Kagan Liveblog 6/28/10

F1@1F LIVEBLOG: KAGAN HEARINGS – DAY 1

Keep refreshing until I figure out how to autorefresh…

12:36 – Senator Leahy is giving his opening statement to a completely packed Hart Senate Office Building Room 216.  Not saying anything remarkable right now–of course, not much remarkable gets said by anyone at these things.  So for the moment, I’ll busy myself admiring the suspendered-reporter sitting directly in front of me who must have just blasted to the future straight from the Brandeis confirmation hearings.

12:45 – Senator Sessions begins his own opening statements.  Here come the march of serious concerns.  First mention of the Warren Court’s activism.  Looking forward to see him go toe-to-toe with Leahy’s references to Citizens United and Vermont Marble.

12:50 – The Kagan Nomination has emerged as the only area Congress feels free to criticize any aspect of Israeli law and politics.  Sessions has repeated his problem with Kagan’s admiration for former Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak, who sessions has called the most activist judge ever.

12:55 – Herb Kohl (D-WI) has fired the first shot against last year’s Robo-Soto performance and 2005’s Roberts hearing.  Paging Justice Souter: “We hear the over-used platitudes from every nominee, that he or she will apply the facts to the law and faithfully follow the Constitution.  But, deciding Supreme Court cases is not merely a mechanical application of the law…You will not merely be calling balls and strikes.”

1:08 – Senator Feinstein (D-CA) notes Kagan’s firstiness as a female Solicitor General.  There have been five SG’s to be SCOTUS justices.  “Nearly every SG” has endorsed her.  Bork hasn’t.

1:11 – Feinstein mentions that Rehnquist and Warren were not judges.  “Extremely dismayed” to hear about McDonald – that they “disregard the precedent of 71 years embedded in United States v. Miller” – except that Miller was admittedly opaque by all.  “As a former mayor,” she says, she’s aghast by these cases’ tossing aside of state and local regulatory control.

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