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The Daily Show's Jon Stewart had a field day with the opponents of gay marriage at this week's Supreme Court hearings on the Defense of Marriage Act, starting with Paul Clement, the lawyer hired by House Republicans, who was called out by Justice Elena Kagan when he attempted to make the claim that the law wasn't based on bigotry.

After playing some of the back and forth between Clement and Kagan, Stewart gave the audience a reminder of just what the House Republicans sounded like back in 1996, before playing the audio of Kagan reading from the actual House report which said "Congress decided to reflect and honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality." As Stewart noted, "with moral arguments no longer available to opponents of same-sex marriage, what's left for the conservatives to argue?"

Cue the idiocy of Justice Scalia, who made this ridiculous claim:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Cooper, let me — let me give you one — one concrete thing. I don’t know why you don’t mention some concrete things. If you redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, you must — you must permit adoption by same-sex couples, and there’s – there’s considerable disagreement among — among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a — in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not. Some States do not — do not permit adoption by same-sex couples for that reason.

As Stewart rightfully noted in the segment, no, there's not.

And then there was Justica Alito's equally ridiculous remark that the issue of gay marriage is "newer than cellphones or the Internet."

STEWART: No, we want you to step in and render a decision based on whether it's right, fair and just under the Constitution, having nothing to do with its "newness" and what you think might happen. Which by the way, what do you think might happen? That they'll discover letting two ladies get married is going to rip open a hole in the ozone layer? And I've got news for you. Gay marriage will definitely cause less national harm than cell phones or the Internet.

But here's the thing that we're pretty sure you don't have to do. You don't have to beta test rights. Black people have only been here fifty years. I mean, let's see how the Netherlands does with them before we lift some barriers.

Stewart did have one hope that the justices might be moved by one thing though, and that's the "mother f**king injustice" of Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the case, being forced to pay estate taxes and their concern "about the heartbreak, that is double taxation."

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Al Sharpton did a good job this Wednesday of going after Fox for their ridiculous attacks on Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, claiming that she should recuse herself from the upcoming hearings on the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act. This Thursday on Fox's America Live, even Megyn Kelly was throwing cold water on Sen. Jeff Sessions latest assertions as to why she should not be allowed to hear the case.

SESSIONS: Megyn, the key thing in those emails was the clear evidence that she directed her chief deputy, her personal deputy to take charge of the legal defense of the health care bill after it passed while she was Solicitor General. And therefore she made decisions in the legal defense of this bill.

And you're a lawyer, but you know, in a law firm, if a superior lawyer directs a subordinate to take a position in a case and begin work on it, they can't then appoint a judge to sit on that case. So I think...

KELLY: So let me ask you about that Senator, because, what should she have done? She was the Solicitor General. She couldn't have taken it knowing that she was possibly going to be on the short list for the Supreme Court. She had to give it to somebody else.

SESSIONS: Absolutely, but then you can't sit on the case. That's the question. I'm not saying she did anything wrong in commencing the legal preparation to defend the health care bill. That was perfectly alright for her. But once she's done that, she's involved herself in the litigation and is not normally, any private lawyer would not be able to sit on the case. Don't you think?

KELLY: Uh, we'll be talking about that on O'Reilly tonight, but I think you've got an uphill battle with that one Senator.

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Politics Nation's Al Sharpton went after Fox for their continued drum beat to have Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan recuse herself from the upcoming hearing on the whether the individual mandate is constitutional and ignoring Justices Scalia and Thomas and Thomas' wife Ginni and their many conflicts of interest in hearing the case, the latest being a fundraising dinner they attended with opponents of the health care law.

Here's more from Media Matters on Fox's ridiculous attacks on Kagan -- Fox Cites Non-Existent Part Of The Constitution To Hype Argument For Kagan Recusal:

For the second day in a row, Fox's "straight news" division has hyped the claim that U.S Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from the case involving the constitutionality of a provision of the Affordable Care Act. Fox pointed to an email Kagan sent to then-Justice Department adviser Laurence Tribe on the day the House of Representatives passed the Affordable Care Act in which Kagan said, "I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing."

Legal ethicists have thrown cold water on the argument that Kagan needs to recuse herself over that email. But Fox seems to have an argument that the legal ethicists haven't thought of: Fox national correspondent Steve Centanni said Kagan's recusal may be required by "Article 28 of the Constitution." Fox's graphics department provided the relevant quote from the "U.S. Constitution, Article 28, Sec. 144":

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It appears CBS has themselves a good little Republican water-carrier in the form of their legal correspondent Jan Crawford. Crawford apparently thinks that the Supreme Court has been politicized not by the fact that our court now is one of the most right wing, pro-corporate courts in history, but instead politicized because the Democrats had problems with the nomination of Sam Alito.

