Kagan acknowledges she’s “generally progressive”

Doug Mills/The New York Times

One message Republicans tried to hammer away at this week, in an effort to derail Elena Kagan’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, must have struck many LGBT viewers of her confirmation hearing as deeply ironic. They said she treated the men and women of the military as “second-class citizens,” when she stood up for her belief that the law barring gays from the military was “a profound wrong.”

And yet gay groups have concerns of their own. Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national gay legal group, shared its concerns over Kagan –though they did so through a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). The group is worried Kagan might show too much deference to religious objections to non-discrimination laws and not enough deference to existing Supreme Court precedents that have largely benefited gays.

But it was Kagan’s actions as dean of Harvard Law School in the dispute over gays in the military that became a large focus of the first two days of her confirmation hearing. Republicans suggested Kagan’s efforts to balance the university’s non-discrimination policy with the military’s need to recruit lawyers amounted to an effort to defy that federal law. More generally, they also sought to label her “progressive,” a term they apparently consider negative...

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked her whether she is a “progressive in the mold of Obama himself.”

Kagan said she’d been a Democrat all her life, worked for two Democratic presidents, and “that’s what my politics are.”

Graham pressed again, asking whether she’s “progressive.”

“My political views are generally progressive,” acknowledged Kagan.

http://www.keennewsservice.com/2010/06/29/kagan-acknowledges-she%E2%80%99s-generally-progressive/

:eyes:

in common (and I'm not Jewish, but rather, raised Christian-- it was just one of those bizarre years when circumstances conspired against any meaningful holiday)

Nonetheless, her funny retort certainly did not need to be explained to me...

A true progressive wouldn't tolerate putting Don Siegelman behind bars.