It begins! The hearings haven't even commenced, and--surprise, surprise--Republicans have gone fishing for something slimy on Elena Kagan. What's biting? Why, thee ol' military recruiter story, of course. Unfortunately for those who oppose her nomination, Kagan did permit military recruiters to access students--even when doing so violated both Harvard's anti-discrimination policies and her own abhorrence of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Why did she cave to the military? Because Congress would have denied the school funding if she didn't. From Slate's Emily Bazelon:
Unless the law school gave the military "equal" access, Congress was prepared to deny the university as a whole $328 million in federal funds. With that much at stake, it wasn't much of a contest. In 2002, Kagan's predecessor as dean, Robert Clark, let the recruiters into the law school's placement office. Kagan did the same thing when she took over in 2003.
But details are the casualty of partisan thinking.
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