The DNC today is launching the Accountability Project, which asks voters to keep tabs on Republican candidates nationwide. Their aim — to catch a GOPer in a major gaffe or capture this election season’s “macaca moment.”
The lines of attack and defense were set out pretty clearly yesterday. Here is a guide to what to expect today, and some reasons why Elena Kagan may have a bit of a tougher time than other recent nominees. Read More
Chairman Leahy opens the hearing by playing the classic role of a defense lawyer: give your client a chance to address the evidence against her before she is confronted by hostile questioners. He ticks through a series of key issues. Read More
For all the latest developments remember to check out our Live Updating TPM Kagan Confirmation Hearings Wire.
And if live video is all that will satisfy you, click here.
We sent TPM reporter Evan McMorris-Santoro out to mingle among the protestors at the hearings yesterday. But there was a problem: there weren’t any protestors. The only one Evan could find was perennial anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry, who took a few moments to cry on Evan’s shoulder about how he was pretty much the only one who showed up because the rest of the protest crowd was afraid to show up.
“They’re afraid, they’re lazy and they don’t want to look like radicals,” Terry told us.
Ranking Republican Senator Jeff Sessions focuses first on constitutional interpretation. He gets Kagan to reiterate that the only way to change the Constitution is through amendment, but she points out that “the constitutional law we live under does develop over time.” But she says that means that judges have to apply the Constitution to new situations, and that they do that via the process of constitutional interpretation.
Sessions then talks about a new movement to revive “legal progressivism” which says has its origins in the 1930s movement criticizing Supreme Court decisions that held unconstitutional key elements of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. He says that it is an effort to try to change the meaning of the Constitution. Read More
Jon Stewart asks David Axelrod: Do you see Obama soon ‘regaining the ability to snatch flies from the air? Watch it.
Also, guess it’s not too early for humor: Colbert: Byrd was snatched away from us “in the blink of an eon.”
Last week we mentioned that the Supreme Court’s decision in the Skilling case could end up having a big effect on a lot of outstanding public corruption cases. Most of our readers know about the Don Siegelman case because of very serious suspicions that the case was based on a politicized prosecution. But the Supreme Court has just sent Siegleman’s case back to the 11th Circuit “for further consideration in light of Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S.”
GOPers who ripped Thurgood Marshall yesterday can’t come up with any decisions they disagree with.