NBC News: Kagan will be Obama's SCOTUS nominee to replace Stevens (MON AM UPDATE 2: IT'S OFFICIAL)

Hot off the presses:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has nominated U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan to serve as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, NBC News’ Pete Williams reported late Sunday night.

Kagan, 50, served as the Dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009. Obama nominated her to serve in her current post as solicitor general early in 2009, and she won Senate confirmation by a vote of 61-31. She is the first woman to serve as solicitor general of the United States.

Williams will be given credit for the early scoop, but Politico’s Mike Allen was actually all over this on Friday.

To learn more about Kagan, click here for several links detailing what issues will likely come up during her confirmation hearing.

Mon. AM Update – 8:26 AM: Will the anticipated nomination of Elena Kagan end the hopes of gay marriage proponents for the time being? Bill Jacobson says yes. All things considered, I’m not so sure about that, but a few prominent liberals – like Glenn Greenwald and others – oppose her nomination, so maybe there is something to Jacobson’s analysis.

BTW, Obama is expected to announce his nomination at 10 a.m. ET.

Update 2 – 10:29 AM: It’s official.

Cross-posted to Right Wing News.

camojack says:

May 10, 2010 at 3:48 am

On the “bright” side, at least it was a liberal Justice that’s retiring.

Raul says:

May 10, 2010 at 9:53 am

That is all well and good but is the nominee pro-life?

Carlos says:

May 10, 2010 at 2:22 pm

ABC News has come up with a headline indicating that, because Kagan has no judicial history, she will be an “unknown” wild card on the court.

Yeah, right. Dean of Hawvud Law. Nominated by the most extremist president in the two-century plus history of our country. I’m just real sure every decision she makes will surprise everyone.

And the Republicans don’t have the spine or moral fiber to challenge her effectively. When it comes to standing on principal, they are (for the most part) full of jello.

NC Cop says:

May 10, 2010 at 9:10 pm

An anti-military, left winger with NO experience as a judge.

Only in an Obama world does this make sense.

May 11, 2010 at 11:07 am

The “A” section of today’s birdcage liner had about three full pages of gushiness about Kagan, all boiling down to this: we don’t know what her philosophical bent on the bench will be because she’s such an enigma.

Let’s see. She supports the military in the same way the statists do, by saying “Support our troops – bring them home now!”

She is all over gay special rights, surely a hard-core conservative view.

She’s a great mediator between conservative and liberal groups, as shown by her ability to get the two factions in Hawvud Law to agree to new hires (no one says whether the new hires were conservative or liberal, or what the split was), a la Maobama.

In other words, she is not a complete unknown and, as indicated in my first comment, could only be one who “enlarges” the Constitution beyond recognition.

Whatever happened to judges just defining what the law actually says, and deciding whether that falls within the strict confines of what is allowed by the Constitution?