The press has had a while to dig for information on who Elena Kagan really is, so the obvious observation for the moment is that practically every “new” piece isn’t really so new. Sure, it sounds sexy to claim that one has dug up “dirt” from her past (like Steven Ertelt did at LifeNews.com), but the fact is that it’s not hard to find any of this information. Kagan’s alma mater has made it exceptionally easy to look at her past writings at “The Daily Princetonian”, and the piece that Ertelt referred to is open for public view.

No matter how much Ertelt might want to wish it so, there is no way to interpret what Kagan wrote – assuming one takes it in context as opposed to selectively quoting as Ertelt did – as a statement purely against the “pro-life” movement. Yes, she did the same thing I just did, placing a part of her statement in quotes, implying nothing more than I have – hypocrisy. You can’t have it both ways. Either you are truly pro-life, or you’re sort of pro-life and open to attack for being a hypocrite. Kagan was pointing out the hypocrisy of being against abortion, but for bombs – remembering this was still during the Cold War, and we were competing with the Soviets to maintain nuclear superiority. Times change, situations differ slightly, but the end result is the same. You can’t be for saving the unborn, and capital punishment and gun rights. Sorry, but that reeks of hypocrisy. And that’s not even getting into the hypocrisy of the failure to consider the real consequences of forcing women to have babies they don’t want. But that typically falls on deaf ears anyway, since quality of life is a foreign concept to most from the “pro-life” camp. And please don’t insult yourselves by suggesting that everyone only have sex when they actually want to pro-create. It is too tempting to bring up Monty Python’s “Every Sperm is Sacred” skit then.

Kagan hasn’t just drawn fire from the religious right. She’s also annoyed the military. But one needs to tread lightly when approaching this situation (pun partially intended.) First of all, not everyone in the military – including high-ranking officers – are for the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Secondly, Kagan’s decision to ban military recruiters from Harvard’s law school was driven by campus politics – something she freely admitted at the time, and still does (as far as I know.) In other words, her actions undoubtedly had more to do with serving her “constituency”, the students and staff of her institution, than any personal ideology. True, she came out publicly stating that the policy was counter to the precepts of freedom in general, and the argument could be made that she should have avoided saying that outright. But, we’re sitting on the precipice of seeing the demise of that policy anyway, with the support of, that’s right, the military. That said, we could just as easily turn back the clock to the Civil War, and say that she came out against slavery years earlier. Slavery was permitted by law, remember? Doesn’t make it right.

And that brings us to the RNC’s fears of legislating from the bench. This was born of Kagan’s assertion that the Constitution as originally drafted was defective. Now, the RNC can’t count on it’s own members on the Hill to carry on this argument, and for good reason. Beyond slavery, there was also the absence of a woman’s right to vote in the original document. The beauty of the Constitution is in the fact that it was originally drafted to be fluid. The men that drafted it weren’t so arrogant to think that their words would be law ad infinitum, and they left us with the ability to change it. As for arguments against legislating from the bench, historically, that has typically happened when the legislative branch has failed in one way or another to move with the times. It is an unforeseen result of the fluidity of the structure of the Constitution – if nothing else, it is a testament of its genius, not a statement against the Courts.

Finally, the most troublesome of the objections I have seen so far, Kagan helped to defend Saudis against 9/11 lawsuits. While this can easily be considered morally reprehensible, it is the direct result of long-standing agreements and treaties between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. I sincerely doubt she relished that particular duty.

As a conservative, I’m not in love with Kagan as a candidate for SCOTUS. Then again, I wouldn’t be overly pleased with any candidate Obama would offer. But, I can say that the majority of the objections beyond her lack of judicial experience are hyperbole. Her lack of judicial experience is the direct result of the GOP, since she failed to garner the votes necessary for confirmation during the Clinton administration. Apparently even then she was considered a possibility for filling a vacancy on the highest court, so maybe the hope was then that if she wasn’t on a bench somewhere, she wouldn’t be considered later. If that was the case, we’ll find out soon enough if the tactic worked.