Kagan heads back to the Hill for whirlwind visits

(Washington) Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan returned to Capitol Hill Thursday to meet with senators who are key to her confirmation.

The solicitor general, preparing for meetings with Republicans and Democrats, including one who has opposed her in the past, said she’s beginning to get accustomed to the delicate ritual of closely watched courtesy calls she must make in the run-up to her summer confirmation hearings.

Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, her first visit of the day, asked Kagan whether she’s “getting used to this little routine.”

“Just barely,” Kagan responded with a smile.

Kagan, 50, called on eight senators Wednesday and plans meetings with another seven today. That includes one former foe, Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., who as a Republican voted last year against confirming her to her current post.

Kerry said he was “very proud” of Kagan, adding that she has “quite a road yet to travel.”

In closed-door meetings, Kagan has assured senators that she’s up to the job of being a justice, seeking to counter GOP criticism of her lack of experience as a judge or courtroom litigator. President Barack Obama tapped Kagan this week to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

Kagan has gotten off to a fast start on Capitol Hill. Shuttling from office to office Wednesday, she stayed quiet in public but fielded questions in private about her resume, opinions and legal philosophy.

Kagan, a former Harvard Law School dean, defended herself against Republican doubts about her fitness to be a fair justice. She said she’d be “faithful to the law,” according to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who said he asked her whether she could be impartial given that she’s identified with “liberal” positions and has clerked for two judges he called “activist.”

Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary panel that will hold Kagan’s confirmation hearings, said he’d do his best to give her a “fair” hearing, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the committee chairman, said he’d guarantee a process where senators could ask “all relevant questions.”

Republicans are questioning whether Kagan can be impartial in light of her political views and current position on Obama’s team. And they have harshly criticized her decision while at Harvard to bar military recruiters from campus because she disagreed with the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay soldiers.

GOP senators say they want to see documents from her time serving in Bill Clinton’s White House to get a better understanding of her fitness for the Supreme Court.

“I think all the documents that are producible should be produced,” Sessions said. “The American people are entitled to know what kind of positions she took, and what kind of issues she was involved with during her past public service.”

Democrats praise Kagan as a highly qualified, sharp legal mind who will bring an important perspective from outside the federal bench to the job of justice.

“She brings to this court that kind of intellect and those values that can make a positive difference for the future of the court,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois.

Sen. Jeff Sessions Irked By Lesbian Mom’s Crying Child: “Enough With The Histrionics” (VIDEO)

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee had a hearing on the Uniting American Families Act, a bill that will “amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate discrimination in the immigration laws by permitting permanent partners of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents to obtain lawful permanent resident status in the same manner as spouses of citizens and lawful permanent residents and to penalize immigration fraud in connection with permanent partnerships.” Of course, some of the discrimination that the bill would eliminate would benefit same-sex couples, so, CONTROVERSY!

One of the people who testified in support of the bill was a woman named Shirley Tan, who is in a same-sex relationship and thus caught in the crosshairs of existing law. The New Republic‘s James Kirchick documents her circumstances thusly:

Testifying was Shirley Tan, a Fillipino woman who has been with her American partner for 23 years. Together, they are raising twelve-year-old twin boys. She originally left the Phillipines after suffering a violent attack from a man who murdered her mother and sister (one of the reasons why Tan does not want to return to her native country, aside from the fact that her partner and children live in the U.S., is that the man who brutalized her has since been released from prison.) Tan was originally scheduled to be deported on April 3rd, but won a reprieve after Senator Diane Feinstein introduced a private bill allowing her to stay in the country temporarily.

Almost right from the start of Tan’s testimony, one of Tan’s young children started crying. The committee chairman, Pat Leahy, paused the testimony and offered the child some measure of comfort. According to Kirchick, these kindly sentiments were not shared by everyone on the committee:

For most people, the sight of a 12-year-old boy in tears at the prospect of his mother being deported halfway around the world would invoke some sympathy. Unmoved, however, was Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, ranking minority member of the Committee and the only Republican to bother to attend the hearing. At the sight of the weeping boy, according to a Senate staffer who was at the hearing, Sessions leaned towards one of his aides and sighed, “Enough with the histrionics.” Sessions’s press secretary did not return a call seeking comment.

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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/jeff-sessions…

Same-Sex Unions Supplant Abortion As Social Priority for Conservatives In Fight Over High Court Pick

As President Obama prepares to name his first Supreme Court justice, conservatives in Washington are making clear that his nominee will face plenty of questions during the confirmation process on the legal underpinnings of same-sex marriage.

In addition to shedding more light on the nation’s most contentious unfolding social drama and legal frontier, Senate Republicans say the debate could provide a road map to an Obama nominee’s judicial philosophy.

“It may reflect the degree to which they think that they’re not bound by the classical meaning of the Constitution, and that they may want to let a personal agenda go beyond what the law said,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Questions on social issues in confirmation hearings have tended for the past 30 years to focus squarely on abortion, with partisans from both sides poring over a nominee’s writings and rulings and presidents typically denying that any “litmus test” was employed in the selection.

Same-sex marriage carries the same freighted potential to dominate a hearing, conservatives say.

“It is now the flash point where politics and law meet. That flash point used to be abortion. I don’t think anybody thinks that’s going to be the flash point in this nomination,” said William A. Jacobson, a Cornell University law professor and conservative blogger.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), another GOP member of the Judiciary Committee, said conservatives are particularly eager to avoid a Supreme Court ruling akin to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide and has divided the country ever since. “I don’t think members of the court, or any of us, ever want to see a decision like that again,” Hatch said. Obama assured the senator in a recent meeting that he will not pick a “radical” to replace Souter, but Hatch added: “Presidents always say that. That’s why we have the hearing process.”

Same-sex marriage gained national resonance in the wake of last month’s Iowa Supreme Court ruling that legalized the practice in that state. And in the two weeks since Justice David H. Souter announced his retirement, Maine also legalized same-sex marriage, becoming the fifth state to do so; the New Hampshire legislature sent a marriage-equality bill to the governor; the New York State Assembly approved gay-marriage legislation; and the District of Columbia voted to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

Those actions, in so short a time, have outstripped the ability of Democrats in Washington to stake out their public position on the issue. MORE at Washington Post

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