Kagan Hearings

I'm watching the Kagan hearings. They're scheduled for 9 hours today and I'll be in and out so I set the TiVo to record C-SPAN3 for 9 hours. For the first time it warned me: "You have selected a very long recording, are you sure you want to do this?"

Ranking Member Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is asking her if she's a "legal progressive" because progressivism is having a resurgence. Unfortunately she's responding with "I honestly don't know what that term means" and "I think people should be allowed to label themselves". Progressive is now a bad word. What's wrong with saying yes (if she is one) and there's nothing wrong with that.

She did manage to say that she's served in Democratic administrations and there should be nothing wrong with that and Sessions agreed. Well at least that.

But why not say that yes I'm a progressive leaning centrist which as best as I can tell she is. Let's be honest she's not the true progressive that Obama could have nominated. He conceded that possibility already by not nominating Diane Wood.

The secret phrase seems to be "within the mainstream of America" and it's about time that someone says that Scalia and Thomas are not the mainstream (which I take to mean the center), they are as far right as there is. In the last 40 years, 12 justices were appointed by Republicans and (now) 4 by Democrats. I'd like to see a court of 3 on the right, 3 on the left and 3 centrists. Steven, was the far left of a very conservative court. He was a self described conservative and appointed by a Republican. A Democrat should be able to replace him with someone at least left leaning. I'm being consistent here. I was fine with Bush appointing Roberts, a little less so with Alito.

Sessions at the end of his first round got (I think) rude. He said "I'm just a little taken aback by the tone of your remarks because it's unconnected to reality." This was regarding the military recruiting issue at Harvard.