There is simply nothing left to add at this point regarding the BP oil spill.  It has easily surpassed Exxon Valdez in size, and while the “top kill” procedure begun Thursday to essentially plug up the hole is so far “on track”, it is not yet “mission accomplished”.  President Obama held a news conference yesterday to address the blame game, who’s-in-charge, the moratorium on new drilling, and answer questions about his rapidly graying hair.  I’d resemble Barbara Bush if I had his job.  How did Reagan keep his from going gray?

An investigation last week turned up a proverbial “smoking gun”, proving that North Korea is to blame for sending a torpedo into a South Korean warship on March 26th, resulting in 46 deaths.  Both sides of the Korean peninsula have shut their doors on each other as tensions mount.  Will instability in the region lead to war?  Is that what Kim Jong Il is after?

There’s a better chance today than there was Wednesday that gays will no longer have to pretend they’re not if they want to serve in the military.  The House voted Thursday to send a defense bill to the Senate which includes an amendment for overturning Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT).  Say it again.  Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Already, some powers that be want to wait until studies on the policy are completed in early December before jumping into this.  It’s been on the books since 1993.  It’s absurd.

Memorial Day is Monday, when we honor those who have died in our nation’s service.  We remember far too many.  Did it surprise anyone else that, with the addition of our National Guard and Reserves, we had nearly enough men and women in the past ten years to fight two wars at the same time?  Without a draft?  Anecdotally, many enlist for lack of other life options.  Some are looking for ways to pay for college.  Other are interested in the rigid discipline of a military life, while thousands upon thousands genuinely want to serve their country, nothing more.

I’m currently reading journalist Sebastian Junger’s book WAR, detailing five months he spent embedded with a combat platoon in Afghanistan.  It’s a macho account and Junger is honest and specific as he details the physical and emotional experiences of these men in the Korengal Valley from June to June, 2007-2008.  What’s stuck in my craw is something he observed early on; the idea that rapidly, the reasons and politics of why and for what these men were fighting were irrelevant.  They were in the armpit of Afghanistan with no electricity, no running water, no phones, where soldiers were encouraged to smoke (if they didn’t already) because there was nothing else to do…except fight.  A shoot-out with the enemy was their sole purpose for being there.  Too many hours without engagement and their lives felt dull, pointless.

Is it possible that war has gone on since the beginning of time because men must fight?

The question is hardly unique, but in addition to reading WAR, I just finished watching HBO’s “The Pacific”.  While World War II had distinct enemies in Japan and Hitler’s Germany, the Taliban has become somewhat elusive in Afghanistan.  Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party were made to disappear quickly in Iraq, but then what?  Both wars will never end in well-defined victory for either side.  War is brutal.  It repels and fascinates simultaneously and it occurred to me that perhaps George W. Bush HAD to go to war because it had been far too long between combat missions.   Honestly, is it in a man’s nature to seek out conflict whether it’s relevant or not?  Is there a physical need to come to blows?

Obviously, not all men are interested in battle.  But historically, one war or another has taken place somewhere on the planet at every point in time.  And for the most part, it’s the men who start them, the men who fight them, the men who win and lose them and the men who die in them.  With humble and great respect for the women killed while in service to our country, on Monday, we’re mostly mourning our sons, brothers, uncles and fathers.  What they’ve done, how they’ve sacrificed, is beyond what I’ll attempt to grasp.  But then I can barely comprehend war because, as a woman, I have no need to battle in ways that could kill me.

As I said, it fascinates me.  I wish it didn’t.

I don't know her, but I like her. Not "like" like her - more in a judicious way.

I couldn’t agree with Elena Kagan more than I do about the comments she made in a 1995 Harvard Law Review article.  Referring to the senate confirmation hearings on Supreme Court Justices, she called the whole thing a “vapid and hollow charade.”  She believed senators should require nominees to talk about their views on legal controversies, like Roe v. Wade.

After having been chosen yesterday by President Obama to replace John Paul Stevens, retiring this summer, one can’t help wonder if Kagan wants to take those words back.  I hope she doesn’t.  Did you watch any of the hearings involving Roberts, Alito or Sotomayor?  “Vapid and hollow” is a gentle description.

