Friday, 6/29/12, Public Square

Confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan

The GOP may have found a spot to dig in its heels against Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Without entirely announcing their opposition to her, a pair of top Senate Republicans called a set of newly uncovered memos she wrote as a clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1988 “troubling.” By accusing her of expressing her personal opinion or political philosophy instead of coldly examining the issues in those memos, Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona and Jeff Sessions of Alabama seem to be picking up the same line of objection the GOP used against Sonia Sotomayor. To Sessions, it merely reinforced the fact that, “Her background is heavily in political legal advocacy more than the meat-and-potatoes discipline of serious legal work.” But both said they will wait until the hearings begin on June 28 to decide how to vote.

Read it at THE HILL

Are Anti-Gay Funeral Protests Constitutional?

A Maryland father laid his soldier son to rest in 2006 surrounded by protesters from Westboro Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, who believe soldiers die in combat as punishment for the U.S.’s permissive attitude toward homosexuality. They carried signs that said, “Thank God for dead soldiers.” The Supreme Court is now reviewing whether protesting the funerals of soldiers is protected by the First Amendment. A Baltimore jury awarded the soldier’s father $10 million in damages, but the case was later thrown out by the U.S. Court of Appeals. The judges said the signs were not referring directly to the father and his son. Snyder v. Phelps will be argued next October.

Read more here.