listening to the kagan hearings on my way to teach. well you know she seems ok, but she's not sweating brilliance as one sometimes thought in the buildup. but she seems comparable to sotomayor, for example: similar really. kohl actually sounded exasperated with her: "what is your passion? what do you really care about?" "deciding cases one at a time on their merits." really? sessions can be an unbelievably incoherent partisan twit, just endlessly repeating the same one idea about whether judges should legislate. but his questioning on the harvard military recruitment thing was quite pointed and probably pretty effective in focusing criticism; he seemed to know a lot about it.