US Supreme Court Justice David Souter

Justice Souter announced his retirement Thursday, giving Pres. Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress an opportunity to further their agenda. Granted, Souter filled out the more liberal part of the High Court during his nearly 19 years of service. However, Obama has an opportunity to replace Souter with a justice who more closely reflects his views.

During his campaign and while at a Planned Parenthood conference in 2007, Obama spoke his mind on his opinion of Supreme Court nominees, “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”

Just wondering how experienced and balanced a Supreme Court nominee needs to be to make the cut.

According to Politico, following are the top nominees for the Supreme Court:

“At the top of the most-mentioned lists are federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York, who is both female and Hispanic; Elena Kagan, Obama’s solicitor general, who may not have been in the job log enough to go to the Court, and Diane Wood, a judge on the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit who worked in the Justice Department under both Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Also mentioned: Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D).”

Tip of the hat to Michelle Malkin, who compiled information on all the top nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court. The resulting picture: shady.

• Elena Kagan is not a judge, nor has she ever been a judge. 
  

  “Dean Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court would be concerning given her complete lack of judicial or appellate experience. She has never been a judge or even argued a case in a court of appeals. It is difficult to see how her experience fundraising for Harvard Law School qualifies her for a seat on the Nation’s high court.

  Dean Kagan has taken positions that are disturbingly out of the mainstream. For example, driven by her view that the “don’t ask; don’t tell” policy adopted by a Democrat Congress and President Clinton is “a profound wrong–a moral injustice of the first order,” she argued that it violates the First Amendment for the United States to withhold funds from colleges that ban the military from recruiting on campus. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected this view.

  It is also unclear that a Justice Kagan would be an adequately independent check on executive excesses. She has argued in favor of greatly enhanced presidential control over the bureaucracy, which is concerning in light of President Obama’s unprecedented centralization of power in the White House.”

• Judge Sonia Sotomayor is known for her record of far-left decisions. No surprise Sotomayor is on the short list. This tidbit may concern you:  
  

  “Only just recently, in Ricci v. DeStefano, Judge Sotomayor was chastised by fellow Clinton-appointee Jose Cabranes for going to extraordinary lengths to dispense with claims of unfair treatment raised by firefighters. Judge Sotomayor’s panel heard a case raising important questions under Title VII and equal protection law, but attempted to dispose of the firefighter’s arguments in a summary order, until called out by Judge Cabranes. The Supreme Court has agreed to review the case.”

• Judge Dianne Wood has a disturbing pattern of ruling against religious litigants. 
  

  “Judge Wood has betrayed a consistent hostility to religious litigants and religious interests. For example, Christian Legal Soc’y v. Walker, 453 F.3d 853, 867 (7th Cir. 2006), she would have voted to allow a public university to revoke the student organization charter of the Christian Legal Society because it declined to extend membership to homosexuals. She also authored an opinion refusing to allow prisons to require inmate participation in drug rehabilitation programs that used “explicit religious content,” even where such programs were the only ones available, effectively allowing inmates to refuse treatment entirely. Kerr v. Farrey, 95 F.3d 472 (7th Cir. 1996).”

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