I hate to break it to Jan Crawford but if the Supreme Court looks politicized right now, that's because it is. It's extremely politicized in that everything corporate America does is right and anyone opposing that power is wrong. And you don't have to have the mentality of a 12 year old to hope to see that trend reversed and to know that Alito and Roberts were going to do nothing but continue to take the court in the direction that favors the corporate elite above average citizens.

Quite frankly I don't think most Americans are even paying attention to the hearings now, didn't pay attention to Sam Alito's nomination and couldn't tell you how many votes Alito got. I don't think sadly most Americans can even tell you who's on the Supreme Court and who nominated them, much less how many votes they got when they were confirmed.

What I can tell you is that even the people I work with that don't follow politics much do know that the Supreme Court just gave corporations the right to buy our elections, and don't like it.

Media Matters has done a good job of following Crawford's hackery and given her past reporting, this newest clap-trap of comparing Senators who had legitimate concerns about where a nominee is taking the Supreme Court to 12 year olds shouldn't come as much of a surprise. She looks like she's getting her talking points right out of the latest RNC email of the day.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis below the fold.

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The Huffington Post's Jason Linkins talks to Rachel Maddow about the fringe groups that the Republicans have resorted to using to oppose Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court. Jason wrote about one of those characters in this article at the HuffPo.

Witnesses Against Kagan Include Head Of Conspiracy-Mad Law Firm:

On Thursday, the confirmation process of Elena Kagan will enter the stage where the Senate Judiciary Committee will entertain witnesses both in favor of and opposed to Kagan's nomination. Of particular interest is one witness who will be testifying against Kagan, William J. Olson, Esq. of William J. Olson, P.C. -- a law firm that is heavily involved in all sorts of conservative cause celebres, from the standard-issue, to the totally bonkers. Read on...

And there's more as Rachel explained in the opening portion of the segment.

MADDOW: Attorney William J. Olson. If you go to the Web site for Mr. Olson’s law practice right now, you can see that among the expertise he brings to bear on a Supreme Court nomination is his propounding of a conspiracy theory that Obama-care might secretly be a mind control plot. Mr. Olson’s co-counsel in his firm, Herb Titus, is cited in an article on the Web site, World Net Daily, that’s titled, quote, "Obama-care’s control plan: behavioral modification."

That’s the sort of thing that is being promoted on William Olson law firm Web site, because presumably the John Birch society wasn’t available to testify today against Kagan.

Today at "The Huffington Post," Jason Linkins took a deeper look into William Olson, again, one of the Republican witnesses today against Elena Kagan. It turns out he is way more kookier than just Obama-care mind control. For instance, he’s representing an organization called the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, which is worried that the U.S. government has been secretly flooding the market with gold from Fort Knox in order to keep its value low.

His law firm is also representing Daniel Chapter One, a Christian ministry that ran afoul of the FTC for running advertisements for miracle cancer cures with web headlines like, "Brain Tumor Gone!" Or as Jason Linkins puts it, "Jesus Will Cure Your Cancer with Food Supplements."

In my whole lifetime, Supreme Court nomination battles have been clash of the titans, big-hitting political battles. They’ve been the high point on the political calendar no matter what else is going on that year, even elections. And this time around, it’s really not like that.

And William Olson is what the Republican forces against Elena Kagan look like. What does that mean exactly?

Joining us now is "Huffington Post’s" Jason Linkins.

Jason, it’s really nice to see you. Thanks for being here on the show.

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As Blue Texan at FDL noted, Al Franken laid waste to the GOP's anti-Thurgood Marshall Campaign and as they called it, their minority outreach program. Franken gives his "good friend" Lindsey Graham and the Republicans a little history lesson on what an "activist judge" is and why Justice Thurgood Marshall wasn't one of them.

Franken: You said there are three things that judges hold to when they’re not activists. You said that they respect precedent. They make narrow decisions and they defer to the political branches, in other words the legislature. And there are a lot of recent cases that we’ve been talking about that instinctively strike me and a lot of other people as falling outside of these three guidelines. And I think that in these cases the Supreme Court was legislating from the bench, which is being activist.

Franken goes on to discuss why the decisions in Circuit City v. Adams, Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Rent-a-Center v. Jackson, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS Inc., the Supreme Court would have fit into Kagan’s guidelines of what would define an “activist court” and noted that Republicans all “seem to like” those decisions. He went on to explain why there is no way that Brown v. Board of Education should be lumped in with those other cases and how it was “an exemplar of overturning a precedent that needed to be overturned.”

Franken: There are certain situations where the Supreme Court really should subject the law to a heightened scrutiny and this is what I think Justice Marshall was talking about when he said that the court should show “special solicitude for the despised and disadvantaged, the people who went unprotected by every other organ of government and who had no other champion.”

Now in the opening statements you were criticized for admiring Justice Marshall for believing this, but I actually think that this belief, Justice Marshall’s belief is just good, Constitutional law.

