{"id":2086,"date":"2010-06-30T02:40:05","date_gmt":"2010-06-30T09:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=2086"},"modified":"2010-06-30T02:40:05","modified_gmt":"2010-06-30T09:40:05","slug":"elena-kagan-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/30\/elena-kagan-day-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Elena Kagan: Day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elena Kagan easily weathered the second day of her confirmation hearing, despite some ugly behavior by Republican Senators.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"30kagan\"<\/a> A poised Elena Kagan on Tuesday spent the second day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing fending off Republican efforts to paint her as a liberal activist, saying she\u2019d be a fair, open-minded justice and refusing to call herself a "legal progressive." <\/p>\n

"I honestly don’t know what that label means," she said.<\/p>\n

However, when Kagan was asked later where she stood politically, she said she’d been a Democrat all her life and that ”my political views are generally progressive<\/strong>.” <\/p>\n

Senate Judiciary Committee members peppered Kagan with a wide range of questions, trying to discern a judicial philosophy and sense her temperament.<\/p>\n

Democrats, who control 58 of the Senate\u2019s 100 seats, routinely praised the record of the 50-year-old solicitor general, as well as her performance this week, and predicted confirmation. Republicans vowed to keep firing away at her record and philosophy. President Barack Obama nominated her to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. The hearings were to continue Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Kagan looked comfortable most of the time Tuesday, as if she were among old friends, but there were times when she sat alert and even turned combative as Republicans hammered away at issues such as military recruiting at Harvard Law School while she served as its dean.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like she was not rigorously accurate in describing the whole nature of the circumstance, and so I\u2019m disappointed in it,\u201d said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the committee\u2019s senior Republican member.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers from both parties asked Kagan, in sometimes scattershot fashion, about the day\u2019s biggest controversies, including abortion rights, campaign finance laws, national security and gun control.<\/p>\n

While saying that she\u2019d judge cases on their individual merits, she offered some glimpses of her views. When considering abortion rights, Kagan stressed, \u201cthe continuing holdings of the court are that the woman\u2019s life and that the woman\u2019s health must be protected<\/strong>.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, quizzed her on whether she agreed with the Supreme Court\u2019s recent ruling that corporations and labor unions could spend unlimited sums on political activity, a view that Kagan opposed as solicitor general.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did believe we had a strong case to make<\/strong>,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She left herself room to go both ways when commenting on the Supreme Court\u2019s rulings Monday that put strict state and local gun laws in jeopardy. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a leading gun-control advocate, asked why the cases suddenly \u201cbecome settled law."<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the court decided them as they did,\u201d Kagan said. \u201cAnd once the court has decided a case, it is binding precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then again, Kagan said, \u201cthere are various reasons why you might overturn a precedent,\u201d including whether it proves unworkable over time. <\/p>\n

She bantered with the senators at times.<\/p>\n

She joked with Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., that if court hearings were televised, \u201cIt means I\u2019d have to get my hair done more often.\u201d When Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked her what she was doing on Christmas Day, she grinned and said, \u201cLike all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kagan disarmed Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, when he asked about her master\u2019s thesis assertion that judges could help steer the law. \u201cI would ask you to recognize I didn\u2019t know a whole lot of law then<\/strong>,\u201d she said\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <McClatchy DC<\/a>><\/p>\n

Although Kagan was circumspect about her opinion on issues that might come before the court, she revealed more about her nature and judicial philosophy than Roberts and Alito combined.  And subsequent decisions have shown that the little those two did reveal was deceptive.<\/font><\/p>\n

Rachel Maddow and Dahlia Lithwick had some interesting observations.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Keith Olbermann and law professor, Jonathan Turley, exposed the hypocrisy and ugliness of GOP behavior,<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I agree with both that the questions from both sides of the aisle, especially the Republicans, were designed more for home consumption than anything else.<\/font><\/p>\n

I listened to the hearings all day while working on other things.  Before Obama nominated her, she was low on my list, as I would prefer a more outspokenly progressive nominee.  Nevertheless, I believe that shwe is a woman of integrity.  I like Elena Kagan.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elena Kagan easily weathered the second day of her confirmation hearing, despite some ugly behavior by Republican Senators. A poised Elena Kagan on Tuesday spent the second day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing fending off Republican efforts to paint her as a liberal activist, saying she\u2019d be a fair, open-minded justice and refusing to […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}