Thursday, May 13, 2010
In Clinton memo, Kagan backed partial-birth-abortion ban over constitutional objections from Office of Legal Counsel - Yahoo! News
In Clinton memo, Kagan backed partial-birth-abortion ban over constitutional objections from Office of Legal Counsel - Yahoo! News: "Wed May 12, 10:37 pm ET
In her speech accepting Barack Obama's nomination for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan described the court's role as 'advancing the tenets of our Constitution by upholding the rule of law.' Which makes it somewhat strange that, as a White House policy adviser years ago, she urged President Clinton to support legislation that she knew the White House's top lawyers believed to be unconstitutional.
Kagan and her boss at the time, White House domestic policy adviser Bruce Reed, co-authored a memo in May of 1997 [pdf] that recommended Clinton throw his support behind a partial-birth-abortion ban authored by then-Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). The idea, as they explained in the memo, was to avoid passage of a harsher GOP measure over Clinton's veto. This memo has now gained some attention from abortion-rights groups, who worry that it signals a willingness on Kagan's part to chip away at Roe v. Wade. What hasn't gotten so much attention is the fact that Kagan backed the legislation even though she knew that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel thought that it, and a similar proposal from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), violated the Constitution:
The Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department ... believes that both the Daschle and the Feinstein amendments, properly read, violate Roe because they countenance tradeoffs involving women's health.
Nonetheless, Kagan and Reed wrote, 'we recommend that you endorse the Daschle amendment in order to sustain your credibility ... and prevent Congress from overriding your veto.' In other words, Kagan appears to have valued Clinton's credibility and a potential political victory over fidelity to the Constitution."
In her speech accepting Barack Obama's nomination for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan described the court's role as 'advancing the tenets of our Constitution by upholding the rule of law.' Which makes it somewhat strange that, as a White House policy adviser years ago, she urged President Clinton to support legislation that she knew the White House's top lawyers believed to be unconstitutional.
Kagan and her boss at the time, White House domestic policy adviser Bruce Reed, co-authored a memo in May of 1997 [pdf] that recommended Clinton throw his support behind a partial-birth-abortion ban authored by then-Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). The idea, as they explained in the memo, was to avoid passage of a harsher GOP measure over Clinton's veto. This memo has now gained some attention from abortion-rights groups, who worry that it signals a willingness on Kagan's part to chip away at Roe v. Wade. What hasn't gotten so much attention is the fact that Kagan backed the legislation even though she knew that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel thought that it, and a similar proposal from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), violated the Constitution:
The Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department ... believes that both the Daschle and the Feinstein amendments, properly read, violate Roe because they countenance tradeoffs involving women's health.
Nonetheless, Kagan and Reed wrote, 'we recommend that you endorse the Daschle amendment in order to sustain your credibility ... and prevent Congress from overriding your veto.' In other words, Kagan appears to have valued Clinton's credibility and a potential political victory over fidelity to the Constitution."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)