Republicans are spinning hard to find something to smear President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, with, but none of the lies are really sticking.
One lie the right is harping on that fulfills their strategy of, “if you tell a lie enough times people begin to believe it,” and that is that the policy on military recruiters made while Kagan was the Dean of Harvard Law School make her "an anti-military zealot." The lie is that she kicked military recruiters off the campus and that Kagan defied the so-called Solomon Amendment -- a statute requiring schools to provide the same access to military recruiters that they provide to other potential employers or lose federal funding.
According to the conservative New York Times, Kagan consistently followed the law, and Harvard students had access to military recruiters during her entire tenure as dean. In fact,throughout Kagan's tenure as dean, Harvard law students had access to military recruiters -- either through Harvard's Office of Career Services or through Veterans Association. The fact is Kagan consistently followed existing law regarding access to military recruiters. She briefly restricted - but did not eliminate - access to recruiters only after the U.S Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that law schools could do so. However, she continued a policy of allowing the military recruiters access to students.
The fact is the military’s discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” violated Harvard’s anti-discrimination policy, but as the NYT said, “Her management of the recruiting dispute shows her to have been, above all, a pragmatist, asserting her principles but all the while following the law, so that Harvard never lost its financing.”
My military career taught me two things about this situation. First, there are gay men - women too, although I have never met any - serving honorably and in positions of leadership and responsibility.
Second, military recruiters were never at my high school, at least while I was a student, but I still managed to find the Navy recruiter’s office and enlist. When I found it, I didn’t have a high school education, let alone an Ivy League education. I think a Harvard Law School student would have no trouble finding a military recruiter. Would you?
The only thing that disappoints me about Kagan is that neither of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominees are liberals. despite Republican’s crying wolf and saying otherwise. It makes no sense to me that Republicans have no trouble getting right-wing tools on the court, but we can’t get a true liberal on the court.
