Excerpt
The Senate confirmed Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court, giving President Barack Obama his second appointment to the high court in two years while leaving its ideological balance unchanged.
The vote of 63-37 today was largely along party lines, with five Republicans supporting the nominee and one Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, opposing her.
Kagan, 50, a former Harvard Law School dean, will be the nation’s 112th justice, fourth woman and just the sixth member of the court who isn’t a white male. For the first time, the nine-member court will have three women as she joins Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s first appointee, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“No one can question the intelligence or achievements of this woman,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. “No one should question her character either.”
Opponents described her as a political activist who lacks judicial experience. The ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, said she “does not have the gifts and the qualities of mind or temperament” to be a justice.
Kagan is the first woman to be U.S. solicitor general, representing the Obama administration before the Supreme Court. Her nomination to the high court underscores Obama’s support of diversity on the federal bench. Sotomayor is the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court.
CONSERVATIVE CODE WORD DICTIONARY:
- "Sound Jurisprudence" = court rulings conservatives like
- "Judicial Activism" = court rulings conservatives hate
- "Special Interests" = lobbyists who don't donate enough to GOP
- "Industry Spokesmen" = lobbyists who swamp the GOP with money
- "Law and Order" = government enforcing laws conservatives like (Constitutional or NOT)
- "Government Interference" = government enforcing laws conservatives don't like (also, Constitution can be ignored)
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