Eat Your Vegetables? Don't Expect Relief From Kagan

Who says that Supreme Court Justice confirmation hearings are vapid and hollow charades? Tom Coburn, apparently reading George Will, asks the Supreme Court nominee if Congress has the constitutional authority to tell us to eat our vegetables, obfuscation follows.



Kagan's non-response is a clear indicator to me that she doesn't believe that the constitution limits the Congress in any meaningful way when it comes to economic rights. For those on the left who proclaim the need for constitutional government, and bitterly complained about Bush, I ask, how can you support a nominee who disdains any notion of limits on the federal government?

And for those on the left who believe that you can somehow separate personal from economic freedom, I commend some study of Hayek. From Ilya Somin of The Volokh Conspiracy:

Third, as Hayek contended in “The Road to Serfdom,” political freedom and economic freedom are inextricably intertwined. In a centrally planned economy, the state inevitably infringes on what we do, what we enjoy, and where we live. When the state has the final say on the economy, the political opposition needs the permission of the state to act, speak and write. Economic control becomes political control....

This is why I oppose the left in all of its guises. Maybe they aren't socialists, but they certainly put us on a path to less freedom.