Confirmation all but sure, Kagan ends testimony

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON – Cruising toward confirmation, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan completed grueling Senate questioning Wednesday, unscathed by Republican challenges on abortion, gays in the military and gun rights while sidestepping partisan debate about GOP-named judges pulling the court to the right.

Kagan emerged from three days of vetting by the Senate Judiciary Committee much as she had begun, declaring she'd be an independent and impartial judge and denying Republican suggestions that she would be unable to separate her political leanings from her job as a justice.

Democrats said President Barack Obama's nominee to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens was on track to become the fourth woman in Supreme Court history.

"Solicitor General Kagan will be confirmed," declared Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the panel chairman.

Republicans, despairing of their inability to get Kagan to reveal her legal views or say anything that might threaten her confirmation over more than 15 hours of questioning, acknowledged as much.

"I assume she will be," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Kagan, prompted by Democratic supporters on the panel, gave a blunt denunciation of "results-oriented judging," deciding cases based on preconceived conclusions, but she refused to join them in applying the criticism to the current court under conservative

Chief Justice John Roberts. "I'm sure that everybody up there is acting in good faith," she said.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the panel, said the combination of some of Kagan's careful answers and her record "leaves me uneasy" about her confirmation.

Kagan, more expansive and animated during her third and final day in the witness chair for nationally televised hearings, relaxed enough to banter with senators about the sometimes-tedious proceedings, and her expectations of being confirmed.

"I can't come back?" she asked.

Leahy facetiously when he suggested that she should watch testimony by outside witnesses scheduled for Thursday afternoon "with your feet up" somewhere.

Dodging Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham's attempts to draw her into naming a judge she considered an "activist," Kagan deadpanned, "I have a feeling if I do that, I'm going to end up doing many things that I regret."

Overall, she said of the hearings as they drew to a close, "I found it somewhat wearying but actually a great moment in my life."
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For her, it was a great moment. For the country, perhaps not so much...