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."
“Looks like Arizona needs 2 new Senators.”
Coming from a CA where they have two (2) Democratic U S Senators that’s saying something s/
Oh, woe is me! Woe is me! Why don’t we all stay home as we did in ‘08 and let these puke incumbents continue to ruin our country...there’s simply nothing we can do!(do I really need the /sarc insert?)
These RepubliCrat clowns need to resign so we can get some real conservative blood in the Congress.
I’m tired of seeing them surrender without a fight when our qualified nominees are totaly destroyed by the democrat party.
How long are we going to allow this to go on?
You are welcome.
What does the GOP and a steer have in common?
In foreign policy, Democrats believe in unilateral disarmament. The rinos like Kyl believe in political disarmament.
Why can’t this dummy keep his cards close to vest and say that he reserves the right to retain all options as the situation unfolds?
What Kyl is doing is coming from the leadership of the US Senate.
Most of the posters in this thread are from states who don’t even have Republican US Senators in their own states. Maybe we should start there first.
It's the job of anybody with commonsense to do what it takes to keep someone who has violated laws, namely those allowing military recruiters on college campus, from having a seat on the high court.
So the Republicans will let the Democrats “Bork” the process but the Republicans are too, what, “gentlemanly” to push back?
They all need to be freaking voted out. Worthless bunch of pond scum.
I believe someone has cautioned the pubs to choose their battles wisely. FOOLS. There ARE no small battles against this bunch of thugs. They need to fight every skirmish like it’s their last. Or it will be.
Then we keep filibustering until they put up someone more reasonable and to the center.
She is more center than the US Supreme Court member which she is replacing.
Are they going to ask questions or simply just send a through. Maybe we should get her flowers too.
A mid term election is coming up and a filibuster proof thingy with 41 senators just isn’t there in this case.
I have a Republican Senator. A very senior one. Thanks, you convinced me. It's time for him to go too.
We’re at war, she took actions against the military. That disqualifies her, period.
Do they two US Republican Senators? No they have Tom Harkin. Who is worse? Tom Harkin vs. Jon Kyle or John McCain?
I would suggest a paleontologist do some digging in the U.S. Senate. If they can find enough material to make one Conservative spine, I’ll be surprised. They would certainly get a front page out of Paleontology Today if they could.
(I realize paleontology probably isn’t the exact science, but I am so frustrated with the Republican party today, I don’t what else to compare them with, other than dinosaurs. The people we have there now are definitely pre-Jeffersonian, and possible pre-13th century England, maybe enen pre-Roman, or pre-Grecian.)
We’ve gone back a long ways to have no representation whatsoever from our Representatives. They do what they damn well please, and ignore us.
“It’s interesting that Obama’s choices for the Supreme Court have thin paper trails.”
Yes, deliberately lacking a paper trail. And how many times do you think she’ll refuse to respond to questions regarding issues that may come before the court? Obama is really trying to sell a pig in the poke with this one!
That’s the way to handle it. Too bad they’re too lazy to do it.
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