Elena Kagan, Obama’s pick for solicitor general, cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, but not before giving the world this priceless quote:
… Reviewing Stephen Carter’s book “The Confirmation Mess” for the University of Chicago Law Review in 1995, Kagan opined that “when the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce.” […]
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said that, despite Kagan’s praise for the Senate’s institutional role in the nomination process, “her refusal to answer legitimate and relevant questions posed by me and others belies this claimed respect.”
Kagan, the dean of the Harvard Law School, told the lawmakers she had endeavored to answer their questions but acknowledged: “I am . . . less convinced than I was in 1995 that substantive discussions of legal issues and views, in the context of nomination hearings, provide the great public benefits I suggested.”
You don’t say. And what transpired between then and now that caused you to re-evaluate your views? The Alito hearings?
