Questions about Kagan

U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan is reported to be on the short list to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. If she were a Republican on the short list for a court opening, Senate Democrats would move heaven and Earth to turn a 1996 contretemps into a major scandal. On the evidence so far, such a political hit job would not be fair. What is fair, though, is to insist that not all the evidence is in, and to demand more answers. As the Wall Street Journal's "Political Diary" reported May 21, Ms. Kagan was in the middle of Clinton White House deliberations that put a kibosh on legal action against a group of eco-terrorists in Oregon who were blocking some legal logging operations. To quote from a House task force investigation in 1999, "these 'environmentalist' protesters erected barricades and other structures (out of timber) in the roadways and in the forest; they dug trenches and deliberately washed out the roadways in several areas, polluting the waterways downstream with runoff; they polluted the area with human waste; they built 'booby-traps' of trenches and sharpened metal spikes designed to maim intruders or damage vehicles; they chained and locked themselves to buried cement structures; and at least one protester was heavily armed." The Forest Service and local law enforcement, with approval from the FBI, the local U.S. Attorney and federal marshals, were ready to move in against the demonstrators. Then, on June 12, 1996, a high-level group of White House officials, including Ms. Kagan, met and ordered that the arrest plans be aborted...WTimes