Jeffrey Lord, at The American Spectator, asks whether or not the Kagan nomination should be a teachable moment for the U.S. about the Obama administration.  I agree with him.  And I wouldn't have a year ago.  I am concerned that the Republicans in the Senate won't have the stomach for such a debate but they need to press on.

"Yes, the White House would surely put up a fierce fight to keep its own appointees from being grilled by Senators -- thus illustrating the point that there is something to hide. They would do everything they possibly could to keep the topic of socialism as far removed from the Senate Judiciary Committee as possible.Which in turn sets up for Team Obama a classic 'lose-lose' proposition.  If socialism is so great, and the nominee is on the written record about this, then let's have the discussion.If the Obama White House and its allies refuse to have the discussion -- the question becomes: what's to hide?"

Read the article here .

Update:  Michael Barone on Kagan and Obama at NRO.  He notices that they fit in on college campuses but not so much in the rest of the world:

"University campuses, far from being open-minded forums of opinion, are the most closed-minded parts of our society, with speech codes and something resembling re-education classes for those who violate them."

Update:  Noonan predicts confirmation but :

"Ms Kagan's nomination has also highlighted America's ambivalence about what we have always said we wanted, a meritocracy. Work hard, be smart,rise. The result is an aristocracy of wired brainiacs, of highly focused, well-credentialed careerists. There's something limited, even creepy, in all this ferocious drive, this well-applied brilliance.There's a sense that everything is abstract to those who succeed in this world, that what they know of life is not grounded in hard experience but absorbed through screens—computer screens, movie screens, TV screens. Our focus on mere brains is creepy, too. Brains aren't everything, heart and soul are something too. We do away with all the deadwood, but even dead trees have a place in the forest."