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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.

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Bob Schieffer asks their Chief Legal Correspondent Jan Crawford about the "recently released" documents from Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's time as a clerk for Judge Thurgood Marshall and Crawford says the memos show Kagan to be much more liberal than the White House is portraying her to be and she slams the White House for acting like there's something wrong with that.

While I agree with her that I don't like the White House pretending that there is anything wrong with being a liberal either, as Media Matters noted after Crawford's appearance on the CBS Evening News, her assumptions about what we can take from her time as Marshall's clerk may not be as cut and dry as she's making them out to be, and those records were not "recently released".

CBS makes a mess of Kagan's record as Thurgood Marshall clerk:

On the CBS Evening News, Jan Crawford distorted memos Elena Kagan wrote as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, falsely painting Kagan as outside the mainstream. [...]

Crawford claimed memos Kagan wrote as a Marshall clerk were "buried," "recently disclosed." During her CBS Evening News report, Crawford said: "[D]ocuments buried in Thurgood Marshall's papers in the Library of Congress show that as a young lawyer, Kagan stood shoulder to shoulder with the liberal left, including on the most controversial issues Supreme Court nominees ever confront." Crawford later described one memo as "recently disclosed" and said "these documents will be much harder for her to explain away than other less controversial papers unearthed before her confirmation hearings for solicitor general."

In fact, Kagan's memos have long been publicly available at the Library of Congress, and she was asked about them during her SG hearing. The memos Kagan wrote as a Marshall clerk have long been available to the general public at the Library of Congress. The library acquired the Thurgood Marshall papers as a gift from Marshall in 1991. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (then a Republican) asked Kagan about the memos during her solicitor general confirmation hearing in 2009, notably describing "a whole series of memos which you [Kagan] sent to Justice Marshall." In his written questions, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) also asked Kagan about a memo she wrote as a Marshall clerk.

Lots more there and it would be nice if Kagan does turn out to be as liberal as Crawford is making her out to be here because as she said, there's not anything wrong with that. After reading the Media Matters report on Crawford's reporting from the other night though, I take her criticisms with a grain of salt.

UPDATE: Media Matters followed up on Crawford's reporting on Schieffer's show.

CBS reporter "baffled" as to why inaccurate Kagan report would upset White House.

Transcript via CBS below the fold.

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Well, here's some of the nonsense we get to look forward to from Republicans during Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination hearings.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told ABC News' "This Week" that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan "violated the law" by not allowing military recruiting on the Harvard Law School campus when she was dean there, and added the issue is "no little-bitty matter."

But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., appearing on "This Week" with Sessions, dismissed the argument as "sound and fury signifying nothing."

The controversy revolves around Kagan's decision to prohibit military recruiting directly on the law school's campus because the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy prohibiting gays from openly serving in the armed forces violated Harvard Law School's anti-discrimination policy.

As Rachel Maddow pointed out last year, the fact that the Republican Party has Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III out there as their point man on the Senate Judiciary Committee replacing Arlen Specter when he retired is just disgusting to begin with given the man's racist past. I've got to wonder if he's going to embarrass himself during Kagan's hearing like he did when Sonia Sotomayor went before his committee. It probably won't be racism this time around that Sessions manages to make an ass out of himself over, but apparently he's getting a head start on lying about her as he did here.

Media Matters has more on Sessions talking point on Kagan and military recruiters that Newt Gingrich was out peddling as well. Imagine that... two Republicans repeating the same talking points and walking in lock step. When has that ever happened before, except every time a Republican opens their mouth?

Gingrich falsely claims "anti-military" Kagan "single[d] out the military" at Harvard:

Kagan did not block the military from campus

Harvard students had access to military recruiters during Kagan's entire tenure as dean. Contrary to Gingrich's claim that Kagan tried to "block the American military from Harvard Law School," throughout Kagan's tenure as dean, Harvard law students had access to military recruiters -- either through Harvard's Office of Career Services or through the Harvard Law School Veterans Association. Kagan became dean of Harvard Law in June 2003 and continued the school's policy of granting the military a special exception to its nondiscrimination policy so that the military could work with the law school's Office of Career Services (OCS).

In accordance with the nondiscrimation policy, Kagan barred OCS from working with military recruiters for the spring 2005 semester after the U.S Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that law schools could legally do so. During that one semester, students still had access to military recruiters via the Harvard Law School Veterans Association. During the fall 2005 semester, after the Bush administration threatened to revoke Harvard's federal funding, Kagan once again granted military recruiters access to OCS. Harvard's data show that Kagan's actions did not adversely affect military recruitment. The notion that military recruitment was adversely affected by Kagan's actions is contradicted by data Media Matters obtained from Harvard Law School's public information officer. The prohibition on Harvard Law's OCS working with military recruiters existed during the spring 2005 semester, meaning that it could have affected only the classes of 2005, 2006, and 2007. However, the number of graduates from each of those classes who entered the military was equal to or greater than the number who entered the military from any of Harvard's previous five classes. Read on...

