US Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, who has displayed a cool demeanor and a sense of humor during her Senate confirmation hearing, is expected to move one step closer today to becoming the fourth woman to serve on the nation’s highest court.
Kagan maneuvered carefully on Tuesday through tough Republican questioning on military recruitment at Harvard Law School, gun owners’ rights and free speech, giving little ground to critics and drawing strong praise from Senate Democrats who command the votes to confirm her.
US President Barack Obama’s nominee soldiered through her second day of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee apparently in good shape to win Senate approval — barring a major gaffe — in time to take her seat before the court opens a new term in October. If confirmed, Kagan, 50, would succeed retiring liberal Justice John Paul Stevens.
Republicans who oppose her nomination will need to resort to a filibuster — a legislative maneuver to delay a final confirmation vote, a prospect that seems less and less likely.
Minority Republicans were intent on Tuesday on portraying Kagan as too liberal and inexperienced — having never been a judge — to serve on the Supreme Court, an ideologically divided nine-member panel that interprets the US Constitution, its founding legal document.
However, Kagan tried to assure conservatives that her work as a Clinton White House aide and as Obama’s solicitor general wouldn’t make her a partisan justice.
“It’s all about law when you put on a judge’s robes,” Kagan said. “It’s not about politics, it’s not about policy. It’s all about law and making your best judgment about what the law requires. And that is the pledge that I said is the only pledge I would make yesterday and I’ll make it again now.”
Some Republicans didn’t seem convinced. In a heated back-and-forth, Senator Jeff Sessions accused Kagan of defying federal law by barring military recruiters from Harvard Law School’s career services office because of her strong opposition to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy banning openly gay service members.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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