Prospects of a 5-4 Supreme Court for a long, long time...

My first impression of Elena Kagan, the U.S. Supreme Court nominee from President Obama, as she is before the Senate confirmation hearing, is "lightweight." I hope that's a wrong impression, since she's likely to be on the Court for a long time.

Kagan told Senator Feinstein that the two recent 5-4 Supreme Court decisions about guns is now established law. Well, you know, the Supreme Court can reverse decisions that prove to be bad. It can and it has in the past. I have read about the court's first decision that required school children of Jehovah's Witnesses to say the Pledge of Allegiance and salute the flag back in the 1940s despite the group's belief that it was a violation of their right to religion (believing that pledges and flags are like graven images and idols as described in the 10 Commandments). Several years later, after the court saw that its decision had caused all kinds of violent assaults upon Jehovah's Witnesses who continued to refuse the order because they couldn't get a sudden agreeing sign from God, the court completely reversed the ruling in the next case, siding with the Jehovah's Witnesses. After all, the best line in the Pledge of Allegiance is "And liberty and justice for all" and there can't be liberty if some people are forced to do something against their beliefs.

Then some old Republican senators (like John McCain--geez, aren't we lucky that he wasn't elected president) were unhappy about Kagan throwing the military recruiters off the Harvard campus because of the discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, though she later caved on that issue in order to keep federal funding for the university. So, Kagan tries to go in a weird orbit around the issue by saying something nonsensical about military recruitment actually going up that year at the university. Wow, I was sitting there, wanting someone with a tad bit of fight within them, to answer those fossil senators, "Yes, we threw the military recruiters off the campus and may have saved some lives of the young people temporarily at least before you learn-nothing-from-Vietnam-War senators were able to send them off to the no-win quagmire of the Afghanistan War." (Oops, I know that isn't very politically correct of me. After all, we have to be very nice to military recruiters so they can send our young people off to endless wars. !!!! Insert your four-letter word of choice here.) Anyway, Kagan wasn't anywhere close to that with her almost-apologetic statements, so she will probably get confirmed with namby-pamby flying colors, though she probably would be confirmed anyway, as I think the Democrats have a majority of votes (though that's always questionable nowadays as well).

The U.S. Supreme Court is going to be a dreary institution for a long time, I have a feeling, with more 5-4 conservative decisions ahead for our country that instead needs progess socially, culturally, and politically.