The Confirmation of Bigotry

Given the lack of ammunition Republicans have to go after Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, their argument yesterday boiled down to: She worked for a black guy, and oh yeah, she's a Jew.

From yesterday's Supreme Court confirmation hearings Dana Milbank in the Washington Post nails the distasteful aruging about the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall:

Oppo researchers digging into Elena Kagan's past didn't get the goods on the Supreme Court nominee -- but they did get the Thurgood.

As confirmation hearings opened Monday afternoon, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee took the unusual approach of attacking Kagan because she admired the late justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked more than two decades ago.

"Justice Marshall's judicial philosophy," said Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, "is not what I would consider to be mainstream." Kyl -- the lone member of the panel in shirtsleeves for the big event -- was ready for a scrap. Marshall "might be the epitome of a results-oriented judge," he said.

And Joan Walsh in Salon digs into the senators' xenophobia:

Republicans on the Senate Judicial Committee are trying to make the case she's outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence, by attacking her clerking for (and admiring) legal giant Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court justice, while singling her out as a denizen of "Manhattan's Upper West Side" – you know, the neighborhood known for Zabar's and bagels and, well, Jews.