Political Quotes

“Madam President, let me start by first expressing my appreciation to Senator Leahy and Senator Sessions. I have the honor of serving on the Judiciary Committee, and I think our leadership--our chairman, Senator Leahy, and our ranking Republican member, Senator Sessions--conducted the confirmation process in the best tradition of the Senate. We had 4 days of hearings before the Judiciary Committee. Every member of the committee was afforded ample opportunity to question Solicitor General Kagan on a far range of issues, and we got complete responses. We had chances for followup questions. We even had a third round of questioning. We had outside witnesses who were before our committee. We had a chance to ask them questions as third-party validators. We also went through tens of thousands of pages of documents. This was a very thorough confirmation process, a very open confirmation process, and a very fair confirmation process. I do thank Senator Sessions, the ranking Republican member, for the way he cooperated with Senator Leahy to make sure the Senate did its business in getting a full record before voting to confirm Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Solicitor General Elena Kagan has the experience, the intelligence, the integrity, and the temperament to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As to her experience, she was the first woman Solicitor General in the history of our Nation.…”