We normally don’t get involved in political things like the Elena Kagan confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, but I watched and listened to a YouTube video of testimony given by Army Captain Pete Hegseth in the Elena Kagan confirmation hearing in the U.S. Senate that convinced me that the Senate should reject her nomination to the court.  The Captain’s statements really hit home with me as a military veteran.

Captain Hegseth is a graduate of Princeton University and is pursuing a masters degree at Harvard University.  He is an Iraq war veteran now serving  as an infantry officer in the Massachusetts Army National Guard.  Please watch the video.  The crux of the Captain’s argument against Elena Hagan is:

  1. The U.S. is a nation at war.
  2. Our enemy wants to destroy us.
  3. Kagan’s actions with respect to banning military recruiters at Harvard were unbecoming a civic leader and a nominee for the Supreme Court.
  4. Kagan refused to allow military recruiters to recruit at Harvard because of the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy.
  5. Kagan’s action “prevented the military from having equal access to top notch recruits during a time of war.”
  6. “We’re nominating someone who unapologetically obstructed the military in a time of war?”
  7. She impeded, rather than empowered “the warriors who have fought and fallen for this county?
  8. Although Kagan talks nice about the military, “actions always speak louder than words.”
  9. “Miss Kagan’s actions toward recruiters with wars raging overseas undercut the military’s ability to fight and win wars and they trump her rhetorical explanation.”
  10. “In 2004 . . . Miss Kagan took the law into her own hands blocking military recruiters in direct violation of law.”
  11. Kagan said she opposes the military’s discriminatory recruitment policy, “but as a legal scholar she know better.  She knows the policy she abhors is not the military’s policy, but a policy enacted by Congress and imposed on the military.”
  12. While at Harvard Kagan invited and met with numerous members of Congress who voted for the don’t ask, don’t tell law.
  13. Harvard law school has three chairs endowed by Saudi Arabia which executes gays.

“The real moral injustice in granting a lifetime appointment is someone who when it matters most, treated military recruiters as like second class citizens.”