While I’m at it, I’d just like to highlight this woefully confused comment by Senator Graham at yesterday’s markup on Kagan:

But at the end of the day, the hearings are important. They give you an opportunity to evaluate the nominee, but there are certain things that you can’t comment on. I mean, if you think that same-sex marriage is prohibited by the Constitution, I doubt if this is the place you would say it, since that’s probably what you’re going to have to decide sooner rather than later.

The constitutional argument over same-sex marriage is between those, on the one hand, who contend that the Constitution should be read as conferring a constitutional right to same-sex marriage and those, on the other, who maintain that the Constitution is silent on the matter and that the people of the various states are therefore free to choose whether or not to redefine marriage through the democratic processes to encompass same-sex relationships. So far as I am aware, no one anywhere is pressing in the courts the contention that Graham imagines—that “same-sex marriage is prohibited by the Constitution.” And even if someone somewhere is doing so, it’s farfetched that that the Supreme Court will ever “have to decide” that issue (and it’s a very safe bet that no justices would conclude that “same-sex marriage is prohibited by the Constitution”).

Graham has just given his support to a Supreme Court nominee who is a predictable vote in favor of inventing a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage—and who may well provide the decisive fifth vote in favor of that radical redefinition of marriage. Does he really not understand the legal issue at stake? Or is he trying to bamboozle the public?