On Elena Kagan

Well, not literally.

Let me preface this by saying I was not an Obama supporter in the Democratic primary, I hoped Bill Richardson would somehow win, as ludicrous an idea as that is. Nor did I see Obama as some progressive/liberal hope, because after all he was a Chicago politician (a dirty, dirty town), and all the more suspect because he was a DLC/Clinton protege (Clinton ruined the Democratic party by bringing it to bed with the financial interests). Obama appears to be acting as a triangulator in the same way as Bill Clinton (although it appears without the penchant for self-defeating personal behavior), and this nomination falls in the same category.

This is the wrong choice for the Supreme Court, not because of what she is, but of what she is not. The Supreme Court has become a bastion of the Ivy League law schools, every single justice, assuming Kagan is confirmed (she will be, in part because her lack of judicial service makes for a thin paper trail), having received their JD from one of that august collective's law schools. As in other areas, I have little respect for Ivy League Schools, or their graduate's claims of pre-eminence.

I applaud the fact that Kagan has not served as a Federal Judge (as all current justices have), it presents an opportunity for someone to operate within that system who has not yet been warped to its culture. However, the President could have taken this opportunity to widen the geographic base of the court, appointed a state supreme court justice, someone from the West, a career lawyer, anyone who isn't simply another Ivy League, East Coast stereotype.