One Republican senator on the committee voted for Kagan and the president calls it a bipartisan vote??
Senate Panel Backs Kagan NominationBy SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: July 20, 2010
WASHINGTON — Solicitor General Elena Kagan moved one step closer to becoming a Supreme Court justice on Tuesday when the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13 to 6, almost entirely along party lines, to forward her nomination to the full Senate for consideration.
Just one Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, broke ranks with his party to support Ms. Kagan.
In a lengthy speech supporting her, Mr. Graham questioned the Senate’s approach to judicial confirmations, taking colleagues — including President Obama when he was a senator — to task for basing their votes on philosophy rather than a nominee’s qualifications and character.
Mr. Graham said that Ms. Kagan was not someone he would have chosen, “but the person who did choose — President Obama — I think chose wisely.”
In a statement, Mr. Obama called the vote “a bipartisan affirmation of her strong performance during her confirmation hearings” and thanked the committee for “giving her a thorough, timely and respectful hearing.”
If Ms. Kagan, 50, is confirmed by the full Senate, as expected, she would be the fourth woman to serve on the high court, and the only member of the current court not to reach it from a position on the federal appellate bench. A vote is expected before the August recess, so that Ms. Kagan can be seated before the court’s next term begins in early October.
Democrats on the committee, all of whom voted for Ms. Kagan, were largely laudatory, with one notable exception: Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. He said he was supporting Ms. Kagan, but with “grave concerns” because she had failed to “answer questions which I think ought to have been answered.”
In his three-decade career, Mr. Specter, a former Republican who once ran the Judiciary committee as its chairman, has voted on every justice now on the court. The committee hearing on Tuesday was something of a swan song for him — he was defeated in a Democratic primary and will be retiring at the end of the year — and he used the occasion to remind colleagues of Ms. Kagan’s critique of past confirmation hearings as a “vapid and hollow charade.” He said she had failed to live up to her own standard.
“She chastised nominees by name and castigated this committee,” Mr. Specter said, but “when she came before this committee, it was a repeat performance.”
Still, Mr. Specter said, his ultimate judgment rested on two of Ms. Kagan’s answers during her hearing: her expression of admiration for Justice Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights giant for whom she clerked, and her support for televising the court’s proceedings, a cause Mr. Specter has advocated for years.
The committee’s Republicans cited a number of reasons for voting against Ms. Kagan: her lack of judicial experience; her decision, while dean of Harvard Law School, to briefly bar military recruiters from the use of law school facilities; and her work as an aide to President Bill Clinton on matters relating to gun rights and abortion policy.
Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican, complained of Ms. Kagan’s “strong commitment to far left ideological beliefs,” while Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the panel, accused Ms. Kagan of giving testimony that was “at best inaccurate and at worst intellectually dishonest” on the recruitment issue.
But it was Mr. Graham who provided the most intriguing moment of the day, with his provocative argument in favor of Ms. Kagan.
“No one spent more time trying to beat President Obama than I did, except maybe Senator McCain,” Mr. Graham said Tuesday, referring to the 2008 presidential election and Senator John McCain of Arizona, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival. “I missed my own election — I voted absentee. But I understood: we lost, President Obama won. The Constitution, in my view, puts a requirement on me not to replace my judgment for his.”
Mr. Graham said there were “100 reasons” he could vote against Ms. Kagan if he based his vote on her philosophy, which is at odds with his. But he said she met a time-honored standard for judicial nominees: whether they are qualified and of good character.
As a senator, Mr. Obama adopted a different standard, saying it was permissible to vote against a nominee based on judicial philosophy, not just qualifications. Mr. Graham said that approach undermined the judicial confirmation process, by making it more partisan.
“Something’s changing when it comes to the advice and consent clause,” he said. “Senator Obama was part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said that Mr. Graham’s remarks had made him rethink his own approach to judicial nominations — including the decision by Democrats several years ago to prevent Miguel Estrada, a prominent conservative lawyer, from getting a hearing before the committee when President George W. Bush nominated Mr. Estrada to a federal appeals court.
Mr. Estrada, a close friend of Ms. Kagan, has spoken strongly in support of her, and she has in turn spoken in support of him. Mr. Durbin said Tuesday that he now believed “Miguel Estrada deserves a day in court or a day before the committee.”
Of Mr. Graham, Mr. Durbin said: “I reflected on some of the things that I have said and how I have voted in the past, and thought that perhaps his statement suggested a better course.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/us/21kagan.html?src=mv
