Senator: Kagan Argued Government Could Ban Books

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, May 17, 2010

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Mitch McConnell pointed out that Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan once argued that the government should have the power to ban books and censor political pamphlets, as yet more alarming information on Kagan’s hostility towards the First Amendment comes to light.

During the Citizens United vs. FEC case, Kagan’s office was asked by Chief Justice John Roberts if the government could ban publications it they were paid for by a corporation or labor union.

“If it’s a 500-page book, and at the end it says, ‘and so vote for x,’ the government could ban that?” Roberts asked, to which Kagan’s deputy, Malcolm L. Stewart, said the government could censor such information.

Justice Roberts blasted Kagan’s argument at the time, reports Newsmax.

“The government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech. It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern,” he wrote.

“Solicitor Kagan’s office in the initial hearing argued that it would be OK to ban books,” Senator McConnell said. “And then when there was a rehearing Solicitor Kagan herself in her first Supreme Court argument suggested that it might be OK to ban pamphlets.”

McConnell called for a full investigation of Kagan’s First Amendment stance in light of her “troubling” position on free speech, adding that classic political pamphlets like Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and the Federalist Papers could be banned under Kagan’s logic.

Under Kagan’s definition of the government’s role in policing free speech, the state would also have a remit to censor things like newspaper editorials, as well as the political opinions of radio talk show hosts or television reporters. This is alarming given the fact that Obama’s information technology czar Cass Sunstein has called for the re-introduction of the “fairness doctrine,” which would also force political websites to carry mandatory government propaganda.

Obama’s Supreme Court nominee also thinks certain expressions of free speech should be ‘disappeared’ if the government deems them to be offensive. On the surface that’s any opinion on racial, sexuality or gender issues, but since criticizing Obama is now deemed racist, where will it all end?

In a 1993 University of Chicago Law review article, Kagan wrote, “I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the uncoerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation.” (emphasis mine).

“In a 1996 paper, “Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine,” Kagan argued it may be proper to suppress speech because it is offensive to society or to the government,” reports World Net Daily.

Kagan’s standpoint on free speech, that it is subject to regulation and definition by the government, has no place in America, completely violates the fundamental premise of the First Amendment, that even unpopular speech should be protected, and would be better suited for countries like Iran, Zimbabwe or North Korea.

Little surprise therefore when we learn that in her undergraduate thesis at Princeton, Kagan lamented the decline of socialism in the U.S. as “sad” for those who still hope to “change America.”

If Kagan is approved she is going to find an eager ally in White House information czar Cass Sunstein, who in a January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” called for the government to tax and outright censor political viewpoints it deemed unsavory.

Kagan’s repulsive take on the rights enshrined in the Constitution is not just limited to free speech.

The Supreme Court nominee outlined her belief that Americans can be guilty until proven innocent, or in fact just plain guilty without even the chance to be proven innocent, when she was quoted as saying, “That someone suspected of helping finance Al Qaeda should be subject to battlefield law — indefinite detention without a trial — even if he were captured in a place like the Philippines rather than a physical battle zone.”

Kagan is also hostile to the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. She has habitually come down on the side of gun control in claiming the state has the right to impose restrictive gun laws and said that she disagrees with the language of the Second Amendment.

Despite accepting the 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller as a precedent on gun rights, Kagan added that the Constitution “provides strong although not unlimited protection against governmental regulation,” thus leaving the door open for future regulation.