On June 17, 1999, Bill Clinton nominated Elena Kagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Then Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch never put her nomination on the agenda for his committee, and it expired when Clinton left office a year and a half later.
It is true that as the majority party Republicans had the right under the rules of the Senate to bottle up Kagan and dozens of other Clinton nominees in committee (though they may have been short sighted in not realizing that by poisoning the water on judicial nominations they were giving Democrats the incentive to similarly thwart Bush so that by now it is almost impossible to find any level of Federal court that doesn't have at least a couple of vacancies on it and some federal bodies like the Federal Elections Commission and National Labor Relations Board have actually been rendered unable to function for extended periods of time as the numbers of people on those boards have fallen below the numbers needed for a quorum.)
The irony though is that now all of a sudden Republicans are upset that she has no judicial record. Well, DUH!
It's almost like the kid who kills his parents and then pleads to the court for mercy because he's an orphan.
According to Pat Buchanan, what's worse than her inexperience (and secret gay identity) is that she's a Jew.
ReplyDeleteHe says there are far too many on the high court. Dems have nominated most of them. But there apparently is nothing wrong with having so many Catholics, like himself, on the Supreme Court.
There have been far more Episcopalians than any other religion on the high court and they represent less of the population than even Jews.
So who really cares which religion any of then are as the Justices are supposed to follow the secular law? Buchanan obviously thinks otherwise.
Buchanan is so bigoted. He trusts only those he thinks he can control. What he's really worried about is that she might be another "wise" woman?
Good bloog post
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