Elena Kagan the stealth nominee
After watching the reaction to the President's nomination of Kagan for SCOTUS ,it is clear that unless there is some smoking gun reason ;the Republicans will not be able to mount a serious opposition to her selection.
However ,her lack of a "paper trail" ,and judicial record has the left more nervous about the pick than I thought they would be .Her selection has been compared to the GW Bush Harriet Miers selection .Even though her resume appears to be more extensive.
Groups like Moveon.org have been luke warm in their support and have asked Democrat Senators to quizz her during the hearings to pin her down on specifics. Andrew Sullivan has called her an "empty vessel" They have complained about her hiring practices as Dean of Harvard;her positions on executive authority during the war against jihadistan ,and they aren't clear about her position on corporate speech. In other words ,they are not sure she will be the liberal lion that Justice Stevens was.
I don't have any such illusions... the President would not have picked her unless she was a mirror image of him.
I don't believe for one minute that the President would make the same mistake the GHW Bush did when he selected "conservative " David Souter .
But ,there is an easy remedy for this . Since Robert Bork was "borked " SCOTUS nominees have generally kept their views close to the vest and have divulged as little as possible to the Senate Judiciary Committee during questioning . They should make it clear to Kagan that they will asked pointed direct questions about her judicial philosophy and they will follow up with even more pointed quizzing if she tries to skate.
Only then will we have a real picture of who is likely to serve on the bench for perhaps the next 30 years.