Monday May 17, 2010
Republicans Not Planning to Filibuster Kagan: Sen. Kyl
By Kathleen Gilbert
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 17, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A judiciary committee Republican has said he does not expect that the GOP will attempt to mount a filibuster against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, who would bring a homosexualist and pro-abortion voice to the nation’s highest court.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, Republican Senator John Kyl of Arizona, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that “the filibuster should be relegated to the extreme circumstances, and I don’t think Elena Kagan represents that.”
Kagan was nominated by President Obama this month to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. A date has not yet been set for Kagan’s hearings, although they are expected to conclude by the end of the summer.
The Republican senators on the program indicated they would focus their questions to Kagan around her views on national security and her treatment as Dean of Harvard law of military recruiters, whom she banned from campus in protest against the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule, which bans open homosexuals from serving in the military.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on ABC’s “This Week” strongly criticized Kagan’s treatment of the recruiters, saying she “violated the law of the United States at various points in the process.”
“She would not let them come to the area that does the recruiting on the campus. They had to meet with some student veterans, and this is not acceptable. It was a big error,” said Sessions.
Pro-family groups have also warned that, given her record, a vote approving Kagan for the Supreme Court would be a vote against traditional marriage.
The National Organization for Marriage pointed out immediately following the announcement of the nomination that a brief authored under Kagan, who is the current U.S. Solicitor General, was revised to gut the legal arguments upholding the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). While ostensibly issued in order to defend the federal law against a legal challenge, the brief actually condemned DOMA as “discriminatory,” setting up pro-family advocates to fail in legal challenges down the road.
A vocal advocate of taxpayer funding of abortion, Kagan has contributed financially to at least one high-profile pro-abortion lobby group, whose president hailed her nomination as “a superb and brilliant choice.” In addition, while some media outlets are reporting that a 1997 memo authored by Kagan to President Bill Clinton revealed a moderate position on abortion, the National Right to Life Committee pointed out that the brief was actually crafted strategically to defeat a Congressional ban on partial-birth abortion.