Are you familiar with Carolene Products… Carolene Products case of 1938?

Kagan: Yes sir.

Franken: Are you familiar with Footnote Four of that decision?

Kagan: Yes sir.

Franken: And you’re familiar with that because the footnote’s really important, isn’t it? It’s often taught in Constitutional law classes, whether they be in the first year or the second year or the third year, right?

Kagan: It is.

Franken: Can you tell me what that footnote says and why it’s important?

Kagan: Senator it seems as though you have it in front of you and you’re going to do a better job of it than I am at this moment.

Franken: You’re a mind reader. Footnote Four basically says that when courts interpret the Constitution and try to figure out whether a law complies with the Constitution, courts should give special scrutiny to laws that violate a specific part of the Constitution, that restrict the political process and that affect “religious, national, racial and discrete and insular minorities” who have a really hard time getting help through the normal political process.

Now to me discrete and insular minorities sounds a lot like the despised and disadvantaged that go unprotected and have no other champion. Is it safe to say that Justice Marshall’s belief is consistent with Carolene Products?

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It looks like Jeff Sessions, Jon Kyl and Lindsey Graham's attacks on Thurgood Marshall during the Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination hearing were even too much for Joe Scarborough to stomach. As Scarborough noted, it might not be such a good political strategy to look like you want to see Brown v. Board of Education over turned.

h/t Media Matters

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Good old Sen. Jeff Sessions who joined his fellow Republicans with deciding that attacking Elena Kagan for her association with "activist judge" Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court also decided it was a good idea to defend Bush's choice of Harriet Miers for the high court while deriding Elena Kagan as someone with the least "real legal experience of any nominee in at least 50 years and not just that the nominee has not been a judge."

John King actually gets Sessions to admit that although he didn't think Miers was the best choice for the Supreme Court, he was going to let her through because he was "being nice to a Republican president. Ben Cardin pointed out the Republicans disregard for Kagan's role as solicitor general. I've got a lot of reasons I didn't like Miers but the main concern for me was that she worked as a union buster and what that would mean when it came to her ruling on decisions that affected labor in the United States. I'm sure Jeff Sessions wouldn't have had any problems with that sort of "activism."

Jeff Sessions and his Republican cohorts apparently haven't learned that playing the race card when it makes you look like the huge flaming racist that you are, and calling the extremely smart woman who worked with the Supreme Court in a position that is often called the "tenth Justice" unqualified might not be the best strategy if you don't want to look like you're just playing partisan politics for political gain and hoping what's left of your racist and sexist base finds it appealing.

Transcript below the fold.

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Jeff Sessions is terribly concerned about Elena Kagan's "liberal leanings", claims that "she has the least experience of any nominee, at least in the last fifty years" and says that "if things come out that indicate she’s so far outside the mainstream--it’s conceivable a filibuster might occur."

Here he is with CBS's Bob Schieffer:

SCHIEFFER: Well, how far are you going to go with this? I mean, could a filibuster-- the option of-- of Republicans filibustering this nomination. Is that still on the table? Is that still possible?

SESSIONS: I think the first thing we need to decide is, is she committed to the rule of law even if she may not like the law? Will she as a judge subordinate herself to the constitution and keep her political views at bay? And then, secondly, if things come out that indicate she’s so far outside the mainstream--it’s conceivable a filibuster might occur. The Senate rule that our Democrats led us to establish was that you shouldn’t filibuster except in extraordinary circumstances. I think that’s a legitimate rule and that will be what I would judge as to whether a filibuster is necessary.

Of course there's no one I'd rather hear from about someone's qualifications to be nominated to any court than Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III who Rachel Maddow laid bare in this segment for his racist past. From Sessions' Wiki page:

In 1986, Reagan nominated Sessions to be a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. Sessions was actively backed by Alabama Senator Jeremiah Denton, a Republican. The nomination of Sessions was first sent to the Senate for confirmation on October 23, 1985, and was resubmitted on January 29, 1986. A substantial majority of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which rates nominees to the federal bench, rated Sessions "qualified," with a minority voting that Sessions was "not qualified." [5]

At Sessions' confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, four Department of Justice lawyers who had worked with Sessions testified that he had made several racist statements. One of those lawyers, J. Gerald Hebert, testified that Sessions had referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as "un-American" and "Communist-inspired" because they "forced civil rights down the throats of people."[6] Hebert said that Sessions had a tendency to "pop off" on such topics frequently and had once called a white civil rights lawyer who dealt with voting rights suits a "disgrace to his race."[7]

