Kagan Confirmed as Supreme Court Justice

The US Senate confirmed Elena Kagan, currently the Solicitor-General of the United States, as the newest Supreme Court justice just a few minutes ago. The vote was 63-37, on what was close to a pure party-line vote. The pundits will kick this around through the Sunday talk shows, but her confirmation changes very little. All it does is underscore just how poisonous the climate in the Senate is these days.

She replaces retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, who at the age of 90 probably deserves a little time off. Although appointed by Gerald Ford, Justice Stevens has been the leader of the liberal wing of the court. His replacement by Ms. Kagan, therefore, hardly changes the ideological balance of the court. Basically, the Supremes are still divided 4 to 4 with Justice Kennedy acting as the floating voter.

Of course, one would not credit that if one only listened to the Republican members of the Senate. At the more reasonable end was Scott Brown of Massachusetts who issued a statement saying "I believe nominees to the Supreme Court should have previously served on the bench. Lacking that, I look for many years of practical courtroom experience to compensate for the absence of prior judicial experience." Apparently being Solicitor-General and former Dean of Harvard Law School was inadequate.

Moving to the crazy end of things, Jeff Sessions of Alabama said she had "failed as a solicitor general" by "not defending Don't Ask Don't Tell effectively," which policy the White House is determined to repeal. He also worried that she would be a "radical" as if the 5 justices who ordered the State of Florida to stop counting votes in 2000 in violation of the Constitution and who said Bush v. Gore could not be a precedent for future elections were not radicals. And she hates guns, approves of abortion rights and is generally what one would expect of a liberal Jewish woman from New York.

Frankly, the counting of coup that is going on in the Senate in particular and Congress in general by a Republican Party that wonders how it lost the last two elections so badly undermines Americans' faith in their leadership. While it may be good party politics, it is poor patriotism. For a party whose presidential candidate in 2008 ran with a slogan of "Country First," this is disappointing. One of the guiding principles of conservatism is being responsible; the current elected leaders of the GOP are anything but responsible.

© Copyright 2010 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.

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