media assault

WSJ Launching Assault on Elena Kagan Even Before American Family Assocation

Conservatives are supposedly readying the launch of their attack on Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the lesbian potential Supreme Court nominee, though the Wall Street Journal [enter paid link via Google] doesn’t name any of these organizations actually mobilizing. Huh.

Sure, there’s the American Family Association and Focus on the Family, who both tried upending her solicitor general confirmation by attacking her criticism of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and other “extreme rhetoric,” but in claiming “conservative activists are homing in on a high-profile stand she took on gay rights as a centerpiece of their opposition if she is nominated to the Supreme Court,” reporter Jess Bravin doesn’t name a single one.

As dean of Harvard, Ms. Kagan cultivated good relations with conservatives, hiring several professors with right-leaning views and reaching out to the Federalist Society, a training ground for lawyers who often go on to populate Republican administrations.

Such an unprovocative past has given pause to some liberal activists, who long to see a vibrant progressive voice join the Supreme Court. But some conservatives fear that once on the court, Ms. Kagan could emerge as heir to the liberal icon for whom she once clerked, Justice Thurgood Marshall, himself a former solicitor general.

To drive home that point, conservative activists point to Ms. Kagan’s role in a gay-rights lawsuit. In 2005, Ms. Kagan was one of 40 Harvard law professors who signed a friend- of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold an appellate ruling that permitted law schools to limit military access to campus recruiting events.

Even AFA has been silent about Kagan’s possible Supreme Court nomination this month, its only public release directing parents to keep their kids home on April 16, the annual GLSEN-sponsored Day Of Silence.

Of course, we expect conservatives to go after Kagan, but if they haven’t begun the campaign, what, exactly, is the Journal reporting? In the the meantime, some advice: AFA and FOTF would better spend their time attacking Kagan’s lack of experience (she’s never held a judgeship) than her alleged support of same-sex marriage.

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