Four Radical Theses on Sports Devolution

So, Texas is staying in the Big 12 and the American sports-pocalypse has been put off for another day.

Still, American sports needs radical change and American society needs to change because American sports is a reflection of the larger problems of American society.

Here's five radical ideas for sports devolution.

1. Admit to Ourselves That Baseball Never Existed. I was watching the Cardinals pound Seattle the other night at Locus Street Rendezvous when I had an itch in my ear. Scratching deep, I pulled out a little chip and suddenly the game went off. That's when I realized that the game wasn't real, that baseball as a sport never existed, and that all my memories of baseball had been implanted by Big Brother, Global Government, the One World Conspiracy, or whatever you call it. My baseball memories were as much an implant as Heidi Montag's breasts. As Americans, we need to free ourselves from the monotonous tyranny of "our national pastime" and open ourselves up to better sports alternatives. Confession is good for the soul. Let's admit that there was never any such thing as baseball.

2. Cede the Big Ten States to Canada. Sure the states from Iowa to Pennsylvania have a lot of people, but American sports would be better off without them. So would America as a whole. Big Ten football and Big Ten basketball have to be the two most boring sports on the planet now that we've owned up to the fictional character of baseball. Sports Illustrated congratulates Tom Izzo on forging "a signature style, basketball in pads, that befits the conference in which his team plays." Anybody who watched March Madness this spring knows that most amphetamine addicts get their start as a way to counter-act the downer effect of Big Ten basketball. Of course, the problem with Big Ten basketball is "three yards and a cloud of carpet" Big Ten football and the problem with Big Ten football is that Big Ten states have become "three yards and a cloud of carpet" states. Ultimately, the only way to solve the Big Ten problem is to get rid of the Big Ten states. So I propose that the United States pay Canada to take Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania off our hands. From the Canadian perspective, it will be like gaining a tropical paradise.

3. Justice to Mexico. Sports devolution isn't just a matter of giving away the North Central part of the country. The United States also needs to return California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to Mexico. We also should throw in Oklahoma as a bonus. That way, our country can rid ourselves of three of the major blights on American sports ethics, the football programs at the University of Southern California, University of Texas, and University of Oklahoma. As an added bonus, that pretty much solves the illegal immigration problem in what's left of the United States.

4. A New French Commonwealth. Of course, the other big problem with American sports is that the U. S. is such a mediocre soccer country. Yeah, we tied England. Big deal. We only scored because of a monumental screw up by the English goalie. We're in the same situation as we were in when that Columbian defender helped us win by scoring an own goal. Why should somebody have to die (the Columbian player was shot and killed later) so the U. S. can win a World Cup game. Of course, we used to be a really lousy soccer country, but there's no reason why the U. S. should be a third tier soccer power while we have so many great athletes growing up here. What we need to realize though is that there's no solution to this problem as long as we're running our own country. So, I propose that the U. S. work out a deal with France where we transfer sovereignty over Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississipi, and Louisiana to the French for about 50 years or however long it takes for these states to fully acclimate themselves to soccer as their no. 1 sport. Then, they can all be transferred back to America. Of course, that's if they decide they want to come back.

That's it. The only solution to the sports crisis in the United States is to break up the country. The U. S. was probably too big anyway.

Limbaugh: The First Step Toward His Fourth Divorce

I wish Rush Limbaugh well in his fourth marriage to Kathryn Rogers, age 33 and blonde. But given that news reports focused much more on Elton John's singing than the bride, the signs don't look too auspicious.

Oh well--no fourth divorce without a fourth marriage.

John Wooden Died Too Young

At least that's what I imagine my 93 year old mother-in-law is thinking.

Paging John Yoo--Israel Needs You

I disagree with TPM's take on Bradley Burston's Haaretz op-ed about today's Israeli raid on the peace activist flotilla headed toward Gaza. Burston writes in response to the botched raid that the Israelis "don't know themselves" and that Hamas and the Iranians know Israel better than the Israelis.

There was a time, when it could be said that we knew ourselves only in wartime. No longer. Now we know nothing. Yet another problem with refraining from talks with Hamas and Iran: They know us so much better than we know ourselves.

They know, as the song about the Lebanon War suggested ("Lo Yachol La'atzor Et Zeh") that we, unable to see ourselves in any clarity, are no longer capable of stopping ourselves.

But that's all nonsense and not just because it has a whiny tone about it.