Senators with I-speak-so-the-world-may-hear-my-mellifluous-voice syndrome drone on in front of these nominees, eliciting little in the way of revelatory information.  Unless you’ve got Ted Kennedy lambasting Robert Bork as if Bork were Beelzebub, or Anita Hill dropping a few salacious accusations against Clarence Thomas, we’re all in for another yawn fest come July when Kagan faces her own Senate confirmation hearing.

Or maybe not.

As expected, Republican Senators are already talking about holding Kagan to “The Kagan Standard”.  Does that mean instead of softball questions, they’ll be throwing hard fastballs?  Curveballs?  Staying with the sports metaphors, will one of them ask what team she plays for, and how she’d vote if there were a case before the court seeking to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)?

Just last year, Sonia Sotomayor was nominated by President Obama to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.  There was the usual spinning hamster wheel of punditry and opinion, most focusing on these words she’d spoken several times before:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Conservative white men from different corners cried “racist!”  (Really?  Really.)  If they’d taken the time to read the entire speech from which it was culled and they were wise white men, they would’ve understood the point she was trying to make.  In the end, she apologized for her poor choice of words.  She did not, however, apologize for the sentiment behind them.

Sonia Sotomayor is a Latina woman, just as there is no denying Thurgood Marshall was a black man.  Did anyone really believe that when Marshall joined the Supreme Court, he was going to form opinions not influenced by being the grandson of a slave?  Free of any resulting emotion from his denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because he was black?

Not too long ago, the Supreme Court was made up of nine white men.  Though many of them were “wise”, they continued to uphold laws that discriminated by race and gender.  Thurgood Marshall began changing that even before he landed in the Supreme Court in 1967, but his inclusion began a leveling of the playing field in the country’s highest court.

In the 1980s, Sandra Day O’Connor gave the court its first female justice and, though a conservative (and a registered Republican), it was her deciding vote that prevented Roe v. Wade from being overturned.  Whether she liked it or not, or would admit to it, being a woman influenced her decision.  How could it not?  Her opinion came from the mind of a woman.

Over and over, senators from the opposing party of the nominating President seek to prove that, in fact, the nominee is NOT a judicial eunuch, which they pretend to seek.  Ridiculous! To judge is to form an opinion.  Opinions are based on evidence and interpretation.  No one can interpret free from the brain inside his or her head.  I have a Venus brain and so, when lost, will ask for directions.  The Mars brain will simply drive around in circles.  Venus and Mars may both get to the same destination, eventually, but let’s not pretend who we are doesn’t affect how we get there.

So, Elena Kagan.  Oh, go ahead Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative Committee for Justice, and get the pot stirring by claiming that “millions of Americans will be outraged when they learn that Obama has picked a Supreme Court nominee with a demonstrated hostility to the very armed forces that make our freedom and constitutional rights possible.”  (Really?  Really.)  The facts: Harvard has an anti-discrimination policy.  The military discriminates against gays with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, so the school doesn’t provide assistance to the Armed Forces when they come onto campus to recruit.  The policy was in place before Kagan became dean of the law school.  She didn’t touch it.  The Armed Forces still recruit at Harvard.  They just don’t get help from the Crimson.  Does that mean that Kagan spits in the military’s face?  No.  Maybe she just doesn’t agree with any kind of discrimination.

Hmmmm.  I wonder why?  Is it just because she’s an evolved human or because she’s felt the sting of being singled out, and not in a good way?  Will she uphold Roe v. Wade out of judicial respect and precedent or because she has a uterus?  Will she vote to overturn DOMA because it’s a form of discrimination or because she knows that homosexuality is not a choice one makes?  I sense she’d apply all these reasons in forming her opinions.  I’d like to think come summer, we’ll be able to listen as she openly shares her views on hypothetical cases that might come before the court.  I live in a dream world.

I want the next Supreme Court justice to be confirmed because of who they are, not because they’ve successfully convinced us that who they are will not affect how they judge.