http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/hill/marshall.htm

I can tell you for sure that there are very few people on this planet who ever found themselves arguing 32 cases (AND FINDING HIMSELF ON THE WINNING SIDE IN 29 OF THOSE CASES) before the Supreme Court of the United States.

This short portion from a '67 speech is labeled by some as controversial:

The government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today...

"Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights."   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall

I challenge anyone to debate any one of the aspects of this short statement that should be deemed controversial. Controversial?  Chief Justice Taney and John C. Calhoun would certainly see this statement as controversial; I have no doubt of this. And yet the old segregationists, the old confederacy is alive and well today; just dressed a little differently and with a little more PC in their rhetoric.

Marshall's name came up 35 times during the first day of Kagan's confirmation hearings, compared to 14 mentions of President Obama, by Talking Points Memo's count.

There's "no doubt he was an activist judge," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said of Marshall on MSNBC Monday. "Let's admire the man for the great things he did, but let's not walk over and wipe out the things that really didn't make sense as an obedient student of the practice of law."

The Salt Lake Tribune tracked Hatch down after Monday's hearing to ask if he would have voted for Marshall, the man who successfully litigated Brown v. Board of Education not long before he joined the Supreme Court. "Well, it's hard to say," was Hatch's .  response  (Remember now, Thurgood Marshall argued both Brown cases before the Supreme Court, he did not decide those cases)

Well, when I read something like this; when I attempt to comprehend this contempt for civil liberties; when I see this type of rhetoric coming out of a Senator's mouth I have only one response:

F%$& YOU OREN HATCH AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON.

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, likewise decried Marshall as "a well-known liberal activist judge" in his opening remarks during the hearing. Other GOP senators have sought to press Kagan on whether she believes that, as Marshall once said, "you do what you think is right and let the law catch up," the Wall Street Journal reports.  hhufpo

My initial response to Jeff for this statement: Siwwy Wabbit!!

After sitting calmly and attempting to gather myself my reaction becomes:

What in the f%$# do you think that it took to end Jim Crow in the North & the South; to end de jure and de facto discrimination in this nation; to alleviate four hundred years of physical and psychological torture in this country, Senator Sessions?

Oh dick uses the 'f' word. Well, hidden in Hatch's statement and Sessions' statements is the fucking 'n' word and they know it.

Senator John Kyl from Arizona said:

"Kagan wrote a tribute to Justice Marshall in which she said in his view it was the role of the courts and interpreting the Constitution to protect the people who went unprotected by every other organ of government. The court existed primarily to fulfill this mission. And later, when she was working in the Clinton administration, she encouraged a colleague working on a speech about Justice Marshall to emphasize his unshakable determination to protect the underdog.

That was Kyl's criticism of Elena Kagan, President Obama's nominee for Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

My initial response to this statement is: I hope Kyl dies of a painful disease and goes straight to fucking hell; that he does not pass GO, that he does not receive $200.00.

Kyl is criticizing Ms. Kagan's respect for one of the greatest jurists to ever practice law or preside as a Supreme Court Justice in this nation.

Neither Kyl nor Sessions nor Moron Oren is fit to have had the honor of shining Justice Marshall's shoes.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

As far as I can tell, over the last ten years the republicans have view of America and where America should be in the future that is at odds with just about everything I hold dear.

They wish for a nation where corporations are afforded all rights under our Constitution no matter what their place of origin or their constituency in terms of management or shareholders.  http://www.ratical.org/corporations/SCvSPR1886.html

They wish for a nation that continuously finds its minorities classified as prisoners, probationers, parolees or illegal aliens with no right to vote and with few of the rights guaranteed under our Constitution. http://ronmull.tripod.com/racism.html

They desire a permanent (read no death taxes) upper class representing less than one percent of the population that can reap half of our national income and own more than half of all of our property including land, natural resources, building structures, gold, silver and just about anything human beings treasure. And they wish to keep the middle class working till they are 70.

They desire a nation that rewards the corporate businesses who seek to extract the treasures underlying our land and our seas and protects those same corporations from civil or criminal prosecution for despoiling the very air we breathe and the very waters we drink while they proceed in their EXTRACTIONS or in the rack-a-thons

They desire a nation that seeks to remove a forum for ignores those who question the status quo, those who question abuse of power by the corporate oligarchy

Here's an ode to Justice Thurgood Marshall delivered by Ms. Kagan provided by TPM:

"In his life; in his great struggle for racial justice, the Supreme Court stood as the part of government that was most open to every American and that most often fulfilled our Constitution's promise of treating all persons with equal respect, equal care and equal attention.

My God, if statements like these are controversial, LET US DO ALL WE CAN TO BE CONTROVERSIAL.