OUR TWO REPUBLICAN PARTIES:

One irony of President Obama's nomination today of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court is that the effect of a Democratic president filling the seat of Republican-appointed Justice John Paul Stevens will likely be to make the Court more conservative. [...]

"Among the most disturbing aspects" of Kagan's record, wrote left-liberal commentator Glenn Greenwald in Salon, "is her testimony during her Solicitor General confirmation hearing, where she agreed wholeheartedly with [Republican Senator] Lindsey Graham about the rightness of the core Bush/Cheney Terrorism template: namely, that the entire world is a 'battlefield,' that 'war' is the proper legal framework for analyzing all matters relating to terrorism, and the government can therefore indefinitely detain anyone captured on that 'battlefield' (i.e., anywhere in the world without geographical limits) who is accused (but not proven) to be an 'enemy combatant.'"

Likewise, as Solicitor General, she has forcefully championed Obama's continuation of Bush's long-term detention without trial of Guantanamo prisoners; of Bush's detention of prisoners in Afghanistan with no judicial review at all; and of Bush's use of the "state secrets" doctrine to fend off lawsuits over Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. Kagan has also apparently helped shape Obama's plan to use congressionally revamped military commissions to try some terrorism suspects and other broad claims of presidential power.

Of course, it is Kagan's job as Solicitor General to defend Obama's policies even if she disagrees with them. But she has given no hint that she disagrees.

Commentators on the left also complain that Kagan never compiled much of a record of aggressively championing liberal causes during her years as a law professor. Some say she was too friendly as dean of Harvard Law School to conservatives and did not recruit as many women and minorities for the faculty as diversitycrats desired.

Speaking as a moderate independent, I like everything about Kagan that the left dislikes. To borrow from my friend Harvey Silverglate, a leading Boston lawyer who champions both civil liberties and an old-fashioned liberal's brand of political incorrectness, "they want people who look different but think alike."

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