a medication. It estimates the number of patients who have to take a particular drug in order for one person to benefit.
The NNT for aspirin in high-risk patients, as described above, is about 100. The ratio for other drugs isn’t that favorable. If drugs were free and produced no side effects, the NNT wouldn’t matter, but aspirin (along with most drugs) can cause serious side effects.
Self-defense: Always ask your doctor about a drug’s NNT. A drug with a low NNT is more likely to be helpful for you than one with a high number. But always discuss the risks and benefits of a drug with your doctor.
Bottom Line/Personal interviewed David H. Newman, MD, emergency physician and clinical professor of medicine at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital and director of a clinical research program at Columbia University, both in New York City. He is author of Hippocrates’ Shadow: Secrets from the House of Medicine (Scribner).
May 11th, 2010 at 7:24 am
Michelle
Is Zen Lill real? I have noticed that when others complain that they can’t get in Zen Lill’s post are always there.
May 11th, 2010 at 7:36 am
Doug
There is never going to be a perfect situation where a qualified candidate hasn’t been exposed to the crooks of this world. The crooks own everything.
If she did not have this exposure she could be accused of being naive about the workings of the world. Many women work where they can get the work.
We observe the crooked ways of men(not all, and some women too) and we adjust our noses biding our time until such a moment as this gives us an opportunity to curtail the crooks.
Be patient and you will be pleasantly surprised to find that Kagan has what it takes to lead one or two of the other justices to her side.
Mildred
May 11th, 2010 at 7:58 am
I could not get in to answer you Michelle. But it seems that the answer has come. The same people who hacked the Stock Market hacked Twitter.
They gave you the same explanation. It was a glitch that they fixed. Translated: We were hacked and we fixed the hole the hacker(s) used to get in.
All that means is the system(s) are vulnerable to being hacked by governments like China, Russia, and North Korea because they are using experts working 24 hours a day to break into systems that are protected by live personal working 8 hour days to protect.
The US government needs to employ experts to work 24 hour days to protect both government and Private computer systems from orchestrated foreign government efforts to hack into our systems.
If not you need to keep good records of your assets and a considerable sum of cash to tide you over until a downed system(s) is back up.
Anton
May 11th, 2010 at 8:03 am
Thanks for the encouragement Michelle.
May 11th, 2010 at 8:13 am
Q: Asphalt for driveways is expensive. Are there cheaper materials that can be used instead?
A: Despite the recent price increases, asphalt still costs less than most alternatives for driveways, particularly concrete and cobblestone.
In more rural areas, driveways can be made of less expensive gravel or a product called road pack, which is basically gravel plus some sand and clay.
But these substances require more ongoing maintenance than asphalt, and they usually are not allowed in cities and nearby areas.
Cost estimates for various driveway materials are available at http://www.drivewaytips.com/cost.asp.
May 11th, 2010 at 8:51 am
[...] Obama Nominates Kagan For The Supreme Court Michelle Moquin’s “A day in the life of…” is powered by [...]