Thomas Figures, a black Assistant U.S. Attorney, testified that Sessions said he thought the Klan was "OK until I found out they smoked pot."[8] Figures also testified that on one occasion, when the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division sent the office instructions to investigate a case that Sessions had tried to close, Figures and Sessions "had a very spirited discussion regarding how the Hodge case should then be handled; in the course of that argument, Mr. Sessions threw the file on a table, and remarked, 'I wish I could decline on all of them,'" by which Figures said Sessions meant civil rights cases generally. After becoming Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, Sessions was asked in an interview about his civil rights record as a U.S Attorney. He denied that he had not sufficiently pursued civil rights cases, saying that "when I was [a U.S. Attorney], I signed 10 pleadings attacking segregation or the remnants of segregation, where we as part of the Department of Justice, we sought desegregation remedies."[9]

Figures also said that Sessions had called him "boy." He also testified that "Mr. Sessions admonished me to 'be careful what you say to white folks.'"[10]

Sessions responded to the testimony by denying the allegations, saying his remarks were taken out of context or meant in jest, and also stating that groups could be considered un-American when "they involve themselves in un-American positions" in foreign policy. Sessions said during testimony that he considered the Klan to be "a force for hatred and bigotry." In regards to the marijuana quote, Sessions said the comment was a joke but apologized.[11]

The Republicans must be so proud to have this guy as their point man on judicial nominations. In the world of the Jeff Sessions out there, having even an inkling of liberal leanings is a mortal sin to maybe bring this extremely right wing court back to the center. Apparently for the GOP, putting out someone with Sessions background to question her qualifications isn't a problem, but her lack of experience as a judge is.

Quite frankly I'll take someone with Kagan's experience rather than the likes of a Jeff Sessions to be nominated to a high court any day of the week even though I'd prefer someone way to the left of Kagan. Anyone I'd be really happy with would probably never make it past a Republican filibuster.

It's too bad our media doesn't remind the public of what this man's background is when they bring him on for commentary such as this. If that were the case maybe Republicans would think twice before allowing racist hacks like Sessions to be nominated as their ranking member on the Judiciary Committee in the Senate.

Transcript via CBS below the fold.

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As Rachel noted, the media and the GOP establishment have been pretty quiet about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan lately but that hasn't stopped some of the more extreme on the right from keeping up the attacks. Kent Jones reports on how the right has been trying to paint her as wanting to put the U.S. under Sharia law.

Right Wing Watch has more on this nonsense.

The Pathetic Desperation of the Anti-Kagan Campaign:

Because the Right has very little ammunition against Elena Kagan heading into her confirmation hearings next week, they have been desperately trying to make up "controversies" that they can try to use against her.

Which is why a donation made by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal to Harvard University to establish an Islamic Studies program at the time that Kagan was Dean of Harvard Law School has been transformed into a right-wing claim that Kagan supports Sharia Law and "the enemy" while hating our troops.

So I guess it was only a matter of time until we started seeing things like this in Frank Gaffney's column in The Washington Times:

Hats off to Sen. Jeff Sessions. The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee has opened up an important new front in the debate over Solicitor General Elena Kagan's fitness to serve on the Supreme Court: her attitude toward the repressive legal code authoritative Islam calls Shariah and her enabling of efforts to insinuate it into this country.

By so doing, the Alabama legislator has given his colleagues and the country an opportunity not only to flesh out and evaluate the thin public record of President Obama's second nominee to a lifetime appointment on the nation's highest court but also afforded us all what Mr. Obama might call a "teachable moment."

Specifically, this Supreme Court nomination offers a prism for examining the concerted and ominous campaign under way to bring Shariah to America, thanks to the troubling role Ms. Kagan played during her tenure as dean of Harvard Law School.

And from Think Progress's Wonk Room.

Sessions Takes The Low Road Against Kagan:

Speaking on the Senate floor yesterday, Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) brought the debate over Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan substantially closer to the gutter by invoking the dread specter of ISLAMIC SHARIA LAW.

“New information has come to light,” Sessions ominously intoned, “suggesting that Ms. Kagan may even have been less morally principled in her approach than has been portrayed.”

...The idea that learning about Islamic faith and culture is, in and of itself, a form of indoctrination into extremism is a common trope on the goofball right. Unsurprisingly, World Net Daily is already touting the Sessions speech, likely soon to be followed by Commentary, the Weekly Standard, National Review, and Frank Gaffney claiming that Elena Kagan “may still be a Muslim.”

Honestly, I’m really not sure what’s more troubling here, the idea that the study of Islam necessarily connotes/inculcates support for Islamic extremism, or that Sessions thinks the conservative base is ignorant and bigoted enough to believe this. Or that he may be right.

And as Media Matters noted, The Washington Times fabricated a photo of Kagan in a turban in an attempt to tie her to Shariah.

Anyone who publishes anything Frank Gaffney has to say without huge warnings that neocon hackery is about to follow should not be allowed to pretend they're a "news" organization. Just shameful. Putting up a picture of a Supreme Court nominee in a turban to accompany that article puts them into Murdoch New York Post territory.