In fact, the Israelis know that they're an aggressive imperialist state that is swallowing up as much Palestinian territory as their American patrons will allow. The Israelis also know that their government is committed to dealing with their Muslim opponents in a bullying fashion. The fantasy seems to be that if the Palestinians might never resist again if only they get beaten up one more time.

Not that self-knowledge means unity. The Israeli right celebrates the Israeli Defense Force's imperial elan. The Israeli left deplores it. But everybody in Israel knows what Israel's about. So does the Arab world and the Europeans for that matter.

As for the current dilemma of the Israeli government, they might as well hire famous American torture lawyer John Yoo to represent their case. Certainly, their current arguments aren't going to hold much water. The Israelis claim that their soldiers were "attacked" after they repelled onto the ship. Well, "duh." Everybody has a right to self-defense, including peace activists. If hostile troops landed on my ship, I would attack them myself if I had any chance of being effective. The largely Turkish peace activists never took a Gandi-esque vow of non-violence. They had just as much right to defend themselves as anyone else.

But this is where John Yoo comes in. Yoo's argument in defense of torture was that the American president has the authority to lawfully ignore provisions of the Constitution, American law, and international law if he believes the U. S. is under threat.

And the U. S. is always under threat. So, the Yoo Doctrine was that the American president could torture anybody anytime he wanted.

That argument is a significant part of what made the U. S. the most powerful rogue nation in the world under the Bush administration. Now that the Israelis are coming under criticism for their human rights abuses in attacking the Gaza flotilla, they also need someone like Yoo to tell the world that Israel can do anything it wants as well.

Paging John Yoo.

Longer Than Expected

Actor-director Dennis Hopper died today at the age of 74. Given all the booze and drugs he consumed, Hopper must have had a strong constitution to live that long. Good for him.

Don't Ask Don't Tell: The Demonization Begins

Under the No Surprise Here category. The Obama administration announced a compromise on Don't Ask/Don't Tell on Tuesday and it only took one day for GOP constituency groups like the Family Research Council to start painting gays in the military as a chamber of horrors.

Here's how the Family Research Council envisions things going if Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed: first, more straight soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines will be fellated in their sleep against their will. Then, commanders afraid of being labeled homophobes will refuse to do anything about it. Eventually, the straight service members will quit out of fear.

The Family Research Council is one of the most important groups on the religious right and their leadership is just as much a part of the Republican elite as Dick Cheney.

No doubt other GOP groups will be rolling out this kind of stuff in the coming days. John McCain and other Republican senators have also threatened to filibuster the defense bill if it contains language repealing Don't Ask/Don't Tell.

If Rush Limbaugh is an Army of One, he's an Army of One for the Party of Hate.

Perhaps the GOP Should Try "Language Deafness"

NBC News' First Notes has an interesting analysis of declining Hispanic support for Republicans--no surprise in the wake of the onslaught of anti-Hispanic legislation sponsored by Republican politicians in Arizona.

The conservative response to the association of the Republican Party with racism was to advocate the idiotic and ultimately racist ideology of "color-blindness."

If the American right is anything, it's a creative ideological force. Maybe they'll respond to the link between the GOP and anti-Hispanic bigotry by developing an agenda of "language-deafness."

Here's three sentences for future William Bennetts: "I don't hear English. I don't hear Spanish. All I hear is character."

Short Summer Reading List

For any students of political theory who might catch this, here's a short summer reading list. Amazon url's are in parentheses. I also have online url's for some of the classics. No particular order of preference.

Enjoy!

1. Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings. http://www.amazon.com/Jean-Baudrillard-Selected-Writings-Second/dp/0804742731/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274931155&sr=1-1.

2. Michel Foucault, A History of Sexuality, vol 1. (http://www.amazon.com/Jean-Baudrillard-Selected-Writings-Second/dp/0804742731/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274931155&sr=1-1)

3. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127096506).

4. Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, http://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolitanism-Ethics-World-Strangers-Issues/dp/039332933X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274931605&sr=1-1

5. Carol Smart, Law, Crime, and Sexuality: Essays in Feminism, (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Carol+Smart%2C+law)

6. Slavoj Zizek, Living in the End Times, (http://www.amazon.com/Living-End-Times-Slavoj-Zizek/dp/184467598X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274931993&sr=1-1)

7. Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, online at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/wages.htm

8. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, online at http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm

9. Shakespeare, Hamlet, online at http://books.google.com/books?id=rORGgTWnAXEC&dq=Shakespeare,+Hamlet&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=Eez9S5TuG4H88Aamh9jYDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=falseFriedrich

10. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, http://books.google.com/books?id=p2h1jVM6WJ4C&dq=nietzsche+thus+spoke+zarathustra&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=gOz9S727IYL58AbTmJniDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=falsebell

11. hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism (http://www.amazon.com/killing-rage-Ending-bell-hooks/dp/0805050272)

12. bell hooks, Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery, http://www.amazon.com/Sisters-Yam-Black-Self-Recovery-Classics/dp/0896087336/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274932523&sr=1-1

13. Plato, Republic, Books XIII and IX, online at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html

Not Much There There on Rush

Either Zev Chavetz, the author of Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One, decided not to reveal much during his interview with NPR or he doesn't have much to reveal beyond what any informed person could have gathered by following the media.

I rather suspect its the latter.

It looks like Limbaugh gave Chavetz interviews because he knew Chavetz would write a mildly favorable book that wouldn't try to plumb the deep depths of Rush Limbaugh.

And Chavetz delivered.

Three quick points:

One, Limbaugh conservatism is no longer the cutting edge of the right-wing populism. That prize goes to Glenn Beck and the Tea Baggers.

Two, Rush Limbaugh has been good for the left because he's a dynamic opponent who has forced the left to raise its game.

Three, Limbaugh is a good redemption story of someone who kept plugging away in the radio wilderness until he found a proper outlet for his talents and energy. I don't agree with much of anything Limbaugh says, but he's still an excellent example of the virtues of patience and perseverance.

Rand Paul: Conservative, Libertarian, Segregationist

Yesterday, NPR was sniffing around the question of whether Rand Paul would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 if he had been in the Senate.

That's a significant and uncomfortable question for any libertarian-inspired, small government conservative. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made every lunch at the local diner and every trip to Woolworths into a federal matter because it banned racial discrimination in relation to serving customers, hiring workers and management, promoting people to new positions, and just about every matter connected to the conduct of private business.

If you like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, you see the federal government acting with real heroism to overturn a monstrous system of segregation that made the American South an evil place of racial hate, intimidation, violence, and deprivation. I read about the fight over the Civil Rights Act every day for months when I was a 9 and 10 year old kid. I'm proud to say that I've always supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 even though I'm embarrassed to say that the legislation was so desperately needed in my country and I'm doubly embarrassed to say that because I'm white and people like my relatives were enforcing segregation in the South and more silently discriminating in the North.

But if you're a libertarian conservative, you would be more likely to see the federal government acting in a completely illegitimate and unconstitutional manner to force private businesses to serve African-American customers, hire African-American employees, and promote African-American employees when hired. If you're a libertarian conservative, you value the freedom of white employers to serve, hire, promote, and fire who they want over the freedom of African-Americans to shop, work, and receive recognition for their efforts.

Moreover, the Civil Rights Act violated libertarian/conservative principles of federalism because it represented a massive expansion of the power of the federal government in relation to the states. In many ways, the Civil Rights Act was even worse the New Deal from a "federalist" point of view. Where the New Deal offended federalist sensabilities by establishing a number of new federal programs and regulations, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 overturned a vast web of state laws pertaining to race in the South. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only vastly increased the power of the federal government, it curtailed the power of Southern state governments in the area of their highest priority--race relations.

These were the reasons why Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and these are the reasons that Rand Paul would vote against the Civil Rights Act if it were brought back up for a vote today.

Paul explained [to the Louisville Courier-Journal] that he backed the portion of the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public places and institutions, but that he thinks private businesses should be permitted to discriminate by race.

In an ideal world, Rand Paul would take the country back to the period before 1964 when private businesses were free to discriminate against African-Americans in any way they wanted.
To be fair, Paul should get credit for his honesty on the issue. Even though the Republican Party has been the party of conservative white racial backlash against Civil Rights ever since Goldwater's candidacy in 1964, few if any Republicans have acknowledged their opposition to what they have to view as one of the "original sins" of big government in Civil Rights legislation.

But that honesty doesn't make him qualified to be a U. S. Senator from Kentucky.

Or anywhere else.

RSI Sends Money to Conway

Jack Conway won a close primary over Dan Mongiardo yesterday evening. A couple hours later, RSI sent him $25 and will volunteer to make phone calls after another donation. The fall campaign for Kentucky's open Senate seat will be a tough but winnable battle for Conway. RSI urges everyone to help as much as possible.