Pat Leahy did a good job of trying to push back against Sessions b.s. on This Week, not that it's going to make any difference to the Republican noise machine. There are reasons to have issues about Kagan's nomination. This isn't one of them. It's a damn shame the media doesn't do a better job beating back instead of perpetuating this crap so we could spend more time on the issues that do matter. Although I doubt we're going to get any real answers on the ones that do since she's written little about them and she's rightfully not going to answer questions on cases that may come before the court. She'd have to recuse herself if she did.

I don't expect this to be of any comfort to anyone that has reservations about her which I do as well, but no matter what you might have to say about Democratic nominees to the Supreme Court, at least they're not Jeff Sessions. It always astounds me that we get all the carping over the Republican nominees that turned out to be centrist and at least not extreme right wingers and them being called "liberal". Our Villagers in the media have bastardized the label so badly most people don't even understand what it means any more. Kagan looks like an Obama pragmatist to me right now. I hope she moves to the left of what we've seen from her so far because this right wing Supreme Court needs some balance very badly and that's an understatement of how terrible they've been.

Transcript below the fold via ABC.

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Conservatives have slammed a White House video promoting Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as propaganda but Fox News' Brit Hume thinks they should just relax.

Chris Wallace worried Sunday that the video was in danger of resembling a "state run media."

The Weekly Standard's Steve Hayes just sees it as effort to control the message. "There's initial roll-out of Elena Kagan was to make her look like a real person. That was the sort of catch phrase. And they want her to appear as she empathizes with everyday Americans," said Hayes. "That's how they want to sell her. I think this is why they did this."

Juan Williams was even more cynical. "You know what concerns me is this media management. Obviously spin control coming out of the White House, it grows in every administration. But the idea that you put out your own media now and control images -- that gets awful close to Pravda," worried Williams.

One of Fox News' most conservatives pundits found himself in the odd position of defending the Obama administration. "Oh, come on. Let them try it. I mean, it's the White House website. People who go there recognize that this is coming from the White House," argued Hume.

"They had every right to do it and there's no harm," said Hume.

(NICOLE:) Let me see if I have this straight: Fox News, by all accounts a propaganda arm of the Bush White House, is bothered by a PR video on the WH website? The White House isn't pretending this is a "news" item like pretty much every story on Fox News Network for the entire eight years of Bush's presidency. Anyone who sees the video on the site is clear that it's coming from the White House. Could we say the same thing about Fox News? Geez, the cognitive dissonance with these guys must be overwhelming.

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Rachel Maddow weighs in on the overt racism that the GOP and their counterparts in the media don't seem to be too concerned about expressing these days.

BECK: This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seed hatred for white people or the white culture.

LIMBAUGH: Here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman. I think he is genuinely revved up about race. You know me. I think he is genuinely angry in his heart and has been his whole life.

MALKIN: I think he is a racial opportunist.

LIMBAUGH: Look, I had a dream. I had a dream that I was a slave building a sphinx in a desert that looked like Obama.

BECK: He has a problem. He has a - this guy is, I believe, a racist.

LIMBAUGH: And after that, they‘re going to go after Oreos. Might have to put that off until Obama is out of office, but they‘ll eventually go after Oreos.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Now, the racial divide in this country didn‘t disappear when Barack Obama was elected president. And no reasonable person has expected it to. But it is somewhere between eyebrow raising and breathtaking to have such blunt, unvarnished race-baiting so forward in the national discourse right now.

And the type of race baiting to which we‘re subjected is fairly specific and fairly consistent. The argument that the president hates white people, for example, which you just heard Glenn Beck make on Fox News, that it‘s he, the president, who is racist, that argument dovetails perfectly with the arguments made against Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor and the far more genteel setting of the United States Senate.

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Joan Walsh calls out Pat Buchanan for describing Sonia Sotomayor as an "affirmative action" pick and trying to compare her to Harriet Miers. Why does Matthews think anyone cares what this racist, sexist, relic thinks? I swear I think Buchanan has a cot in the MSNBC studio and just sleeps there they have him on so much. Buchanan backs down a bit after Walsh gets onto him and points out Sotomayor's educational background and the number of years she's served as a judge, but mark my words he'll be right back on Morning Joe repeating the same nonsense with Scarborough or one of their other guests chiming in with him.

Pat still hasn't gotten over Nixon getting run out of office. He's always a sure bet to be out there fighting for the poor, downtrodden white man who just hasn't gotten a fair shake in this country.

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David Shuster calls out Republican strategist Chris Wilson for repeating quotes by anonymous sources in Jeffrey Rosen's article at the New Republic to attack Sonia Sotomayor.