There's been a lot of ink spilled saying that the Kagan confirmation hearings would be (and were) nothing more than political theater. Well, I didn't really buy it at first, but after watching the hearings and looking through the transcripts, I'm afraid I have to agree.
While this reporter encourages you to check out the hearings for yourselves, this kind of questioning must lead you to believe that the cries of political theater aren't going to be getting any kind of early curtain call:
SEN. TOM COBURN (R), OKLAHOMA: Do you bite your thumb at us, Ms. Kagan?
KAGAN: I do bite my thumb, sir.
COBURN: Do you bite your thumb at us, Ms. Kagan?
KAGAN: I do bite my thumb, sir.
COBURN: Do you bite your thumb at us, Ms. Kagan?
KAGAN: Is the law of our side, if I say ay?
SEN. AL FRANKEN (D), MINNESOTA: No.
KAGAN: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.
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SEN. GRASSLEY (R), IOWA: To be or not to be, that is the question.
KAGAN: You mean whether 'tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them?
GRASSLEY: Actually, let's table that. Right now I'd rather get your feelings on sleep and perchance dreaming.
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SEN. CARDIN (D), MARYLAND: But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
KAGAN: It is the east, and established precedent is the sun.
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SEN. KLOBUCHAR (D), MINNESOTA: I guess it means you missed the midnight debut of the third 'Twilight' movie last night. We did not miss it in our household, and it culminated in three 15-year-old girls sleeping over at 3 a.m. . . . I keep wanting to ask you about the famous case of Edward vs. Jacob or the vampire vs. the werewolf.
KAGAN: If she must teem, create her child of spleen, that it may live and be a thwart disnatur'd torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth, with cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks, turn all her mother's pains and benefits to laughter and contempt, that she may feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!
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SEN. LEAHY (D), VERMONT: Thank you Ms. Kagan. I know we are all looking forward to more questioning tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
Sen. Leahy: As soon as Senator Godot arrives we will begin.
ReplyDeleteKagan: Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I come to continue settled precedent, not to overturn it.
ReplyDeleteSen. Sessions: The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Hath not a campus military recruiter eyes? Hath he not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you banish them from campus, hast thou not sided with the terrorists?
Kagan: This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be a closeted soldier. Out! Out, gay soldier! A military by any other sexual orientation would project American power as effectively.
After a volley of questions, Senators Rosencrantz and Guildenstern announced that they would decide their confirmation vote by coin toss.
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