Posted on 05/16/2010 2:41:24 PM PDT by LouAvul
Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is unlikely to face a Republican filibuster, the Senate's second-ranking Republican said Sunday.
"The filibuster should be relegated to extreme circumstances, and I don't think Elena Kagan represents that," Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CBS’s "Face the Nation."
Kyl voted to confirm Kagan to be solicitor general, the top lawyer who argues the administration's cases before the Supreme Court. But Kagan shouldn't be count on his vote again, he said.
"No," he said. "I explained at the time that my vote for the temporary position as the government's top lawyer in the Justice Department did not suggest how I would vote were she to be nominated for a lifetime appointment to a court such as the Supreme Court."
Administration efforts to keep Kagan's confirmation process humming along with little drama continue. Over the weekend, the White House sent a letter to the National Archives, urging the release of 160,000 pages of documents from Kagan's tenure in the Clinton White House. And this week she will head back to Capitol Hill for meetings to shore up additional support.
Judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) predicted Kagan's confirmation to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens will be "done this summer” ahead of the court's new term. Leahy said he'll be sitting down with ranking Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) this week.
"We'll work out a time," he said on ABC's "This Week."
Republicans have meanwhile stepped up their criticism in the run-up to the expected summer hearing, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried a new line of attack Sunday, addressing Kagan's role in the Citizens United Case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment could not limit corporate funding in campaigns.
"Solicitor Kagan's office, in the initial hearing, argued that it'd be okay to ban books," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And then when there was a re-hearing, Solicitor Kagan herself, in her first Supreme Court argument, suggested that it might be okay to ban pamphlets. I think that's very troubling."
On the Sunday shows, GOP senators again focused on Kagan's role in barring military recruiters from Harvard Law School. In 2003, Kagan, the law school’s dean, decided that military officials could not use the campus' main recruitment office because the military's "don't ask, don't tell" stance violated the school’s anti-discrimination policy.
Sessions proclaimed that it was "no little bitty matter," and said that Kagan broke the law.
“She disallowed them from the normal recruitment process on campus,” he told Jake Tapper on “This Week.” “She went out of her way to do so. She was a national leader in that, and she violated the law of the United States at various points in the process.”
McConnell, who did not repeat the claim that Kagan had broken the law, did say "the committee ought to look into it," since the "record has yet to be developed."
And while Kyl declined to weigh in on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's claim that Kagan is "anti-military," he said the controversy will "play a part in the hearings."
"In my view, it was inappropriate for her to describe it as a discriminatory policy of the military," he said. "She did not deny entry on to the campus of the president, President Clinton, or the members of the Congress who had adopted the law."
The White House has stressed that Kagan has had great relationships with veterans and with the military. And Leahy pushed back on “This Week,” saying it was "sound and fury signifying nothing."
"If somebody wants to go in the military, they usually find a recruiter," he said. "I mean, I don't think there was a recruiting station on the campus when my youngest son went and joined the Marine Corps. He wanted to join the Marine Corps. He had no trouble finding a recruiter. And I think in this case, the recruitment went on at Harvard all the way through. This really is trying to make up something out of whole cloth."
We need people in Congress who will stand for their convictions, not RINO wimps.
You've surrendered. Change your name to yield 2 the left.
Do it now, before the storm troopers knock at your door. Maybe you'll be spared.
And your response to my post, and many others, tells me all I need to know about you.
UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Texas
Kyle is political history if this empty bra is confirmed...
Kyl
Him too!
lol
“We need people in Congress who will stand for their convictions, not RINO wimps.”
We need to clone Chris Christie.
I used to respect Sen. Jon Kyl and I have voted for him, in the past.
Align your spine, dig deep within yourself for your personal courage, pray for strength and guidance, and then DO WHAT YOU MUST TO WIN. PERIOD.
Kyl is another in a long, long list of Republican disasters. AZ has a lot of explaining to do in its poor choice of officeholders. And I believe their immigration law will be struck down by the federal courts.
Yes, but it is the Republican primary voters who keep nominating failed candidates.
“I believe he is up for re-election in 2012. Time to start planning on taking out the trash.”
A clear message needs to be sent to Kyl and his ilk. If you don’t block Kagan, you won’t get reelected. It is time to shut down Mr. Obama’s present and future SCOTUS picks.
Unless he at least picks a true moderate instead of a leftest idealoge, then don’t confirm his nominees....block them at all costs. Obviously we won’t get a conservative appointment by him, but we can keep him from chosing the left end of the political spectrum.
Just like the Prez.
How do people like this stay in high office and out of jail? If I were to try rolling like politicians do, I'd end up bunking with "Tiny" and "Guido" down at the crowbar motel.
The net of law is spread so wide,
No sinner from its sweep may hide.
Its meshes are so fine and strong
They take in every child of wrong.
O wondrous web of mystery !
Big fish alone escape from thee !
-- J.J.Roche
Shouldn’t they wait until they find out what she says and what comes out before deciding on what they’ll do?
So what? Let the 'Rats trot it out. It won't break my heart to see this seat remain vacant until 2013.
Then explain why he went from having ACU scores in the 90's 12 years ago, to sounding like Bob "Wet Noodle" Michel and Bob "Let's Make a Deal" Dole? Or Denny "I'm Not Really Here" Hastert?
This is a complete, totally craven caucuswide El Foldo of the very first water. A Communist lesbian on the Supreme Court? Because a guy who, to display his street-cool contempt for white people won't show us his bona fides documents and only pretends to be President, wants her?
IS JOHN KYL OUT OF HIS MIND?
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