The Profound Truth of the Ken Griffey Scandal

Sports fans know that fading mega-star Ken Griffey jr. was caught napping in the clubhouse during a recent Seattle Mariners game. The underlying truth of Griffey's little nap was that baseball is b-o-r-i-n-g. And there's the pitch--ball one.

It's More Than Lebron Losing

Lost in all the commentary on Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers "losing" to the Boston Celtice is the fact that the Celtics "won." The Cavs might be built more for the regular season than the playoffs, but the Celtics got their act together from a mediocre regular season, won their series with the Cavs 4-2 and looked good doing it.

There's a lot of criticism for the way GM Danny Ferry put together the Cavaliers, but the critics don't mention the extraordinary success of Danny Ainge in Boston. When the Celtics are healthy, they start Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo, and Kendrick Perkins. Except for the very serviceable Perkins, all of these guys are likely Hall of Famers. Of course, Pierce, Allen, and Garnett are one step beyond their primes. But they're still All-Stars when they get it going and Rondo has been such a good point guard that the Big Three almost always has it going.

Ultimately, the Celtics won the series more than Cleveland lost.

With Friends Like Randall Kennedy, Elena Kagan Doesn't Need All the Enemies She's Going to Have

In "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King criticizes white Southern ministers for responding to the civil rights movement in Birmingham with "pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities."

Unfortunately for Kagan, that's pretty much what she got from Randall Kennedy's effort in HufPost to defend her record on minority hiring as Dean of Harvard Law School. Kagan's problem is that Harvard only hired only hired 7 women and one member of a racial minority in the 32 law school searches that occurred while she was Dean from 2003 to 2009.

Maybe Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond would approve. Otherwise, these numbers look bad. By not hiring any black faculty, Harvard Law is implicitly claiming that there were either zero or one black legal scholar who was qualified for either entry level job offers or senior appointments. That's barely tokenism. And the situation with women isn't much better?


By way of comparison, my former political science unit had ten searches and had a fairly even distribution between white males (2), African-American males (2), and white women (3). We weren't exactly paragons of diversity and presently we're back to three white males. But we were much more effective than Harvard.

However, perhaps Harvard's poor minority hiring record doesn't reflect on Elena Kagan herself. Maybe Kagan didn't have very much influence over hiring new professors or maybe there was some sort of institutional priority to hire for legal fields in which women and African-Americans were severely under-represented.

That's the question that Prof. Randall Kennedy tried to address in his op-ed and there was undoubtedly some hope that Kennedy's being black would give him more credibility on the issue.
But it's hard to be very credible while being sanctimonious and irrelevant.

According to Kennedy, Kagan aced her "race relations law" class from Kennedy as a law student and went on to clerk for Thurgood Marshall before settling in as a law professor back at good ol' Harvard.


Good for her.


Kennedy also claims that Kagan is "committed to a vision of racial inclusiveness that reflects the best of our national traditions." That sounds great if Kagan was also committed to using her position to further that vision. Otherwise, Kagan's vision of racial inclusiveness is more of a "pious irrelevancy" than anything else. Indeed, if Kagan did have a "vision of racial inclusiveness," that would increase her responsibility to ensure that Harvard Law School hired a diverse faculty and magnify her failure to do so.


Kennedy goes on to claim that Kagan didn't really have the power to do much about minority hiring anyway. "First, it is mistaken to suggest, as some have, that the Dean of Harvard Law School is responsible for all that happens or does not happen with respect to hiring."


Perhaps she wasn't responsible for "all" that happened in relation to hiring. But Kennedy makes it clear Kagan had real power rather than just a positionk. He goes on to say that "the Dean is the single most influential member of the faculty. One does not get hired at the law school without the Dean's blessing." It also turns out that Dean Kagan was a member of the "Entry Level Appointments Committee" that Kennedy himself chaired.

In other words, Kagan had real responsibility rather than merely formal responsibility for the lack of minority hiring.


As Dean, Kagan was much more worried about ideological diversity than racial or gender diversity and invested a great deal of her credibility in hiring conservatives like Jack Goldsmith. Like a lot of moderate Democrats, Kagan seems to be more interested in conservative ideology than the various ideological positions of the left. There was certainly an argument for this during the Bush years. Given the tilt of Bush administration judicial appointments to the right, it could be claimed that Harvard could not adequately train lawyers unless they were exposed to enthusiastic representations of conservative views. Likewise, it might be argued that an agenda to hire conservatives would bias the hiring process toward white males like Goldsmith because relatively few female and African-American lawyers are conservative.


