Posted on 06/30/2010 7:11:54 AM PDT by IbJensen
Few events in government are as consciously theatrical as a Supreme Court confirmation. The senators are grandly arrayed in the front of the room, lacking only togas to convey their sense of austere dignity.
The audience is huddled in the rear and between them is the nominee, sitting at a large desk — facing a motley crew of crouched photographers — alone, though carefully rehearsed.
Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, who years ago called such hearings “a vapid and hollow charade,” helped ensure they were exactly that this week.
She also once said of the hearings a “repetition of platitudes has replaced discussion of viewpoints,” and “such hearings serve little educative function, except perhaps to reinforce lessons of cynicism that citizens often glean from government.”
So what are we to make of her opening statement, which could have served as an entry for an American Legion high school essay contest?
“I will make no pledges this week other than this one,” Kagan said, “that if confirmed, I will remember and abide by all these lessons: I will listen hard, to every party before the court and to each of my colleagues. I will work hard. And I will do my best to consider every case impartially, modestly, with commitment to principle, and in accordance with law.”
Vapid? A repetition of platitudes? Naw.
And how about the senators who could have done some real fact-finding instead of reinforcing “lessons of cynicism”? They chose reinforcing cynicism.
Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama danced around the ring with Kagan over military recruiting at Harvard (where students are apparently falling all over themselves to get into uniform), but in the end, he didn’t lay a glove on her, being reduced to saying her statements were “in variance with reality” without having really proved it.
Sessions was followed by grocery store heir Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, whose first question was — and I am not making this up — “Please tell us why you want to serve on the Supreme Court and what excites you about the job.”
OK, show of hands: Did he come up with that himself or did his staff have to write it for him?
One was left wondering if the public would not be better served by forcing nominees to appear on “Meet the Press,” “Face the Nation” and “This Week” — or at the very least “Larry King Live” and “The View” — instead of going through the current process.
Would we really learn less? Could we possibly learn less?
Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah began his questioning by saying to Kagan, “You’re doing well” and then asked her to answer his questions “‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the extent you can.”
For the next half-hour, she answered not a single question “yes” or “no.”
After one extended exchange, Hatch said, “We have to have a little back and forth every once in a while; otherwise, this place would be as boring as hell.”
It was, anyway, though the bizarre rambling of lame-duck Democrat (sort of) Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania did have its moments, though nothing even close to the pubic-hair-on-the-Coke-can weirdness of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in 1991.
According to a Los Angeles Times profile of Kagan, some of her former colleagues at Harvard Law School said she could be “warm, obsequious, charming, intimidating and sometimes temperamental.”
Kagan did not show most of those qualities to the senators (though she did make a funny remark about probably being in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day “like all Jews.”)
Instead, she chose the qualities she has rehearsed for weeks: cool, calm and safe.
Wise up Republicrats! Don't fail you nation.
Imagine for a moment, the kind of nominee we would have gotten with McCain in office.
Ummm yea.... The fact that I don’t think his nominee would have been much better concerns me. (At least McCain’s would have been pro life which I admit would have made his choice a universe better...)
And people wonder why the tea party movement began.
She will be voted in so that it can be found out what she is really like.
Here are a few comments I have accumulated -— read these and tell me if you think this person is qualified to represent the 99% of Americans who are so different from her:
In another article, titled “Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V,” she writes, “I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the un-coerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation.”
Solicitor General Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, helped craft President Bill Clinton’s political strategy for sustaining his veto of the partial-birth abortion ban in 1997. As a result of Clinton’s successful veto that year, the ban was not enacted until 2003, when it was signed by President George Bush.
So, in this also, she lied to us.
She’s in the back of the closet, just like Barney Frank was until he was outed and heroically made a virtue out of being a god-curséd sodomite SOB, as well as a crook.
Now, about her hard-core, real-orders-from-the-Kremlin-belong-to-a-cell, commie family. Dad was a big time commie union infiltrator.
Mommie was a commie.
Brother still is a big-time commie. (but not allowed to interview him - just like Obama’s relatives)
These Kagans are NYC commies from the 1930’s, 1940’s, type of people. Elena? Red Diaper baby type. Can sing the “Internationale,” but not the SSB.
Pull the old Kagan FBI Files.
Look ‘em up in the VENONA files. I hope every Republican Senator does.
You don’t have to have very many brain cells to know that Elena Kagan is a Pluto-bound abortion-loving socialist. The thought of that grinning overfed New York bull dyke on our Supreme Court for the next 30-40 years makes me weep for my country.
Chief Justice Roberts:
Kagan Asked Court to ‘Embrace Theory of First Amendment That Would Allow Censorship Not Only of Radio and Television Broadcasts, But Pamphlets and Posters’
Her heroes: Abner Mikva, Thurgood Marshall, Cass Sunstein (who believes the Constitution requires taxpayers to fund abortion and has proposed abolishing marriage - the pure Communist line since 1917) and Aharon Barak Israeli Supreme Court justice Aharon Barak (who has been called Israel’s “Big Brother”)
SHE IS LYING, JUST LIKE SOTOMAYOR DID.
Just what you want in a justice on the highest court in the land--A BIG FAT LIAR!!
She was asked point blank if the gov’t could tell you what to eat, and she would not say yes.
That means fatso’s answer is yes.
You’d have to be an IDIOT to confirm her —which is what we have.
That is all anyone needs to know.
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