Elena Kagan danced around all of the questions Republican senators asked about her opinions on politically sensitive questions as her Supreme Court confirmation hearing continued.
Had she done otherwise the Senate should have disqualified her for the Supreme Court by a unanimous vote for being hopelessly naive and terminally stupid.
In today’s polarized politics a Supreme Court nominee dare not take a position not universally held by Republicans, Democrats, independents and everyone in between.
Ms. Kagan must be particularly careful. Because she has not been a judge and left her written opinions on the cases that came before her, her views are not on record and therefore cannot be attacked. Still, Republicans feel they must at-tack her because she was appointed by a Democrat president and worked in Democrat administrations before she became dean of the Harvard Law School.
Opposition parties feel they must oppose, with or without justification.
But Kagan offers only her affiliation with Democrats as a target. That party label and the fact that she is on the faculty of Harvard are the only reasons that rigid right senators need to justify opposition. But those ideological reflexes don’t pass for reasoned opposition and only carry weight with like-think-ers.
Her opponents make themselves look small-minded and mean-spirited with ill-founded attacks that have no relevance to her qualifications to serve as a justice.
Kagan should be quickly confirmed as eminently qualified by her intelligence, her standing in the legal profession, her scholarship and her character. She will be an outstanding member of the court.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