In other words, hiring conservatives was not necessarily a bad thing.

However, feminism and African-American perspectives are also important to American law and are becoming more important as more women become lawyers and the American mainstream has been transformed in the ways needed to better integrate African-Americans. Kagan's focus on conservatives tends to distort the law by narrowing the scope of theoretical conflict to white male liberals and white male conservatives with only token representation from lawyers like Kagan and Kennedy.

In practice, Kagan's "vision of racial inclusiveness" boils down to a white male cockfight between liberals and conservatives.


Kennedy seems to recognize that Kagan's record of concern for minority hiring is still thin. So he rolls out the "santimonious triviality" of citing that Kagan supported fellowship programs for minority law students.


As if that really mattered to the issue of faculty hiring.


I basically support Kagan. In fact, I highly doubt that Obama could have nominated her at all if Kagan in fact had proved successful at diversifying the Harvard Law School faculty. But she's starting to look like a lightweight who's main skill is the politics of personal relationships.

Still, Randall Kennedy's defense makes Elena Kagan look worse than she probably is.


Maybe Kagan needs to find smarter friends than she had at Harvard Law School.

Elena Kagan Celebration Continues--Madonna Version

The Elena Kagan celebration continues at RSI. This morning "Celebration" by Madonna.

"Celebration"

I think you wanna come over,
yeah I heard it through the grapevine.
Are you drunk or you sober?
Think about it, doesn’t matter
And if it makes you feel good then I say do it,
I don’t know what you’re waiting for

Feel my temperature rising
There’s too much heat I’m gonna lose control
Do you want to go higher, get closer to the fire,
I don’t know what you’re waiting for

Come join the party, yeah
Coz anybody just won’t do.
Let’s get this started, yeah
Coz everybody wants to party with you.

Boy you got a reputation, but you’re gonna have to prove it
I see a little hesitation,
Am I gonna have to show you that if it feels right, get on your marks
Step to the beat boy that’s what it’s for

Put your arms around me
When it gets too hot we can go outside
But for now just come here, let me whisper in your ear
An invitation to the dance of lifeCome join the party, it’s a celebration

Anybody just won’t do
Let’s get this started, no more hesitation
Coz everybody wants to party with you
Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?

You look familiar
You wanna dance? Yeah.
I guess I just don’t recognize you with your clothes on… (laughs)
What are you waiting for?

Boy you’ve got it
Coz anybody just won’t do
Let’s get it started, no more hesitation
Coz everybody wants to party with you

Elena Kagan Just Wants to Celebrate

More music for Elena Kagan--

Rare Earth's "I Just Want to Celebrate."

I just want to celebrate another day of livin'
I just want to celebrate another day of life
I put my faith in the people
But the people let me down
So I turned the other way
And I carry on, anyhow
That's why I'm telling you
-
I just want to celebrate, yeah, yeah
I just want to celebrate, yeah, yeah
Another day of living, I just want to celebrate another day of life
-
Had my hand on the dollar bill And the dollar bill blew away
But the sun is shining down on me
And it's here to stay
That's why I'm telling you
-
I just want to celebrate, yeah, yeah
Another day of living, yeah
I just want to celebrate another day of living
I just want to celebrate another day of life
-
Don't let it all get you down,
Don't let it turn you around and around
And around and around
-
Well, I can't be bothered with sorrow
And I can't be bothered with hate, no, no
I'm using up my time by feeling fine, every day
That's why I'm telling you I just want to celebrate
Aw, yeah
I just want to celebrate yeah yeah
Another day of living, yeah yeah
I just want to celebrate another day of livin', yeah
I just want to celebrate another day of life
-
Don't let it all get you down, no, no
Don't let it turn you around and around,
And around and around, and around
Around round round 'round and
around round round
round don't go 'round

Damn That Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein pretty much gets it right on Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan when he says that Kagan looks a lot like Obama himself.

When Obama announced Kagan's nomination, he praised "her temperament, her
openness to a broad array of viewpoints; her habit, to borrow a phrase from Justice Stevens, 'of understanding before disagreeing'; her fair-mindedness and skill as a consensus-builder." This sentence echoes countless assessments of Obama himself.

