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Wednesday, April 7, 2010 as of 11:14 AM ET

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Lee Ross

Supreme Court

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Senators Spat over New Kagan Documents

June 18, 2010 - 6:37 PM | by: Lee Ross

The last scheduled batch of documents from the Clinton Library related to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan came out late Friday with divergent views from Capitol Hill on what the documents represent.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Verm., will preside over Kagan’s June 28 confirmation hearing and praised staffers in Little Rock who expedited their review process of Kagan-related material in advance of the hearing.

“The evaluation of her record and qualifications has been the most open and transparent in history. There is no chapter from her professional life for which we do not have significant records to review,” Leahy said in a statement Friday.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s top-ranking Republican reiterated his concern that the number of documents coming from the Clinton Library in recent weeks (about 77,000 Friday and 140,000 overall) will overwhelm senators and staff. “There is a significant amount of material to review in a short period of time,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, said Friday. “I remain concerned by the both the pace and the timing of document production, as well as the fact that the Committee, the press, and the public have been denied access to a number of documents.”

Republican criticisms of Kagan’s record have slowly picked up in recent days but the volume of their critique, and from outside interest groups, has been noticeably quieter than a year ago in advance of Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing. Much of the relative passivity towards Kagan has to do with her lack of judicial record.

Nonetheless, Sessions says a ”troubling pattern” has emerged from the trail of documents tied to Kagan’s work in the Clinton White House and her high court clerkship for Justice Thurgood Marshall “Throughout her career, she has demonstrated a willingness to make legal decisions based not on the law but instead on her very liberal politics,” Sessions said.

A very preliminary review of the e-mails released Friday reveal one in which Kagan was dismissive of a line near the end of Clinton’s 1997 State of the Union speech. While reviewing a draft of the text four days before delivery, Kagan sent an email to her immediate boss: “Realizing that I may be taking on someone’s favorite line (perhaps even yours), I’m nonetheless going to say that the quote from Isaiah is the most preposterously presumptuous line I have ever see — and the President would deserve it if the press really came down on him for this.”

It is isn’t immediately clear who was responsible for the Biblical quotation but the president kept in the speech: “Just a few days before my second Inauguration, one of country’s best known pastors, Reverend Robert Schuller, suggested that I read Isaiah 58:12. Here’s what it says: “Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called, the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.” I placed my hand on that verse when I took the oath of office, on behalf of all Americans. For no matter what our differences — in our faiths, our backgrounds, our politics — we must all be repairers of the breach.”

That passage notwithstanding, Kagan must have liked the speech because a day after it was delivered she sent an email to White House chief speechwriter Michael Waldman, “I meant what I said today (and what I told Liz last night): It was grand, and you should feel really proud.”

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