Twin Disasters: Elena Kagan and Oil

No, I haven't posted in a long time, three months to be exact. Much has happened in that time, and I must have been suffering from outrage fatigue. I have of course been regularly writing my Black Agenda Report column, but alas I have neglected this blog and that means I have neglected myself as well. No mas!

Since February the president ended the moratorium on offshore drilling and told a bold faced lie in the process. "It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today don't cause spills. Technologically they are very advanced. Even during Katrina the spills didn't come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore."

Well, that was before the Deepwater Horizon blew up in the Gulf of Mexico and put egg squarely on Obama's face. Oh and by the way, oil rigs did cause spills in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Liar, liar pants on fire.

What does the oil disaster in the gulf have to do with Elena Kagan, Obama's supreme court nominee? Because the hits just keep on coming. My worst fears about Obama are being realized and in very short order. Every week brings a new outrage that I need to get over and be outraged about.

As I said in my BAR column, we are told to keep voting for democrats because of the importance of federal judicial nominations. But if a democratic president chooses a conservative democrat, what is the point of supporting him?

As dean of Harvard law school, Kagan did not appoint one black law professor during her tenure, not one. Out of 32 tenure or tenure track positions, she hired only seven women, one of whom was Asian. No African Americans, Latinos or Native Americans were hired. All 25 men hired were white.

Why did Obama choose her? Glenn Greenwald explained it all very well. "Nothing is a better fit for this white house than a blank slate, institution-loyal, seemingly principle free careerist, who spent the last 15 months as the Obama administration's lawyer vigorously defending every one of his assertions of extremely broad executive authority."

So here we are with a mediocre butt kisser on the court, a court devoid of anyone who didn't attend Yale or Harvard. The outrage is back!