April D. Ryan

The nation is paying attention to the President’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Elana Kagan.   Kagan has few papers for people to pour through to get an idea as to how she would render a decision on the highest court in the land. Entertainment Icon, Lionel Richie even chimed in on Kagan, the night after she made the Senate rounds on Capitol Hill.

NEW YORK TIMES 

May 12, 2010
On Capitol Hill, Kagan Gets to Know Her Voters
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

 
WASHINGTON - Elena Kagan’s lack of judicial experience and her stance on the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy emerged Wednesday as potential flashpoints in her confirmation hearings. The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee said he was not satisfied with her explanation of why she had briefly barred military recruiters from using Harvard Law School facilities when she was dean.

“It seemed to me a little bit out of touch,” the Republican, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, said after about an hour with Ms. Kagan. “That you think you could disagree with a legal policy of the military, and that would allow you to in any way inhibit their ability to come to your campus, I think indicates some of the dangers of being in the rarefied atmosphere of the academy.”

Their private talk was one of eight meetings that Ms. Kagan, President Obama’s nominee to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens, had with senators on Wednesday as she began paying traditional courtesy calls to some of the 100 men and women who will vote on whether she is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.

 
In her job as solicitor general, Ms. Kagan does plenty of talking; she is the lawyer who represents the government before the Supreme Court. But now, as she concentrates exclusively on winning Senate confirmation, Ms. Kagan is practicing a different skill: keeping her mouth shut.

The White House and its allies are casting Ms. Kagan, 50, as a trailblazer and a brilliant academic. An umbrella group of liberal advocacy organizations, the Coalition for Constitutional Values, is running a national television spot that serves up a gauzy vision of her life story: daughter of a lawyer and a teacher, graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law, public servant in the Clinton and Obama administrations.

 
On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, it quickly became clear that Republicans were trying to paint a very different picture, of a woman in an ivory tower who lacks the requisite experience to serve on the highest court in the nation.

POLITICO

Kagan sparred with Clinton race panel - Josh Gerstein:  May 12, 2010

Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan sure didn’t seem too impressed by the work of President Bill Clinton’s high-profile commission on race or a related White House initiative on racial issues.

 
Documents at the Clinton Presidential Library show Kagan taking a sarcastic and dismissive tone about proposals from the racial reconciliaiton project and sometimes with the individuals who led it.

 
In one memo, Kagan, deputy domestic policy adviser, and her boss Bruce Reed reject the idea for a follow-on presidential commission or council on race as having “serious flaws.” A council is “subject to characterization as a ‘do-good,’ ‘touchy-feely’ essentially unrigorous and unserious response to the most intractable of America’s social problems,” the pair wrote. They proposed a conference or town hall meetings instead.

 
On a memo from deputy chief of staff Sylvia Mathews and race initiative chief Judy Winston, Kagan scrawled, apparently saracastically: “Pretty exciting stuff.” Kagan also seemed skeptical about some mundane things the race folks were touting as accomplishments. “By November 15, a letter!” she scoffed.

Kagan and Reed’s skepticism about the race project was widely held among Clinton advisers, such as Rahm Emanuel.

 
In an e-mail in Reed’s files, Clinton race adviser Chris Edley complains that Kagan seemed to be avoiding his request to talk about the racial implications of a proposal to end so-called social promotion of schoolchildren. Edley lists complaints about White House ignoring racial implications of actions on student testing and other points and threatens to resign.

 
Another memo trashes a “book” on race that was prepared by those involved in the race initiative. The memo carries the names of Kagan and Reed, but edits show Kagan’s name being removed. No reason for the change is clear. It’s unclear whether Kagan drafted the memo and Reed suggested the edits or vice versa. “It isn’t bold and it isn’t interesting,” the memo says.

Other memos suggest that Kagan and Reed thought that the race initiatve was pressing for too many race-conscious solutions when the central focus should be a “race-neutral opportunity agenda.” They did, however, concede an ongoing role for civil rights enforcement and “narrowly-tailored affirmatvie action programs.”

The bulk of Kagan’s own files from the White House remain under wraps, though the library is expected to release some or all of them in the coming weeks.

First Lady Michelle Obama is promoting reccommendations to reverse a 30 year trend and solve the problem of obesity in America.  Mrs. Obama says, “one in three children in america are obese, one in three kids will suffer from diabetes at some point.”

 The Anti-Obesity task force recommendations:

 
· Getting children a healthy start on life, with good prenatal care for their parents; support for breastfeeding; adherence to limits on “screen time”; and quality child care settings with nutritious food and ample opportunity for young children to be physically active.

 
· Empowering parents and caregivers with simpler, more actionable messages about nutritional choices based on the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans; improved labels on food and menus that provide clear information to help parents make healthy choices for children; reduced marketing of unhealthy products to children; and improved health care services, including BMI measurement for all children.

· Providing healthy food in schools, through improvements in federally-supported school lunches and breakfasts; upgrading the nutritional quality of other foods sold in schools; and improving nutrition education and the overall health of the school environment.

· Improving access to healthy, affordable food, by eliminating “food deserts” in urban and rural America; lowering the relative prices of healthier foods; developing or reformulating food products to be healthier; and reducing the incidence of hunger, which has been linked to obesity.

· Getting children more physically active, through quality physical education, recess, and other opportunities in and after school; addressing aspects of the “built environment” that make it difficult for children to walk or bike safely in their communities; and improving access to safe parks, playgrounds, and indoor and outdoor recreational facilities.