Andy, you, and Ed, and a few readers have convinced me I should have chosen my words more carefully. I went back and clarified:

Kagan is widely respected by both sides, and has views on separation of powers / national security issues that could even put her to the “right” of conservatives like Antonin Scalia in cases like Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, where Scalia and Stevens were alone in their narrow reading of the conditions under which a president can detain American citizens without trial.

Scalia is so often caricatured as in the tank for “the right”, and unfortunately so, since it is the very internal consistency of his “originalist” jurisprudence that results, occasionally, in these weird Scalia/Stevens alliances on certain issues.

But I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that Kagan would elbow her way between, say, Scalia and Thomas!