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."
Agree with your point of view when it comes to the final vote for office. We, as conservatives, need to be more of a force in the selection of the candidates to make SURE that a true conservative stands up against the liberals.
Hello Bill Richardson who is against any law like AZ in relation to illegal immigration
please define “true conservative”
thanks
” Hello Bill Richardson “
Can you point me to your evidence that Bill Richardson was voted into office UNANIMOUSLY???
That is the only way that you could possibly leap to your implied conclusion that I, personally, voted for him...
Grow up....
AMEN!! Primaries are where the power are!! Then you have to vote for the LEAST of the worst!!
Ask Mr. Jazzy.
Martinez retired from office and was replaced in the office by George LeMiuex. Nelson is the EQUIVALENT of McAmnesty. Kyl and the other repukes in the Senate that just want to “get along” with the rest of the progressives make me ill.
Kyl might be a good guy on other issues, but this Lou Costello impersonator Kagan is seeking a LIFETIME appointment! If there ever was a time to break out the filibuster, IT IS NOW!!!
Sell outs. They are too busy buttering their bread using the global scam.
Well with a Dem in the statehouse and two US senators what does voting unanimously mean really?
Please use your efforts to change that first before criticizing a very conservative US Senator in AZ like Jon Kyl
Thx
Not in Florida now that Crist has changed from Republican to independent
Nelson voted for the HC bill McCain did not
WTF?? Support the WINNER, Marco Rubio!!
John Kyl seemed to be Conservative compared to McCain, Now that McCain is on the hotseat...Kyl is starting to show his has one finger in the air and the rest else where!
I’ve never understood why smart people do such dumb $h!t!
And just how many US Senators that are Republican does OH have? One that I know who is retiring for sure
Crist is ahead in the polls as an independent in the polls in Florida.
Why worry about Kyl who is not up for reelection in az?
Don’t know what state you are from but again its
Jon Kyl
Oh you’re from CA where you have Barbara Boxer and Diann Feinstein
here are the Republicans giving it all away again. We don’t need a 50 year old anti-Constitutionalist on the Court. It is a given that Socialism and worse is what we will get from Soetoro. But the Republicans should at least hold out for one that won’t last so long. But the Republicans will accept Kagan with barely a sound and will eventually give us Amnesty, too.
If the CONSERVATIVES stay home, Crist will win....Meeks doesns;t stand a snowball’s chance in HELL...even DEMOCRAT Floridians know he is a DUMB BAG OF ROCKS!
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