At her first opportunity to do so, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan banned military recruiters from campus during her tenure as dean of Harvard Law School, in protest over the Pentagon's policies on gays.It won't stop her confirmation because, after all, hating the military is pretty much a badge of courage among lefties. I can't imagine a single Democrat voting against her based on this.
Ms. Kagan's defenders insist the nominee was simply following the law as it worked its way through the courts, but Ms. Kagan banned the recruiters as soon as an appeals court in 2004 struck down a law tying federal funding to allowing military recruiting on campus. She acted despite the court's order that the ruling not take effect until the Supreme Court reviewed the case.
The episode offers one of the few insights into Ms. Kagan's thinking on any issue and promises to be a focal point of what is shaping up to be a relatively low-key confirmation battle to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.
"I think it's not a small matter, and when she was a dean of Harvard we had 900 people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and they were not permitted to come on the Harvard campus to recruit JAG officers because she believed that President Clinton's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy was wrong," Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who will lead his party's questioning during Ms. Kagan's confirmation hearing, said Tuesday during an interview on Fox News.
Meanwhile, the debate rages on over Kagan's sexual preference, not so much among conservatives who don't really care that much as long as she's not trying to have sex with them, but among the left which is desperate to make her into another symbolic nominee. However, that approach isn't working yet as the best they've got is "well, she played softball and she looks like a lesbian". I'll bet the media spends more time looking at this issue than at anything else about her during the weeks before her confirmation hearing.
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