Irony Board

How many ways can Senate Republicans show intellectual hypocrisy?
By Dahlia Lithwick
Slate.com

Let's stipulate: You hate our nominees, and we hate yours. Our nominees are all godless baby killers and terrorist lovers. Yours are all God-crazed rights suppressors and misogynists. Fine. But isn't it also the case that when you reverse, rewrite, or undermine every rule and standard you've ever laid out for measuring the fitness of a presidential nominee, you become ridiculous—period?

The irony now on display among Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee is staggering. You need to pedal your intellectual bike hard and fast just to get past the hypocrisy of the sudden rule changes: Senate Republicans who, four short years ago, condemned the use of the filibuster as "unconstitutional" and threatened to answer it with the "nuclear option" are now earnestly pledging to filibuster President Obama's judicial nominees, even though he has named just one. (They hate him.) Because, of course, the filibuster isn't unconstitutional when it comes to thwarting "judicial activists."

But it goes so far beyond that. See, for instance, Senate Republicans roughing up Obama's pick for his solicitor general, Elena Kagan, this afternoon on the Senate floor as they voted on her confirmation. She was confirmed by a vote of 61-31. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., voted nay. Now, Kagan, the dean of Harvard Law School, has been endorsed by every solicitor general serving from 1985 to 2009, including Charles Fried, Ken Starr, Drew Days, Walter Dellinger, Seth Waxman, Ted Olson, Paul Clement, and Greg Garre. While at Harvard, she was acclaimed for brilliant scholarship and an unprecedented willingness to hire scholars from across the political spectrum. So what is it that Kagan is being hassled about by Republicans on the judiciary committee? Her failure to provide sufficient information about her ideological views. Sen. Specter has already publicly spanked her for providing "insufficient answers" to his questions.

(More here.)