Topic: WorldNetDaily
When Elena Kagan was nominated as a Supreme Court justice, WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein hurled a slew of false and misleading attacks on her. Klein's sliming ultimately went for naught, as she was confirmed easily.
Now that the Supreme Court has taken up the constitutionality of health care reform, Klein is rehashing many of those bogus attacks.
IN a Nov. 20 WND article, Klein claims that "a closer look at Kagan's academic writings and previous work history paints a picture of a woman who strongly supports court intervention." But he supports that mostly by repeating his earlier discredited sliming.
Klein asserts that Kagan "once helped shield Saudi Arabia from lawsuits filed by families of 9/11 victims seeking to target countries and leaders who helped finance al-Qaida." In fact, as we detailed, the federal government has long barred such lawsuits if the country being targeted has not been designated by the State Department as having provided material support for terrorist groups, which is the case with Saudi Arabia.
Klein also attacked Kagan for praising retired Israeli Supreme Court justice Aharon Barak, whom he declared was "one of the most extreme liberal activist high court justices in history." Klein asserted that Barak "famously ruled numerous times in favor of the Palestinians and against the IDF" -- without explaining why ruling in favor of Palestinians is inherently a bad thing -- and that Barak's rulings regarding a security fence "were blamed for scores of terrorist infiltrations from the very areas where Barak had stopped the fence from being built."
Klein offers no evidence to back up that claim. Further, Barak is on record as taking security into consideration in bulding the fence. Israeli National News reported:
To those who criticize the security fence, claiming that 'the damage outdoes the good', Barak responded: "Similar statements are made by others – one could call them the Israeli left – against the involvement of the High Court in matters pertaining to Judea, Samaria and Gaza. They say that the court overstepped its authority, viewing its ruling as negative. Why? Because most petitions are rejected, and they allege that this "legitimizes the occupation", and that therefore it would be best not to involve the court. I am of the opinion that this would be the most grievous of errors. The percentage of rejected petitions from Judea, Samaria and Gaza – is the same as the percentage of rejected petitions from inside Israel. The situation for Palestinians in the region would be far worse if it weren't for the High Court."
Klein's assertion that Kagan "shows strong beliefs for court intervention in speech" is contradicted in the very next paragraph, in which he quotes Kagan as favoring the "uncoerced disappearance" of certain types of offensive speech.
In a pernicious example of selective quoting, Klein asserted that "in her undergraduate thesis at Princeton, Kagan lamented the decline of socialism in the country as 'sad' for those who still hope to 'change America.'" In fact, she did no such thing; her thesis simply explored historical questions about socialism, and at no point did Kagan portray herself as a socialist.
Klein also claimed that in a 1996 paper, "Kagan argued it may be proper to suppress speech because it is offensive to society or to the government." But that's another highly selective quoting of Kagan's work. In that very same paper, Kagan said that government "may not restrict" speech "because it disagrees with ... the ideas espoused by the speaker."
Klein even asserts -- without providing any evidence whatsoever to back it up -- that "Kagan was also heavily involved in promoting the health-care policy of the Clinton administration."
Klein has never reported fairly or accurately about Kagan. There's no reason to think he would start now.
