Can I ask a non-partisan question?

[Boz]

Why in the hell does every Senator on the Judiciary Committee get to make an opening statement before a confirmation hearing?

Come to think of it, why do ANY of them get to make an opening statement, except maybe the chairman and ranking minority member?


(Also, is SNL going to bring back Chris Kattan to play Elena Kagan? The resemblance is nearly as eerie as Tina Fey-Sarah Palin
)

[Boz]

This just in:

Elections have consequences.


I feel so much more informed having been told that 25 times today.



Screw it. Brazil's on. These guys are annoying the crap out of me.

[strummer8526]

First of all, Chris Kattan: yes, that should happen.

Second, these hearings might just be the worst, most inane, most irrelevant, most pointless exercises of political posturing in a country and a political system that has A LOT of political posturing. Really, except for a few highlights here and there, the whole thing is unwatchable.

Personally, I advocate for two things (the first of which I know Glenn Beck has even been a big supporter of...I'm not sure how I feel about agreeing with him, but I do): (1) repeal of the 17th Amendment. Let's go back to state legislatures choosing Senators so Senators can stop behaving like older, longer-term House members with their pandering to constituents. I'm so f-ing sick of "the people." And (2) get rid of the Supreme Court confirmation hearing, which is an even more recent creation than the 17th Amendment, the first hearing being Harlan Stone's in 1925.

A few weeks ago, my mom asked me what I thought of Kagan. She probably expected a good answer out of her third year law student son. Instead, she got "She's obviously brilliant. She's qualified. She should get confirmed." (I'd have said the same of Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Scalia, Bork, Breyer, etc., etc. Thomas and Harriet Miers, probably. I don't know enough about their pre-nomination backgrounds to be 100% sure.) The Founders—and Lord knows, we LOVE the Founders in these hearings—created a system where a state legislature-appointed Senate would confirm Justices without required hearings. Why now do we have a process that demands the public be widely informed of who the nominee is, what his/her judicial philosophy is, where he/she worked 25 years ago, how he/she feels about access to contraception, and what he/she eats for breakfast? (Ironically, it was Sen. Coburn who said that the Founders had "preeminent wisdom" and then went onto describe the need for an informative public hearings process never endorsed or created by the Founders. Well, maybe the Founders just forgot it. They all wrote so much and were so busy "Founding" that they must have just missed the "pointless confirmation hearings" stuff.) Regardless, this is not supposed to be a democratic institution. Every jack-hole who puts on CNN for 10 minutes is not supposed to have a say on this. Our Senators are not supposed to have to answer to the electorate for consenting to obviously qualified, though ideologically different, Court nominees.

Sorry, you got me started there...Anyway, the opening statements are just a few of the many many ridiculous aspects of this whole thing.

[TBird41]

Jun 28, 2010 15:36:06 GMT -5 strummer8526 said:

First of all, Chris Kattan: yes, that should happen.

Second, these hearings might just be the worst, most inane, most irrelevant, most pointless exercises of political posturing in a country and a political system that has A LOT of political posturing. Really, except for a few highlights here and there, the whole thing is unwatchable.

Personally, I advocate for two things (the first of which I know Glenn Beck has even been a big supporter of...I'm not sure how I feel about agreeing with him, but I do): (1) repeal of the 17th Amendment. Let's go back to state legislatures choosing Senators so Senators can stop behaving like older, longer-term House members with their pandering to constituents. I'm so f-ing sick of "the people."

Best reason I ever heard for abolishing the 17th Amendment is that you won't see so many unfunded mandates, since the Senators will actually be accountable to the State Legislatures.

[EasyEd]

I think we should abolish all Congressional hearings. Let the staffers gather the information on any subject and present the results to the committees for discussion. We should also ban TV coverage of any federal matter, including the state of the union address and inaugural addresses, Also abolish C-Span. Seriously the only purpose of any of these is political.

[The Stig]

Jun 28, 2010 18:07:24 GMT -5 EasyEd said:

I think we should abolish all Congressional hearings. Let the staffers gather the information on any subject and present the results to the committees for discussion. We should also ban TV coverage of any federal matter, including the state of the union address and inaugural addresses, Also abolish C-Span. Seriously the only purpose of any of these is political.

It's political, but it also improves transparency. Can you imagine the howling from certain segments of the electorate if all this stuff went on behind closed doors?

Yes, the hearings give politicians soundbites, but it also gives the public soundbites to hold the politicians accountable. Their archaic, but still useful.

The biggest argument against repealing the 17th Amendment is corruption. That was a major reason for passing the Amendment in the first place - the appointment process was becoming an auction. As a certain Illinois governor showed, it wouldn't be much better today. After all, a Senate seat is "a Editeding valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing."

[Boz]

See, I'd like to agree with Stig in principle. I'd like for government to have these things out the open as much as possible, while understanding the need to have some meetings, hearings, etc behind closed doors (I am not of the opinion that the citizenry gets to know absolutely everything, just as much as possible within reason).

Ideally, yes, that would mean an open and transparent government and not just a bunch of blowhards listening to themselves talk.

I am willing to tolerate some of that for the sake of good government, I really am.

But it still doesn't answer the question: what is the purpose of umpteen opening statements? What possible end does that serve that is not 100% political?

As far as I'm concerned, yesterday was a complete waste of everyone's time (including the nominee, who had to sit there silently and appear on camera as though listening to all that blather wasn't a worse form of torture than anything currently taking place in our rendition program) and of our money.

