The Thurgood Marshall hearing

Dana Millbank listened to the Kagan hearings so I didn’t have to: 

He noted that the late Justice Thurgood Marshall – for whom Elena Kagan clerked when she was younger, and whom she admired – appeared to be on trial at yesterday’s Judiciary Committee hearings. 

Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the panel, branded Marshall a “well-known activist.” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Marshall’s legal view “does not comport with the proper role of a judge or judicial method.” 

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) pronounced Marshall “a judicial activist” with a “judicial philosophy that concerns me.”  

 . . . .

I really don’t think Cornyn has much to worry about. Marshall died in 1993, 17 years ago. Died. Passed. Kicked the bucket. Met his maker. Slipped into the long sleep. Said bye-bye. Stopped messing with the Constitution for good. 

The Senator from Texas has never shown himself to be among the leading intellectual lights of the world’s greatest deliberative body. But he has great hair.

I think it’s about Kennedy

Listening off and on to the Kagan confirmation hearings. Everything I hear (except from the old misogynist Jeff Sessions) reinforces the portrait of a consensus builder, a master negotiator. 

I’m beginning to think that Obama named her to target Kennedy who has become the swing vote since O’Connor’s retirement. He’s more conservative than she was, but he’s traveled around the spectrum quite a lot since he was appointed. For instance, that conservative bugo-a-boo, horror of teh foreign law – Kennedy expresses a deep understanding of that in recent years. 

Got an eye on you Mr. Justice Kennedy

 Kagan for Kennedy? Makes sense to me. A reliable liberal most of the time installed to turn someone else into a sympathetic vote more of the time.

Kyl on Kagan

‘Results-oriented’ jurist. What happened to ‘activist judge’?

Writing the platform and running for office on CSpan 3!

I loathe Howie Kurtz. I have always loathed Howie Kurtz.

And now I loathe him even more. This most conflicted of ‘media critics’ and all around shallow man managed to tweet this today.