President Obama has nominated Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, to fill the seat of the retiring John Paul Stevens. She's the current Solicitor General, representing the U.S. government in cases before the Court. She got her law degree from Harvard, clerked for Thurgood Marshall, worked in the Clinton White House, taught at the University of Chicago Law School, and then was the first female dean at Harvard Law. She is said to be a brilliant legal scholar who plays well with others and is open to all viewpoints, a sort of MENSA mensch. If confirmed, Kagan would be the third woman on the current court. (Perfect proportion would be four and a half women!)
Because Kagan's the nominee of Obama the Anti-Christ and is obviously not a card-carrying member of the John Birch Society, Senate Republicans are duty bound to find some sort of fault with her, however lame. Here's what they've come up with:
1. She's "inexperienced", meaning she's never been a sitting judge. So we should discount all her credentials, forget that she's the country's preeminent Constitutional expert, and give her the thumbs-down because she's never been a judge. Neither had Felix Frankfurter, William Rehnquist, and many others, but forget that too. If it's experience we must have, there are tens of thousands of experienced judges in America. Pick one. How about the traffic court judge from Kokomo? How about Harry Anderson from Night Court?
2. She's an academic who couldn't possibly understand ordinary people in the real world. This is the "Ivy League smarty-pants" argument, which ignores the fact that all the other current justices graduated from either the Harvard or Yale law schools. So it's OK for those eight, but not OK for her? Don't recall anyone bitching about Sam Alito's Ivy League background. And being a smart and educated person is a good thing, especially for a Supreme Court Justice. We've suffered through a whole bunch of dumb in recent years. Right now, I'll take all the smart I can get. But if you really believe the Court should save a seat for the ordinary common man, how about Calvin Borel for the Supreme Court? The Ragin' Cajun jockey is an illiterate eigth-grade dropout, but he can ride horses and count money. Calvin is common as dirt. He'd be a wondermous Justice, I guar-ron-tee!
3. She's a lesbian. Maybe, maybe not, but so what if she is? Who fucking cares? What does that have to do with anything? I hope she is a lesbian. She can do it with donkeys for all I care. Imagine this exchange at her confirmation hearing:
Douchebag Sen. Jeff Sessions (R, Ala.): "Now Ms. Kagan, you're unmarried, is that correct?"
Kagan: "That's right, Senator Sessions. I'm a lesbian and I'm unmarried because assholes like you won't let me. How about you, Jeffy? You married? You like women or men? I bet you go for little boys, you fuckstick!"
That won't happen, of course, but one these days it ought to!
Anyhow, I like the academic smarty-pants lesbian who hasn't been a judge . . . yet. Need more like her.
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