As every Kossack knows, President Barack Obama is in the midst of making an extraordinarily important decision: choosing a replacement for retiring Associate Justice John Paul Stevens. Appointed by Gerald Ford, Stevens is widely acknowledged to be the most liberal member of the current court. This says less about Stevens himself than it does about the Court on which he sits. Stevens remains what he always was: a moderate Republican. But these days, that puts a justice on the far left of a court that has contained no actual liberal voices since the retirements of William Brennan in 1990 and Thurgood Marshall in 1991.
Now the White House is mounting an aggressive defense of the apparent frontrunner for that post: Solicitor General Elana Kagan. Some of that pushback is aimed at rightwing slurs about Kagan's private life, but it's also aimed at progressives, who've raised questions about Kagan's positions on executive power and civil liberties.