Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court: Not As Bad as It Could Have Been ...

... but being not quite as radical as Diane Wood is not exactly the ideal standard and is cold comfort once one realizes Kagan is only 50 years old and, lack of radical bona fides notwithstanding, nevertheless represents a vote in favor of furthering a leftist, anti-life agenda via an unelected and life-tenured judiciary.

As my friend Steve "Feddie" Dillard says, "elections have consequences". And our First Thoughts co-blogger, Prof. Rick Garnett, writes on that topic today: "Kagan Proves Elections Matter":

... No one should think that this nomination is inconsequential. Some commentators have suggested that it will change little—that the Court’s “balance” will stay the same—because the President is simply replacing one “liberal” justice (Justice Stevens) with another. This is not the right way to view the matter, though. With the confirmation of Justice Sotomayor, and now with this nomination, President Obama is entrenching (as any President would want to do) on the Court a particular approach—his approach—to constitutional interpretation. A “conservative”, attached to a different approach, may someday win back the White House, but he or she will probably have to settle for playing defense with his or her Supreme Court selections.

With his second Supreme Court pick—and, to be clear, he will almost certainly have more—President Obama is on the way to having had more influence over the Court than any President since Reagan, and perhaps even Roosevelt. Future elections might undo some of the President’s policies, but his views about the Constitution, the powers of the national government, and the role of unelected federal judges, are now being locked in securely on the Court. Again, elections matter.