Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has announced he will vote against current Solicitor General Elena Kagan's confirmation to the United States Supreme Court. Saying Ms. Kagan does not live up to the judicial philosophy that "the law must control the judge; the judge must not control the law," Senator Hatch will join at least several other Republicans in officially opposing her lifetime appointment to the high court.

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While this news will most likely have no effect on Ms. Kagan's confirmation, Senator Hatch's statement does give the mainstream media at least one more chance to do their job with regard to President Barack Obama's latest inept decision. The statement reads:

I have carefully examined Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s record, actively participated in the entire Judiciary Committee hearing, and considered the views of supporters and opponents from Utah and across the country. Qualifications for judicial service include both legal experience and, more importantly, the appropriate judicial philosophy. The law must control the judge; the judge must not control the law. I have concluded that, based on evidence rather than blind faith, General Kagan regrettably does not meet this standard and that, therefore, I cannot support her appointment.

Supreme Court Justices who, like General Kagan, had no prior judicial experience did have an average of 21 years in private legal practice. General Kagan has two. The fact that her experience is instead academic and political only magnifies my emphasis on judicial philosophy as the most important qualification for judicial service.

Over nearly 25 years, General Kagan has endorsed, and praised those who endorse, an activist judicial philosophy. I was surprised when she encouraged us at the hearing simply to discard or ignore certain parts of her record. I am unable to do that. I also cannot ignore disturbing situations in which it appears that her personal or political views drove her legal views. She promoted the Clinton administration’s extreme position on abortion, including the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion.

As Dean of Harvard Law School, she blocked the access by military recruiters that federal law requires. And she took legal positions on important issues such as freedom of speech that could undermine the liberties of all Americans.

General Kagan is a good person, a skilled political lawyer, a brilliant scholar, and was a fine law school dean. I like her personally and I supported her to be Solicitor General. But applying the standard I have always used for judicial nominees, I cannot support her appointment to the Supreme Court. (source)

To this point the Kagan nomination, senate committee hearings and upcoming vote has been covered as nothing more than a rubber stamp of President Obama's choice; a well coordinated dance between two branches of government under single party rule and a mainstream media that just seems happy to have been invited to the ball. But Senator Hatch, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that held four days of hearings on the nomination, is refusing to waltz through the process. Instead he is speaking out so that the American people may actually hear the facts about the nominee: virtually an entire career spent in academia and politics endorsing an activist judicial philosophy and a long list of documented positions that, if held by a Supreme Court Justice, could undermine the liberties of all Americans.

Will Senator Hatch's words even be heard above the Obama Band or will the mainstream media just keep dancing to this administration's off key tune?