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Have You No Sense of Decency? Let Elena Kagan Use the Bathroom!

By Bruce Carton

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is in Day 3 of her confirmation hearings, and has reportedly held up well thus far. The Christian Science Monitor reports that in particular, Kagan's sense of humor has been on full display during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings this week. (For example: Sen. Graham -- "I just asked you where you were on Christmas?"; Kagan, laughing out loud -- "You know, like all Jews, I was probably in a Chinese restaurant.") But one, perhaps even more important, attribute that Kagan will need to survive her hearings has received very little attention: the ability to sit for hours without ever taking a bathroom break. Bob Fuss of CBS News reports that Congress has a "bizarre practice of making witnesses testify for hours without a bathroom break." Many hearings, Fuss writes, "can be confrontational and there are always power issues and witnesses don't like to show weakness by asking to take a bathroom break and they are almost never offered." Indeed, on June 15, 2010, General David Petraeus was testifying before Congress when he "turned pale, seemed to lose his train of thought and then crumpled onto the table." After seeing a doctor and after a...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on June 30, 2010 (boomark / email).