This shows that basically spending your entire life without tipping your hand on the prevailing issues of the day, and taking as few substantive positions as humanly possible, has become the road map to succeeding in ascending to the nation’s highest court.

Consequently all we’ll ever see are non-entities like Kagan rather than lions like Marshall, Warren, or Douglas.

Well, if Ben Nelson doesn’t like her, I sure do.

Apparently Ben was not offered a sufficiently large bribe for his vote.

Republican admins nominate unabashed conservative/corporate advocates while Dem admins refuse to nominate anyone who can effectively counter them. A formula (among others) for disaster.

Meanwhile, the Senate needs to take a break.

With so much looting left to do? Who do they think are? French?

So, Kagan is on the court just in time to take a swing at Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Irony writ large?

And, Nelson may be a corporate whore, but he’s not a cheap one.

This shows that basically spending your entire life without tipping your hand on the prevailing issues of the day, and taking as few substantive positions as humanly possible, has become the road map to succeeding in ascending to the nation’s highest court.

half your life, david.
the other half you spend on the supreme court.

Same for Stupid Cornyn, the “good looking sob”, per Molly Ivins….and he also had insulting things to say to explain his stupid vote.

This shows that basically spending your entire life without tipping your hand on the prevailing issues of the day, and taking as few substantive positions as humanly possible, has become the road map to succeeding in ascending to the nation’s highest court.

Hey, it got Obama the Democratic nomination for President…

half your life, david.
the other half you spend on the supreme court

Ouch! How true.

Dem admins refuse to nominate anyone who can effectively counter them

Is there any evidence that Democrats want to? Again and again we come back to the distinction without a difference between corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans.

This shows that basically spending your entire life without tipping your hand on the prevailing issues of the day, and taking as few substantive positions as humanly possible, has become the road map to succeeding in ascending to the nation’s highest court.

I’m partly with you, but I think what secured the gig for her wasn’t all the time spent not tipping her hand, but rather the things we have found out about her during Obama’s admin – her willingness to be a part of a crew that set policy at the DOJ to coverup crimes, make WH directed assassiantions that result in pregnant women being killed and their abdomens carved up (but only Muslim women) the norm, kill investigations, sell torture as not being a concern, sell the right to jail lawyers for representing the “wrong” clients on human rights abuse claims against the US and smirk and preen with Lindsey Graham over it – those are what got her the vote.

After watching the Dems handling of this – the one thing we keep getting drilled into us as why we *have* to vote for Dems no matter what – bc of the lifetime Sup Ct appointments – after watching this, I’m really equally good to go with Sara Palin trotting out her local defense lawyer for the SUp Ct.

I don’t even give a rats ass anymore if Leahy and Feingold and Whitehouse are re-elected. They were worse than pathetic on Kagan and, where the Republicans refused to let Bush go forward with such a blatantly political pick as Miers, the Dems were all smiles and chuckles over putting torture girl on the bench. There aren’t words for it.

And now she and Obama have set up every single important vote on Executive branch power to depravity to be one on which she is either a lost vote bc she can’t vote due to her ties to the litigation or a lost vote bc of the what her willingness to be a part of the assassination/torture/rendition crew. How do you have a Sup Ct Justice voting on the Exec branch assassinating by “oopsies” pregnant women and having the assassins carve the bullets out of their bellies – when she was a part of the policy cartel that encouraged that power grab?

At most, you get a vote from her against Exec power in a throw away situation or, if it has impact, one that is forever and always open to derision bc of her own direct participation in the Obama admin “policies” cum war crimes.

After Kagan, I’m not living in fear of what the Republicans will put on the bench. Obama and the Dems have literally moved the window to make it completely acceptable to put someone who has set the political policy on the bench that will rule on that policy – even when that “policy” goes by the name crime if it were properly labelled.

A Sup Ct Justice who has helped Obamaco relabel crime as policy – and I’m supposed to worry about what will happen if we don’t elect Dems?

A pox on all their houses. It’s worse than wicked.

All I can say is what a wasted opportunity.

As to Kagan’s confirmation— ho hum.

the one thing we keep getting drilled into us as why we *have* to vote for Dems no matter what– bc of the lifetime Sup Ct appointments –

Yeah, Obama managed to appoint someone to the right of her predecessor appointed by Gerald Ford, a republican. He could have pushed through Pamela Karlan, a true progressive, instead we get Anthony Kennedy in a blue dress.

The Bush/O’Bummah SCROTUS: Boy, it sucks.