Posted on 06/29/2010 11:43:56 AM PDT by traumer
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on Tuesday fought off Republicans who were trying hard to paint her as a liberal activist, saying she'd be a fair, open-minded justice and refusing to call herself a "legal progressive."
"I honestly don't know what that label means," Kagan told Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama .
Sessions, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican, kept pressing the former Harvard Law School dean, quoting her colleagues to make the point. Kagan wouldn't take the bait, though.
"My politics would be, must be, have to be completely separate from my judging," said Kagan, who was a domestic policy adviser in the Clinton administration.
President Barack Obama nominated Kagan, who's now the solicitor general, to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens . Since Democrats control 58 Senate seats, and none has signaled opposition to Kagan, her confirmation is expected.
Republicans such as Sessions nonetheless hope to use this week's hearings to raise public doubts about Kagan and the president who nominated her. In particular, they're challenging her lack of judicial experience and her past dealings with the military.
Foremost in early questioning Tuesday were Republican concerns about Kagan's decision to restrict military recruiting at Harvard Law School , while she was its dean, because of the military's policy banning gays and lesbians from serving openly. Kagan called the policy a "profound wrong" and a "moral injustice of the first order" in a 2003 e-mail.
Under the so-called Solomon Amendment, schools that deny recruiting opportunities to the military can be cut off from federal funding. In 2005, after an appellate court ruled that the Solomon Amendment was unconstitutional, Kagan stopped providing official law school access to the military. The access later was restored, as the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Solomon Amendment in 2006.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The Homer Simpson response doh doh doh, the queen of know nothing.
Deep,legal mind there, boy.
Oh I’m sorry, I meant to ask “Are you a rabid communist?”
The she/butch/thing will get nominated and the R’s will sit on their hands.
Politics separate? Not likely, I know mine would NOT be. My politics say the Constitution is the LAW. Therefore, as a judge, I would use that as the bedrock of all my judging.
She used to opine that judicial decisions were nothing more than another type of politics.
Now she says her politics would be seperate.
Just like Sotomayer said she supported individual gun rights -— and voted against them.
The safe answer would have been “no”.
She’s either lying her a$$ off or she’s too stupid to be a justice... probably both ..
She is a liar.
Will that answer be ridiculed like Sarah Palin's request for clarification of what Tom Brokaw meant by "Bush Doctrine"?
Maybe it’s a product of the mindset where most liberals tend to think their opinions are the only opinions. Like if you were a rock in a part of the universe that only had rocks, and someone asked you if you were a rock, you might say you didn’t know what a rock was because you’ve never known there could be anything different.
You would obviously make a better justice then this insipid moron.
Ask her: “Gettin’ laid regular?”
not that we need any more indications off how far this country has fallen, take a look at this SC nominee. I suppose if we can make a community organizer with no practical experience of anything at all POTUS, anything is possible.
So look at her past decisions and see if they are separate from her politics or not.
Real simple.
What? She has no past decisions??!!
I’m betting undocumented progressive.
Of course had she ever been a judge this statement could be vetted.
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