A WARNING FROM RECENT HISTORY – AT 7:59 A.M. ET:  Is it possible that the Obama administration is instructing Supreme Court nominees to lie, during confirmation hearings, about their view of the Second Amendment?

I think it's distinctly possible.  Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor this week joined the other liberals on the Court in specifically rejecting the usual interpretation of the Second Amendment, that Americans have an individual right to keep and bear arms.  But she sang a different tune entirely during her confirmation hearings.  Reason magazine has the facts:

During last year’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, one of the most controversial issues centered on the would-be justice’s approach to the Second Amendment. As I argued at the time, her 2nd Circuit vote in the case of Maloney v. Cuomo, where she held that the Second Amendment did not apply to the states, did not bode well for her future treatment of gun rights on the Supreme Court. It turns out those fears were well-founded. On Monday, Sotomayor joined the dissent of Justice Stephen Breyer in McDonald v. Chicago. As gun rights expert David Kopel explains in today’s Washington Times, Breyer’s dissent did not just oppose extending the Second Amendment to Chicago, it opposed the Second Amendment itself:

Not only did Justice Stephen G. Breyer vote against extending the Second Amendment to state and local governments, he also argued forcefully and at length for overturning Heller and, therefore, for turning the Second Amendment into a practical nullity. Ominously, Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined the Breyer dissent - contradicting what she told the U.S. Senate and the American people last summer....

The Breyer-Sotomayor-Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissent urged that Heller be overruled and declared, "In sum, the Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self defense."

Contrast that with her Senate testimony: "I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller." And, "I understand how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans."...

...To the SenateJudiciary Committee, Justice Sotomayor repeatedly averred that Heller is "settled law."

Sotomayor lied, plain and simple.  I will be blunt in saying that some modern liberals, as opposed to the traditional liberals of the Paul Douglas stripe, feel they have a right to lie because they're superior creatures who must violate the minor rules of society to create a paradise on Earth.

Which brings us to Elena Kagan, whose confirmation hearings have now been completed.  Kagan swore under oath that she believed that the Second Amendment embraced a personal right to keep and bear arms.  She had never expressed such a view before.  In fact, there is some evidence that she actually holds an entirely different position. 

Did she lie too?  I suspect so.  And I suspect it was part of the strategy to take the issue off the table.

Kagan's nomination is now being opposed by top Republicans in the Senate.  I join their position.  She is the Barack Obama of 2010.  We're asked to put a question mark on the Supreme Court, and to believe statements that she made during confirmation hearings that seem to contradict everything we know about her.

She'll be confirmed anyway, and I would hope that conservatives would brush up on the Constitutional amendment process, because we're going to need it.

July 3, 2010