The Whole Delivery

After today's latest monarchial, affluent, and elitist ruling by the John Roberts Corporate Court, allowing the Kochs and Adelsons of the world to spread their already toxic influence on American governing, it is once again salient to bring up this question I always ask: Why isn't the Supreme Court televised? I mean, seriously, this is something in 2014 that should long never be a question, but will continue to be for what I fear will be forever. Television hasn't stopped nutty Republicans (with the help of sellout and willing Democrats capitulating pure democratic principles) from awful ideas and bills passed in Congress, and you can't see lawmakers every steps no matter how much transparency was thrown during the Obama first campaign. But just imagine if there was no C-SPAN given to at least provide some visual evidence for how our public officials were either screwing us or actually fighting for our causes as general collective? It's the 35th anniv...

Elena Kagan nomination live and at the moment, as she is expected to pass with several moments of the nutcase party voting her in. The live coverage of the vote is here, on C-Span website . And as I predicted, it was 63-37 . Ben Nelson becomes the first Dem Senator since 1967 to vote against a Democratic appointed President. Collins, Snowe, Graham, Gregg and Lugar voted for her. Besides that, everyone else went with the party line, including Sanders and Joey Lie (Lieberman). Kagan becomes the 112th Supreme Court Justice and 4th women in history.

Cool calm, calm and cool, even if she is purely a centrist: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy

It seems that Democracy Now is the only place where you can find serious, actual grown up, 1 on 1 banter that isn't about garnering ratings or entertainment points, but to informed their viewer on the most important news events and situations of our time. Today, DN featured the settled discussion (for now) in a week long respectful back and forth debate between Glenn Greenwald and Lawrence Lessig on Elena Kagan's nomination. Simply put, for those who didn't have a chance to see or hear about this discussion that took place on the invaluable Amy Goodwin's show, it was the "settling of the score" for these two renowned legal figures on the left after their back to back appearances on Rachel Maddow's Monday show. Even though both certainly left the show with the same sentiment on Kagan as they held before, but exhibited a level of decorum, as well as intelligent colloquy, severely missing in our usually terrible television discourse. Here's the ent...

Kagan and Obama are definitely alike, as the President has said and cherished about his friend. Sadly, our dumb media will focus on what stupid and dishonest stuff the Republicans and conservatives will say, once again providing kindergarden discourse in a time where high level discourse will only suffice. And what about Arlen Specter, if he needs anymore on his mind : Of political interest is what Arlen Specter will do. He voted against her for solicitor general, when he was trying to be a Republican, because she ducked questions he felt were critical. His primary will be over by the time the hearings start, but he'll likely still be a Democrat this time around and vote for confirmation. The White House will begin consultations with Senate Democrats, presumably including Specter, on Wednesday or Thursday. Jonathan Turley has just said that Kagan will "move the court to the Right." Basically agree and thensome. The reason why I agree with Turley and Greenwald ...

Well, the White House looks even sillier trying to debunk all the reports of them choosing Kagan, because they have chosen just her. More to come on this folks. She moves the court to the Right sadly, and it is a choice that is another centrist happily go lucky choice from the President. I sure can't wait until the White House can explain her Goldman Sachs ties, as well as her problems with diversity .

No matter how much she is liked by conservatives, Elena Kagan will still be painted by them as far to the left. In the minds of conservatives, everyone is simply a far-leftist . Every.........ONE : I hasten to repeat that no matter how sensible Kagan may be on the national-security and executive-power issues that aggravate the Left, it doesn’t follow that conservatives should welcome her nomination. For on a host of other issues—abortion, same-sex marriage, race and gender quotas, and an aggressively secularist reading of the Establishment Clause, to name just a few—there’s no reason to believe that Kagan would be anything other than a doctrinaire liberal judicial activist. Even when they are a weak minority and their ideas are both irrelevant and disastrous, conservatives will always want everything THEY want at every single time. It just only makes common simple sense that President Obama chooses someone who truly has a liberal background. A true liberal background not locate...

While everyone is speculating that the centrist Elena Kagan maybe John Paul Stevens replacement on the Supreme Court, a new contender has emerged out of nowhere. Montana federal judge Sidney Thomas is that new name in the race to join the highest court of the land. An administration official says President Barack Obama is considering federal appeals court judge Sidney Thomas of Montana for the Supreme Court, one of about 10 people under serious review. The Associated Press has confirmed the names of seven of them. Among the others under consideration are former Georgia Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, federal appeals court judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Here is Thomas' wikipedia page for those who want to check out on this man .

