ELENA KAGAN SCARES ME -- she'd move the Supreme Court rightward

For years, the Institute for Public Accuracy has been providing media with experts on public issues who offer the little-heard left perspective. Today, IPA brought us a scintillating and eyeopening analysis of the dreadful anti-civil liberties record of Obama's Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, whom the White House has been leaking as the leading name on the president's short list for Justice John Paul Stevens' seat on the Supreme Court. It's by University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle, a magna cum laude grad of Harvard, where Kagan was Dean, and it's a real eye-opener. If Obama puts her on the Court, it will be one of his most disastrous appointments -- and one whose effects will be felt for decades. Here's what Boyle has to say about her:

"As dean of the Harvard Law School, Kagan hired Bush's outgoing director of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, as a law professor. Goldsmith is regarded by myself and many others in the field as a war criminal. He wrote some of the memos that attempted to make violations of the Geneva Conventions appear legal. Kagan actually bragged about 'how proud' she was to have hired Goldsmith after one of his criminal Department of Justice memoranda was written up in the Washington Post.

"During the course of her Senate confirmation hearings as Solicitor General, Kagan explicitly endorsed the Bush administration's bogus category of 'enemy combatant,' whose implementation has been a war crime in its own right. Now in her current job as U.S. Solicitor General, Kagan is quarterbacking the continuation of the Bush administration's illegal and unconstitutional positions in U.S. federal court litigation around the country, including in the U.S. Supreme Court. For example, early this month, the Obama administration lost an illegal wiretapping case. One of the lawyers in the case who won, Jon Eisenberg, said the Obama administration is as bad or worse than the Bush administration when it comes to issues like state secrets and wiretapping.

"Kagan is apparently being backed by several people who are indebted to her from her time at Harvard. [Professors Laurence] Tribe, [Charles] Ogletree and [Alan] Dershowitz all had plagiarism scandals while Kagan headed up the law school -- and she in effect bailed them all out. Tribe and Ogletree were teachers/mentors to Obama and still advise him today, Tribe recently taking a job in the Department of Justice along with Kagan. She was named dean at Harvard by Larry Summers, who helped deregulate much of Wall Street in the Clinton administration and organize much of its bailout under Obama.

"Kagan has said 'I love the Federalist Society.' This is a right-wing group; almost all of the Bush administration lawyers responsible for its war and torture memos are members of the Federalist Society. Many members of the Federalist Society say that Brown v. Board of Education [which struck down 'separate but equal'] was decided wrongly.

"Five currently on the U.S. Supreme Court were or are members of the Federalist Society: Harvard Law graduate Roberts; Harvard Law graduate Scalia; Harvard Law graduate Kennedy; Yale Law graduate Thomas; and Yale Law graduate Alito. A narrow elite is imposing itself through the legal system, and ordinary Americans need to start asserting themselves."

Boyle is also a former chair of the Harvard Law School Fund Campaign for Greater Illinois and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School.

For more links to analyses of Kagan's record, click on IPA's post here.