Sen. Harry Reid's support for President Obama's Supreme Court nominees has cost him the endorsement of the National Rifle Association in his re-election bid.

The NRA is a force in rural states like Nevada where many voters own guns and hunt. The absence of the NRA's blessing represents a setback that Reid's campaign was quick to address Friday by noting that NRA executive Wayne LaPierre once called him a "true champion of the Second Amendment."

With 37 votes against her and a public approval rating less than 50%, Kagan's confirmation had the least support of any Democratic nominee for over 100 years and she is the least popular nominee in recent memory to win confirmation. The bipartisan opposition to her nomination indicates that even Democrats are worried that a vote for Kagan will tie them to the president's unpopular legislative agenda in an important election year.

Those of us on that lean to the right are used to disappointment when it comes to the judiciary, but we’ve always taken pessimistic comfort in the belief that it couldn’t get much worse. Well, we were wrong.

In her confirmation hearings, Elena Kagan was careful to avoid passing judgment on any sitting Supreme Court Justice or any court case, past, present, or future.  Justice Ginsburg, from her position on the Court, obviously does not feel so constrained.  Last Friday she joined the fray in defense of Elena Kagan’s statements during her confirmation hearings and took several Senators to task for suggesting that American judges should limit themselves to considering American law and that reliance on foreign law is ahistorical.  

Her speech to the International Academy of Comparative Law at American University was entitled “A Decent Respect to the Opinions of [Human]kind,” a modified reference to the Declaration of Independence which enumerated the colonies’ reasons for throwing off British rule because “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”  Her title alone is telling, because Ginsburg’s attempt to ground her approach to foreign and international law in the nation’s founding and early history is, as Eugene Kontorovich has pointed out, founded on a complete misconstruction of the sentence and its context.  The Declaration of Independence is not making a point about the sources of authority in American law, but is framing itself as an appeal to natural law in an effort to win the support of other nations – namely France – in the struggle for independence.  It addresses an American explanation of our actions to other nations, not an American respect for foreign opinions that would impel us to alter our own law.

All of a sudden, in the midst of the Kagan confirmation battle, the Left has exploded in outrage about the pace of judicial confirmations for the circuit and district courts. In the L. A. Times, David Savage has compared the Senate fight over judges to a “family feud,” noting that the president has managed to fill only 36 of the 134 judicial vacancies that have opened during his term.

This recent editorial in the Des Moines Register is harshly critical of Senator Grassley’s decision to vote against Elena Kagan. The problem is that the Register’s criticism is based on a mischaracterization of Senator Grassley’s actual comments.

They claim that Grassley was motivated almost entirely by a decision to pay back Democrats for their opposition to Republican nominees. In fact, Grassley’s statement before the Judiciary Committee didn’t mention Democratic action on Republican nominees even once.

With his nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, President Obama once again fulfilled his threat to nominate judges who would decide cases on the basis of emotions and personal politics rather than fidelity to the original meaning of the Constitution. Kagan has no judicial experience, less relevant legal experience than any nominee in memory, and an extreme background of political activism that raises serious doubts about her ability to put the law ahead of a political agenda.

West Virginia governor Joe Manchin has appointed lawyer Carte Goodwin to replace Sen. Robert Byrd. K-Lo has asked, “Who is Carte Goodwin?” noting that very little is known about him.

Senator Specter used to stand for something during Judiciary Committee Hearings. As a younger Elena Kagan quoted approvingly in 1995, he famously exhorted the Senate to “rear up on its hind legs” and refuse to confirm nominees who would not answer their questions. As it turns out, both Kagan and Specter are now singing a different tune.