Today, I expect some of that mix. I have no doubt that there will be Senator after Senator asking five minute long questions that really only serve themselves and do not serve the end of evaluating this nominee. And that will come from both sides of the aisle. On the other hand, I think there will be some valuable exchanges and some important questions asked. I do not know if these questions will be answered, probably not.

I can put up with the theater if there is a purpose to it. Yesterday had no purpose whatsoever.

[jerseyhoya34]

People tend to be all over the map as to this issue. Transparency/hearings/floor debates were the order of the day when it came to something like HCR, but now that we have an insufferable committee hearing by most accounts, it is time to close the doors or do away with it.

I think the bigger problem is that there is an utter lack of continuity and talent in today's Senate. This is only reinforced by the recent passing of Senator Byrd - like it or not or like him or not, he was the source of information about parliamentary traditions and rules. Longer term senators like Orrin Hatch are now caught up in the dial for dollars dynamic that just kills any ability to protect the traditions and respect that are otherwise associated with the Senate. The "activist judges" moniker is one by-product of this - it has no serviceable meaning in politics other than to provide a veiled signal to respective partisan bases.

[Boz]

Well, in the case of HCR, open hearings (or open discussions) were promised by the administration. I think it was only right that they had to deliver on that.

And as much as that one day was filled with a lot of bluster and bizarre tales of fake teeth, there were some really valid and valuable discussions that took place throughout the day.

The problem was sitting through 8 hours of it to hear maybe an hour or two of instructive conversation and debate.

I have tried to listen to some of the hearings today. Haven't caught everything, but I did like that there was a lot of pointed questioning, from both sides. Sure, some of it was just designed to make a political point, again on both sides, but I thought it was pretty direct. No great deal of wandering 10-minutes speeches followed by one question. Kagen seemed to handle herself well and spoke fairly candidly, but of course the same rules always apply.

[TBird41]

Jun 29, 2010 12:13:28 GMT -5 @jerseyhoya34 said:

People tend to be all over the map as to this issue. Transparency/hearings/floor debates were the order of the day when it came to something like HCR, but now that we have an insufferable committee hearing by most accounts, it is time to close the doors or do away with it.

I think the bigger problem is that there is an utter lack of continuity and talent in today's Senate. This is only reinforced by the recent passing of Senator Byrd - like it or not or like him or not, he was the source of information about parliamentary traditions and rules. Longer term senators like Orrin Hatch are now caught up in the dial for dollars dynamic that just kills any ability to protect the traditions and respect that are otherwise associated with the Senate. The "activist judges" moniker is one by-product of this - it has no serviceable meaning in politics other than to provide a veiled signal to respective partisan bases.

That'll happen when you lose the two Senators who have served their respective parties longest.

[The Stig]

I don't know the Judiciary Committee very well, but in the hearings I'm used to (Foreign Relations) only the chairman and the ranking member are supposed to have extended opening statements. The rest of the Senators are supposed to keep it short, because any time they spend on an opening statement cuts into their Q&A time.

Unfortunately, the chair of the Foreign Relations committee right now is Kerry, and the ranking member is Lugar. Kerry's opening statements drag on forever and are about as interesting as the Swiss soccer team. He also tends to ramble off script, so the "prepared remarks" on his website have very little to do with what he actually said. Lugar's a bit better for the opening statement, but he's an absolute master of the 5 minute question that's actually a statement.

The purpose of all the opening statements is the same as the purpose of the hearing itself - to put the Senators on the public record, to which they can be held accountable. At least that's the principle. Of course a lot of it becomes political grandstanding.

[jerseyhoya34]

Jun 29, 2010 12:22:28 GMT -5 Boz said:

Well, in the case of HCR, open hearings (or open discussions) were promised by the administration. I think it was only right that they had to deliver on that.

And as much as that one day was filled with a lot of bluster and bizarre tales of fake teeth, there were some really valid and valuable discussions that took place throughout the day.

The problem was sitting through 8 hours of it to hear maybe an hour or two of instructive conversation and debate.

I have tried to listen to some of the hearings today. Haven't caught everything, but I did like that there was a lot of pointed questioning, from both sides. Sure, some of it was just designed to make a political point, again on both sides, but I thought it was pretty direct. No great deal of wandering 10-minutes speeches followed by one question. Kagen seemed to handle herself well and spoke fairly candidly, but of course the same rules always apply.

The administration and Senate leadership also promised open hearings on the Kagan nomination.

[Bando]

Um, anyone who thinks leaving Senatorial elections to the states is poorly informed. All this would do is change the target of Senatorial pandering from constituents to state legislators. Have you all see state legislators? Also, polarization would likely increase as the blue state/red senator (and vice versa) phenomenon would cease to exist.

The best ideas to curb this sort of chicanery is to 1) require the Senate to confirm an entire department en banc, and/or 2) reduce the number of politically appointed positions. Seriously, the civil servant who's worked for the department for 30 years is probably a better choice for under-under secretary than anyone a president could propose.

[SFHoya99]

I'd rather have the Senatorships bought and sold at the macro level to the masses than bought and sold at the political level. Just me.

[Boz]

Here is another non-partisan question:

How freakin' hot is Anna Chapman?!?!?

Holy Schnikes!

[The Stig]

Reminds me of the stories of US military officers on trips to Eastern Europe. Some of the guys who'd never had any luck with the ladies suddenly found it very easy to bring some super hot chicks back to the hotel room....