HATCH TO VOTE NO

UPDATE: We are sad to forward two obituaries:

The Boss is Dead: George M. Steinbrenner, NY Yankees owner and a larger than life New Yorker, has died today at the age of 80. The NY Times Obit is here:

And Harvey Pekar, with whom we have felt an intellectual and emotional kinship that spanned the decades, has died at 70. Mr. Pekar, a Veterans Administration File Clerk for almost forty years, chronicled his life as a "depressed, aggrieved everyman" in his comic book series American Splendor. There was an acclaimed movie about his life in 2003. The NY Times Obit is here.

Senator Orin Hatch has announced he will vote against the confirmation of Ms. Kagan to the Supreme Court.

But first a word about humor. When he's sober, our favourite federal blogger has, well, lets just say he's somewhat humor impaired. Spending all your free time reading the committee notes to the current amendments to the sentencing guidelines has that effect on a soul. However, he can reprint a funny blog post with the best of them, and he has done that with a blog post by a law student who writes about the 17 things he learned in law school. Check it out.

Senator Hatch laid out the case against confirming Kagan in an article he wrote for the National Review On Line. The title links to the article.

The Senator's article starts:

After studying Elena Kagan’s record, actively participating in her hearing, and listening to the views of folks in Utah and across the country, I do not believe that she meets the standards we should require of federal judges — especially Supreme Court justices.

The first important standard is experience. Ms. Kagan has never before served as a judge — and, in addition, has little legal experience of any kind. Over the Supreme Court’s long history, justices who were nominated without past judicial experience have had an average of 21 years of legal practice. Ms. Kagan has two. Her experience is instead academic and political.

Rumpole says: We're not sure we agree with the Senator, but we wish we could get those fonts and have that big "A" to start our paragraphs. It lends an air of sophistication to the blog.

The real issue is that Hatch is pandering to the right and trying to label Kagan an "activist judge":

Ms. Kagan served as a law clerk to Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. In a tribute she wrote after his death, she described as a “thing of glory” his belief that the role of the courts and the purpose of constitutional interpretation is to “safeguard the interests of people who had no other champion.” In 2006, while dean of Harvard Law School, Ms. Kagan introduced Israeli Supreme Court justice Aharon Barak as “the judge or justice in my lifetime whom I think best represents and has best advanced . . . the rule of law.” Justice Barak is widely credited as perhaps the most activist jurist in the world; for him, as Judge Richard Posner has described it, “the judiciary is a law unto itself.”

Rumpole predicts- just wait until one of the five conservative justices retires and Obama has a chance to replace him. The Iraq war will seem like a kindergarten outing compared to how the right will react.