Watching the hearings on Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court nominee ( graduate of Harvard Law School and a former dean there) this week makes me want to ask ‘Where is that ‘Have you no shame, at long last? guy who blew the whistle on Joe McCarthy style character assassination. We need him so bad. As Republican senators tried to put Kagan through their Catch- 22 meatgrinder, it is a reminder of systemic hypocrisy at full reek.
Of course, it’s all called tit for political tat… the snake calling the viper asp… the knife cutting both ways…well anyway Kagan continued to beat the clocks and the nay-saying senators at their own game by refusing to be trapped by semantics.
Or appearances- on her nomination many wanted to know if she was lesbian as if that should catagorically would disqualify her. So much for the Constitutional rights to privacy.
Failing anything concrete, Republicans tried to demonize her because of her previous stance against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, using their gay dividing rod to taint her as being anti-military.
The comic highlight was when Wisconsin democratic Senator (and apparently former member of the Rat Pack) asked her-
“I’m sure you’re a woman of passion. Where are your passions?”
To which Kagan replied that she would keep those passions in check as she considered each case individually.
So in the end it is all ritual. If they had anything substantive to hold against Kagan’s nomination, the press would have leaked it out even before the hearing.
Every Supreme court nominee has to own their record that may or may not predict how they will stand on particular future case. Yes, we believe that John Roberts and Samuel Alito keep their previous ultra-conservative hammer in the closet when they put on their robes. There was no doubt that the conservative consilgieri… well, never mind.
Thank the gods that Kagan is the brilliant independent thinker she is with sterling academic credentails and obviously, an honest set of human emotions.
It was paraded out that Kagan previously called the Supremes confirmation hearings ‘vapid.’ Do we need any more confirmation than that to give this nominee a robe.