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Senator John McCain Will Not Support Elena Kagan For Supreme Court Justice

07/07/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Senator John McCain has surprised very few in his decision to vote against Solicitor General Elena Kagan for being the subject of a lie, apparently. According to the former Presidential candidate

“When Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School, she unmistakably discouraged Harvard students from considering a career in the military — even while claiming to do otherwise — by denying military recruiters the same access to Harvard students that was granted to white-shoe law firms. Kagan did so because she believed the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy to be ‘a profound wrong — a moral injustice of the first order.’

While Kagan is entitled to her opinion, she was not entitled to ignore the law that requires universities to allow military recruiters on campus under terms of equal access with all other recruiters. The chief of recruiting for the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General Corps described the impact of Kagan’s changes by saying that ‘Harvard is playing games.’ The Army’s report from that same period was even more blunt, stating, ‘The Army was stonewalled at Harvard.’”

Not only is she entitled to her opinion, but at the time that she supposedly turned the recruiters away from Harvard Law, the law that Senator McCain believes allowed those recruiters access to the students at her college was in abeyance until it was said to be constitutional by the Supreme Court.

At this point, it should not be surprising that Senator McCain has fallen into the usual shrill run of half-truths, non-truths, and faulty thinking that permeates so much of the Right at the moment. He is desperately trying to keep his Senate seat from a challenge by Tea Party favorite J.D. Hayward. He has, in some ways, also become rather bitter of late given that he lost his bid to be President again. Not long ago, Senator McCain vowed strongly to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should the military leaders such as Admiral Michael Mullen, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or General Colin Powell were to come forward and ask for it to be taken down. Of course, how he is adamantly for retaining the law which is turning perfectly good and capable servicemembers out of the military for being lesbian or gay.

In other words, Senator McCain is doing more to discourage people from joining the military than Elena Kagan ever did, but it is not surprising that he is not going to support her.