FRANCIS BOYLE The Wall Street Journal reports: “The White House said Friday that Elena Kagan’s membership on an advisory panel for the securities firm Goldman Sachs Group Inc. wouldn’t disqualify her for a position on the Supreme Court. … From 2005 to 2008, Ms. Kagan was a paid member of the Research Advisory Council of…

SHANE KADIDAL Kadidal is senior managing attorney of the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. He just wrote the piece “Senator Lieberman’s Latest Constitutional Buffoonery,” which states: “Senator Lieberman [Thursday] proposed a bill that would strip American citizenship from anyone who has ‘provid[ed] material support or resources…

ANTONIA JUHASZ Juhasz recently wrote a piece for the UK Guardian titled “BP spends millions lobbying as it drills ever deeper and the environment pays.” Director of the Chevron program at Global Exchange, Juhasz is author of The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry — and What We Must Do to Stop It.…

COSTAS PANAYOTAKIS Panayotakis is associate professor of sociology at the New York City College of Technology at CUNY. He said today: “Basically, you have a new government imposing the austerity policies that it ran against, attempting to solve the crisis on the backs of ordinary Greeks. And, as is usually the case with the International…

MAUREEN WEBB Author of the book Illusions of Security: Global surveillance and democracy in the post-9/11 world, Webb said today: “The pervasive surveillance systems that have been implemented since 9/11 have pernicious effects on the democratic freedoms of ordinary people and, as this [Times Square] case underlines, only limited utility in fighting real terrorists. Tragedy…

SHAHID MAHMOOD Mahmood was an editorial cartoonist for Dawn, a national newspaper in Pakistan. He is now internationally syndicated with the New York Times Syndicate. He said today: “People become radicalized through the corruptions of an Islamist agenda, the excesses of capitalism and a heavy-handed U.S. foreign policy.” ALI ABUNIMAH Abunimah is co-founder of the…

LUCI BEACH Beach is executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee in Alaska. She said this afternoon: “Today I’m in Gulfport, Mississippi, one of the areas that’s going to be impacted. These people have no idea what they’re in for. People buy the oil companies’ propaganda and allow them to do what they want without…

TYSON SLOCUM Slocum is director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. He recently wrote the piece “The Oil Spill … BP’s $485 Million in Fines.” He also wrote the piece “Obama’s Drill To Nowhere.” JOSEPH GERSON Gerson is speaking this weekend at a conference on abolishing nuclear weapons at the Riverside Church in New York City.…

ROBERT KUTTNER Co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, Kuttner is the author of the recent book A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama’s Promise, Wall Street’s Power, and the Struggle to Control Our Economic Future. He said today: “It’s crucial that we now get a strong financial reform bill. This includes…

BARBARA KENNELLY, PAMELA TAINTER CAUSEY Kennelly is president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security; Causey is communications director for the group. Kennelly said today: “Social Security has not contributed one thin dime to the current deficit. It should not be used as a ‘piggy bank’ to pay our way out of the fiscal…