Judiciary

Via the Associated Press (link may be dynamic and subject to change):  A federal judge in New Orleans has blocked a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects that was imposed in response to the massive Gulf oil spill. The White House says President Barack Obama's administration will appeal. Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore…

How committed is the Washington Post to its crusade to see Congress abridge free speech under the guise of "campaign finance reform"? So much that it's willing to be a political bedfellow with the National Rifle Association, a group it detests for its persistent advocacy of Americans' Second Amendment liberties.In a June 17 editorial, the Post voiced its support behind a bill that Democrats and…

The “deeply polarized confirmation process in the Senate” has “undercut Obama's effort to significantly infuse the federal courts with more women and minorities,” USA Today's Joan Biskupic fretted in a Wednesday front page article in which she refused to identify Obama's nominees as liberals as she attached the positive “diversity” patina to Obama's agenda without any regard for the irony such “…

Borrowing a line from one of her Harvard colleagues, the Washington Post entitled its June 10 front-page profile of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, "Her work is her life is her work."*But the 60-paragraph story by staff writers Ann Gerhart and Philip Rucker shed barely any light on the judicial philosophy that Kagan's life work demonstrates. Instead, Gerhart and Rucker presented a gauzy…

In his June 9 "case study" feature for Time.com, Adam Cohen, formerly of the New York Times editorial board and Time magazine, tackled the question "Are Liberal Judges Really 'Judicial Activists'?" Cohen's short answer: yes, but so are conservative judges, and it's the conservatives on the Supreme Court that have been on an activist kick lately. To bolster his argument, Cohen complained that…

The Associated Press's Mark Sherman didn't try very hard to mask his true feelings on a couple of matters on which Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was working on during the late 1990s. The dictionary from which Sherman is working must have interesting definitions of "unsentimental" and "compassionate." See for yourself in the first four paragraphs of the AP writer's report on what is…

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Thursday touted Supreme Court collegiality from Justice Antonin Scalia as a real victory in the battle over Elena Kagan's nomination. Stephanopoulos enthused, "Justice Scalia, who is likely to be a conservative adversary if Kagan gets confirmed, pointed out that everybody on the bench now is a judge." (Kagan is likely to be a conservative adversary…

Another day, another liberal meme.Yesterday I tackled how Newsweek's Howard Fineman was attacking Kentucky Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul for picking a fight that the liberal media, in fact, was whipping up.Today, it's Fineman colleague Ben Adler and his insistence that conservatives are fixated on smearing both Elena Kagan and softball players everywhere as gay.Adler made his argument in…

Last Friday on TV, NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg touted Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as "spectacularly successful" -- twice. But that was mellow compared to her Tuesday report for Morning Edition, where she enthusiastically pitched her record as dean of Harvard Law School as a Superman legend (The audio valentine is here):  NINA TOTENBERG: In some ways, the descriptions of Elena…

"In a 7-2 ruling [on Monday], the Supreme Court expanded Congressional powers just a mite, by allowing the federal government to keep sexual predators in prison beyond their terms if they are deemed too dangerous to be released," U.S. News & World Report contributor Bonnie Erbe noted in a May 18 Thomas Jefferson Street blog post.The PBS "To the Contrary" host later snarked that: [T]he two…

In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama cast doubt on President Bush's pick of Harriet Miers in part because "her [legal] experience does not include serving as a judge" and as such "we have yet to know her views on many of the critical constitutional issues facing our country today." Yet five years later, after President Obama named his solicitor general -- who has also never served as a judge -- to…

Give that lady a Peabody!  The Peabody folks claim they give their awards for "outstanding" journalism and "excellence."  So just how clueless do you have to be to qualify? Take Katty Kay, the BBC's chief US correspondent, in New York today to pick up her prize.  On Morning Joe, Kay got off a double-barreled dose of classic MSM-think:1. She defended Elena Kagan's opposition to military…

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Friday cited a new poll and marveled to viewers that Barack Obama "is largely escaping blame for his handling of the [oil spill] crisis." (Note the passive way he framed that sentence.) Reporter Jake Tapper discussed the government's reaction to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. He proclaimed, "[Obama] is said to be angry and disappointed, not…