Litigation

NRA Judge-Targeting ?In Pursuit of Power?

By Peter Hardin

The NRA has gone from no involvement in Supreme Court nomination battles to engaged opposition to President Obama’s two nominees. Why?

In Slate, Dahlia Lithwick explores an answer in an essay entitled “Shoot First, Confirm Later.” She questions why, when Solicitor General Elena Kagan “endorsed the NRA’s view of the Second Amendment,” it ended up opposing her aggressively.

Lithwick examines the influential lobby’s opposition to Sonia Sotomayor, to Kagan, and most recently its failure to endorse Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, as punishment for his backing Kagan for the Supreme Court. Reid is a politician who had sought to “appease the NRA over the years,” she writes. With the NRA’s stance on Reid, “it became clear that judicial nominations are now a life-or-death issue for the group,” Lithwick asserts.

In fact, Lithwick reasons, the NRA’s actions seem more about the NRA than anything based on legal fact, executed in a quest for power:

“The NRA has never had it better?which goes a long way toward explaining why it has never been so bereft. It’s the most powerful lobby group in Washington, and five members of the Supreme Court have actually signed off on its constitutional worldview.

“Yet it needs enemies to thrive, so it is responding by finding more and more lethal enemies where none exist. Today it’s Attorney General Eric Holder and Elena Kagan, tomorrow it will be Phineas and Ferb. Don’t look for reason or rationality in the NRA’s continued involvement in evaluating and lobbying against future judges. This is an exercise in pure fantasy, and it’s performed in the interest of pure power.”

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 06, 2010 (boomark / email).