Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court. The most damning argument against confirming Kagan was not made by Republicans, but by Harvard graduate student Pete Hegseth, executive director of Vets for Freedom.
Hegseth is an Army captain who served two tours of duty in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. Earlier this month, he told the committee that Kagan’s actions blocking military recruiters at Harvard during a time of war was “unbefitting a nominee to the United States Supreme Court.”
But he didn’t stop there. In a devastating critique, Hegseth pointed out Kagan’s hypocrisy and “intellectual dishonesty” in blaming the military for the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy which, he correctly points out, was imposed by civilians during the Clinton administration.
“In emails to students and statements to the press, Ms. Kagan slammed – and I quote – ‘the military’s discriminatory recruitment policy.’ Yet as a legal scholar, she knows better than that,” Hegseth testified. “She knows the policy that she abhors is not the military’s policy, but a policy enacted by Congress and imposed on the military. In fact, after the law was passed, Ms. Kagan went to work for the very man who signed ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” into law, President Clinton.”
Hegseth went on to point out that Kagan didn’t utter a peep of protest when Harvard accepted money from Saudi Arabia:
“Harvard has three academic chairs endowed by money from Saudi Arabia, a country where being a homosexual is a capital offense. So rather than confront the congressional source of the true legislation or take a stance against a country that executes homosexuals, Ms. Kagan zeroed in on military recruiters for a policy they neither authored nor emphasized.”
Well said, Captain Hegseth.
If an anti-military bias, rank hypocrisy, and intellectual dishonesty is not enough to disqualify a nominee from a life-long appointment to the Supreme Court, Judiciary Committee members should tell us all what is.