Gingrich: No Hearings Needed, Just Withdraw Kagan’s Nomination; She’s Anti-Military

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is calling on President Obama to withdraw the nomination of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court, claiming she’s anti-military. On Fox News Sunday, Gingrich said:

“I think the president should withdraw it. You don’t need a lot of hearings. The very fact that she led the effort which was repudiated unanimously by the Supreme Court to block the American military from Harvard Law school — we’re in two wars, and I see no reason why you would appoint an anti-military Supreme Court justice or why the Senate would confirm an anti-military Supreme Court justice.”

Gingrich also attacked Kagan on grounds that Harvard, where she was law school dean, accepts money from the Saudis.

“On the one hand, Harvard accepts money from Saudis. Saudi Arabia, by the way, executes homosexuals, Saudi Arabia represses women, Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow Christians or Jews to practice their religion, but Saudi money is fine.”

The Saudi charge is bizarre, in that Saudi investment in Harvard has nothing to do with Kagan. A law school dean has nothing to do with recruiting money from foreign nations.  As for the anti-military charge, Frank Rich notes how ludicrous that is. For one thing she never banned military recruiting from campus, as former Harvard Law School Dean Robert C. Clark detailed in the Wall Street Journal. In order to preserve school funding, she permitted recruiting at the Office of Career Services until November of 2004, when the Solomon Amendment, which punished schools which didn’t allow recruiting, was overturned.

Yet this reversion only lasted a semester because the Department of Defense again threatened to cut off federal funding to all of Harvard, and because the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Third Circuit’s decision. Once again, military recruiters were allowed to use OCS, even as the dean and most of the faculty and student body voiced opposition to “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Even when OCS was not permitted to recruit, the military was permitted elsewhere on campus because it was invited to do so by the Harvard Law School Veterans Association. And when a coalition of law schools sued the Defense Department for coercing Harvard and other schools to violate anti-discrimination policies, Kagan came under fire for not participating in the lawsuit.

In fact, Kagan’s comments at the time are exactly the opposite of what someone would say who is anti-military:

“What the United States government is essentially saying to gays and lesbians is that they cannot participate in, they cannot contribute to this incredibly important mission. These men and women, notwithstanding their talents, their conviction, their courage, cannot perform what I truly believe to be the greatest service a person can give for their country. And that’s just wrong, that’s just flat out wrong.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.