Obama is cool. He makes a show of processing the other side's viewpoint. He's more interested in the fruits of consensus than the clarification of conflict. In fact, just as Kagan is praised for giving conservative scholars a hearing at Harvard's Law School, Obama was praised for giving conservative scholars a hearing on the Harvard Law Review. "The things that frustrate people about Obama will frustrate people about Kagan," says one prominent Democrat who's worked with both of them.

Still, I've been thinking that all day myself and hate to admit that Klein wrote it first. Damn you, Ezra Klein.

Elena Kagan "Celebration" Song

Here's some Kool and the Gang lyrics for Elena Kagan.

"Celebration"
-
Yahoo! This is your celebration
Yahoo! This is your celebration
-
Celebrate good times, come on! (Let's celebrate)
Celebrate good times, come on! (Let's celebrate)
-
There's a party goin' on right here
A celebration to last throughout the years
So bring your good times, and your laughter too
We gonna celebrate your party with you
-
Come on now
-
Celebration
Let's all celebrate and have a good time
Celebration
We gonna celebrate and have a good time
-
It's time to come together
It's up to you, what's your pleasure
-
Everyone around the world
Come on!
-
Yahoo!
It's a celebration
Yahoo!
-
Celebrate good times, come on!
It's a celebration
Celebrate good times, come on!
Let's celebrate
-
We're gonna have a good time tonight
Let's celebrate, it's all right
We're gonna have a good time tonight
Let's celebrate, it's all right
-
Baby...
-
We're gonna have a good time tonight (Ce-le-bra-tion)
Let's celebrate, it's all right
We're gonna have a good time tonight (Ce-le-bra-tion)
Let's celebrate, it's all right
-
Yahoo!
Yahoo!
-
Celebrate good times, come on! (Let's celebrate)
Celebrate good times, come on!It's a celebration!
Celebrate good times, come on! (Let's celebrate)
-
Come on and celebrate, good times, tonight (Celebrate good times, come on!)
'Cause everything's gonna be all right
Let's celebrate (Celebrate good times, come on) (Let's celebrate)...

Elena Kagan? I'll Be Surprised If There's a Vote

The definitive word is now out that Solicitor General Elena Kagan is going to be nominated for the Supreme Court by President Obama.

Lefties like Glenn Greenwald oppose Kagan because she's too closely aligned with conservatives and is pretty much a judicial blank slate because she's never been a judge. Likewise, Kagan seemed to be favorably toward the expansion of executive power during the Bush years, has been too close to Goldman Sachs, and did little minority hiring while she was the Dean of Harvard Law School.

That all bothers me as well.

But I'd be surprised if Kagan's nomination came to a vote.

The main issue is that Kagan was the leader in Harvard University's decision to exclude ROTC from campus as long as gays were excluded from the military.

That's a position I support.

But the Republicans are going to frame the Kagan choice as "Gay Rights vs America" and they'll most likely have a great deal of success in mobilizing Tea Party support as the Obama administration struggles to get beyond its initial tone deafness.

It's hard for me to see how the politics of the Kagan nomination are going to be anything but pretty grim because of the likelihood of Democratic defections. It's easy to see Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson declaring against Kagan as a way to stick it to the left. At the same time, it's hard to see Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu as standing up to conservative pressure to vote the "pro-military" values of their constituents.

That's four Democratic "no votes" right off the top of my head. So Harry Reid is going to start with 55 votes out of the 60 he's going to need to overcome the inevitable GOP filibuster.

I'm a big believer in fuzzy math. But I don't see anything fuzzy about the the math of a Kagan nomination.

Apparently, the Obama administration thought a Kagan nomination would be difficult to demonize.

They're in for a rude awakening.

A New Opportunity for the Right-Wing Fiction Machine

According to Chris Good of the Atlantic Monthly, Elena Kagan will be hard for conservatives to attack if Obama nominates her for the Supreme Court:

I asked Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network (a conservative group focused on judicial nominees) what conservatives are going to say about Kagan, and what Kagan's "wise Latina" moment, if there is one, will prove to be.

"She has been much more careful than Justice Sotomayor. She never would have said something like that even if she thinks it. She's been so careful for so long that no one seems to know exactly what she does think," Severino said.

As if any of that's going to matter.

It's not like honesty is Job 1 on the right. If they can't find anything in Kagan's record to attack, they won't have any problems making things up. It might turn out that creative conservatives are consulting the collected works of Joe McCarthy, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Ann Coulter as they gear up for a Kagan nomination.