Photo from the AP's Charles Dharapak And so it is finally official in regards to win he was finally leaving. Supreme court Justice John Paul Stevens will retire this summer. The 89 year old Justice has been on the highest court in the land since 1975, and the search for his replacement will definitely now begin to officially emerge. And the fierce, ugly partisan nature of the Republican Party will certainly get higher and higher.

It is the right way to try and fight the corporate elites , though now people will be funny and call Unions and Activist Group people themselves with this move. That’s the message in a letter that a powerful coalition of liberal groups and unions have fired off to Pelosi and Reid, urging them to seize on the SCOTUS decision allowing corporate money to fund elections to deal a death blow to the influence of big money in politics — by approving public financing of campaigns. The letter they’ve sent to Reid and Pelosi, to be released this afternoon, urges them to adopt a measure called the Fair Elections Now Act, which has 129 co-sponsors in the House and would enact public financing of federal elections. Campaign finance reform types say the act would give candidates the option to run for office on a mixture of small contributions and limited public funds — strengthening campaigns funded by grassroots fundraising and undercutting the power of large corporate donors. You should ...

Of all the people that should be talking : Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who was of course President Obama's Republican rival in the 2008 general election, has announced that he will vote against Sonia Sotomayor, "And regardless of one's success in academics and government service, an individual who does not appreciate the common sense limitations on judicial power in our democratic system of government ultimately lacks a key qualification for a lifetime appointment to the bench. Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court." An unqualified Presidential candidate like no other who picked the most unqualified person ever for the Vice Presidency, saying someone is unqualified. Yeah, like that makes sense. Well Arizonians, you can vote him out next year or just want him back. Though without Napolitano in his way now, I guess he made this choice without having to worry about the Hispanic backlash in Arizona. He just loves attention, doesn't he? Open Thread's Giveawa...

Photo from CNN.com Limbaugh, Gingrich and company won't be celebrating this : Former President George H.W. Bush stood up for his former judicial nominee Sonia Sotomayor Friday, telling CNN Anchor Robin Meade that GOP critics who called President Obama's Supreme Court pick a racist were off-base, and unfair. "I don't know her that well but I think she's had a distinguished record on the bench and she should be entitled to fair hearings. Not – [it's] like the senator John Cornyn said it," he told CNN. "He may vote for it, he may not. But he's been backing away from these…backing off from those radical statements to describe her, to attribute things to her that may or may not be true. "And she was called by somebody a racist once. That's not right. I mean that's not fair. It doesn't help the process. You're out there name-calling. So let them decide who they want to vote for and get on with it." Soon, someone will call for c...

The push back against the attacks on Sonia Sotomayor have been well documented, with the video of Samuel Alito's similar comments surfacing and Gwen Iffl's well thought out statement yesterday on This Week. The Washington Monthly writer Daphne Eviatar probably gives the most striking point in defense of Obama's pick: Buried in Jeffrey Toobin’s recent profile of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is this astonishing fact: (bold emphasis added by me) In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. The recent uproar over Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s comment eight years ago that being a Latina influences her perspective as a judge has led to charges by de facto R epublican spokesmen from Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Beck that she’s a “racist” for acknowledging th...

Photo from the LA Times Greg Sargent's title is telling in his latest post : Tomorrow’s Attack On Sotomayor, Today But it's just slightly off. The attack has already started. Media Matters documented a few weeks back on the ugliness coming from the disgrace of manure offer by New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen : Of course, that didn't stop Rosen from using anonymous quotes from the few people he did talk to in order to portray Sotomayor as too temperamental, too vain, and too stupid to serve on the Supreme Court. Well, to be fair, Rosen's article wasn't based entirely on anonymous comments. He quoted 2nd Circuit judge Jose Cabranes by name. Unfortunately, he cropped Cabranes' comment to make it appear he was criticizing Sotomayor's intelligence. That's pretty bad. What's worse is that Cabranes was actually praising Sotomayor's intelligence. Leading to: The New Yorker's Amy Davidson caught Rosen's quote-cropping and posted the full quote on...

Photo from ABC.com He's been busy all weekend with this decision (as well as a hell of a lot of other things) at Camp David and the White House, but it seems like he has made up his mind for a possible announcement today. Sadly, the short list looks to not include the brilliant Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan, who would have angered conservatives (not only Republicans but maybe also Democrats as well) to the point of raising their already "No" skills to a level never before seen. And that is truly saying something. So the short lists as some reports indicate has come down to four women: Sonia Sotomayor of New York, Diane P. Wood of Chicago, and two members of his administration, Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. More on this, as well as the article, later in the morning.