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Obama's team also highlighted Kagan's stance as a White House lawyer in favor of protecting religious expression. They downplayed her involvement in the scandals of the Clinton White House and kept private many of her memos and notes regarding the president's defense in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit that touched off his impeachment. Only the 19 senators on the Judiciary panel and a small cadre of their senior aides got access to those and other sensitive files
-- more than 1,000 pages worth so far -- dubbed "committee confidential" because the public won't get to see them. Obama chose the 50-year-old Kagan last month to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. The former Harvard Law School dean stepped aside from her post as solicitor general to focus on winning confirmation. It's all but certain that she will be confirmed by a Senate where Democrats have a comfortable majority and Republicans have shown little inclination to mount a filibuster to block her. Kagan has been spending her days making one-on-one visits to the senators who will vote on her confirmation
-- always with a small entourage of aides in tow, including Associate White House Counsel Susan Davies, Legislative Affairs aide Christopher Kang, and often one or two other minders from the ranks of Obama's lawyers and Hill strategists. They're there to take note of what's said in preparation for Kagan's marathon week of hearings later this month, as well as to track her every private utterance to a senator, in case anyone might try to mischaracterize a remark later.
As endorsements of Kagan roll in, Obama's team times their public release to ensure a steady drumbeat of support for her, and makes sure to highlight conservative backing for a nominee the GOP portrays as reflexively liberal. That was the case this week when 69 law school deans wrote to the Judiciary panel endorsing Kagan. No prominent conservative signed the letter. But when the White House arranged a conference call for reporters to discuss it, aides recruited Joseph D. Kearney, the conservative dean of Marquette University Law School (who doesn't as a practice sign group endorsements) to chime in on Kagan's behalf. They also invited a conservative Harvard Law School alumna to join other former students last month on a call praising Kagan's work as dean. Asked repeatedly whether she would back Kagan if she had a vote, the woman, Sarah Isgur, demurred, and a White House aide quickly jumped in to inform her she didn't need to answer the question. Isgur got back to reporters later with her response: Kagan is qualified, she e-mailed, and, "Were I a senator, I would vote to confirm her based on that belief."
[Associated
Press;
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