Yes, Solicitor General of the United States Elena Kagan is a Jew. She is also President Obama's nominee to be a justice on the Supreme Court.Kagan was born to a Jewish family in New York City where she graduated from Hunter College High School (1977), the same school that our mom went to a generation earlier.
Kagan has had a stellar career serving as U Chicago professor of law, Harvard Law School Dean, a White House Counsel for Bill Clinton, and is highly ranked as a potential Supreme Court justice.
Her recent challenge involves a story from January 2010 that claims she secretly met with Tobacco lawyers who want to avoid a Supreme Court decision against them.
Personal connection. Mother's Day 2010 was this past Sunday.
Cigarettes killed our mom in 2000 after causing her numerous debilitating illnesses. Big tobacco got her hooked on cigarettes in around 1938 when their hawkers, standing in front of Hunter College High School, gave her free sample cigarette packets.Cigarette smoking kills 400,000 people every year in the US. Smoking needs to be outlawed and the tobacco industry needs to be shut down.
We pray that Kagan does not yield an inch to the insidious racketeering industry of death.
AP: Tobacco's plea — no big US payments/Updated 5/10/10/
Pete Yost, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – Tobacco industry lawyers met secretly with Solicitor General Elena Kagan in an effort to avoid the government's last-ditch attempt to extract billions from companies that illegally concealed the dangers of cigarette smoking, The Associated Press has learned.
Four cigarette makers that control nearly 90 percent of U.S. retail cigarette sales have until Feb. 19 to persuade the government not to go to the Supreme Court and ask the justices to step into a landmark 10-year-old racketeering lawsuit.
In 2006, a judge ruled that the industry concealed the dangers of smoking for decades. Despite that finding, lower courts have said the government is not entitled to collect $280 billion in past profits or $14 billion for a national campaign to curb smoking.
As part of any effort to convince the government that it should skip a trip to the Supreme Court, the tobacco companies may have to drop plans to ask the justices to overturn the ruling that the industry engaged in racketeering....more...
To all smokers and former smokers out there who are thinking of lighting up. There is an alternative to outright quiting. It's called nicotine gum and/or the patch. This is a proven technique for getting off the coffin nails, known as cigarettes. Nicotine the drug, although hightly addictive (more so than herion), is neither a poison nor a carcinogen. Tobacco smoke on the other hand contains over 200 poisons and 50 carcinogens, including a number of heavy metals. I say that it's proven because it worked in my case, dealing with this horrible habit. I have been smoke free for years.
ReplyDeleteOne of the big dangers of punitive taxes on the cigarette industry is that government may start getting addicted to the revenue as easily as poor shmucks become addicted to the cancer sticks. This former addiction, although cloaked in a veil of righteousness, can prove more fatal in the long run. Rather, we must insure that these revenues of death do not become a permanent fixture to our tax base.
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