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Over at Talking Points Memo, they've compiled a list of the top 5 interesting questions being posed to Elena Kagan by Senate Republicans, and it makes for some ...um...interesting reading:

TPM read through the dozens of questions and answers so you don't have to. While most of the answers were a little, well, dry, we've collected the Top 5 most noteworthy below.

1. Um, still not a socialist.

In his questions for the record, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) asked Kagan about her thesis, titled, "To The Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933."

"I assume you are familiar with the tenets and beliefs of socialists," Coburn wrote. "Please explain what the limits of government are in a socialist state."

Kagan's response:

Other than writing an undergraduate thesis on a single aspect of the history of the American Socialist Party, I have not explored in any significant way the tenets or beliefs of socialists. My general view is that the role of government in a socialist state is more extensive than in a state based on free markets.

He asked a follow up, to which she responded, "Please see above. The role of a judge in interpreting the Constitution is to analyze cases based on legal sources, not political beliefs."

2. I'm expected to remember all the dumb memos I wrote?

Ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) asked Kagan about her own comments about one of her memos about teen pregnancy prevention while clerking for Justice Thurgood Marshall. During her 2009 confirmation hearings for solicitor general, Kagan said the memo was "deeply mistaken" and "the dumbest thing I ever read." Sessions asked Kagan, "Was this the only memorandum you wrote for Justice Marshall that you believe is 'deeply mistaken'?"

Kagan wrote Sessions that since "more than two decades ago" she wrote more than 500 memos for Marshall, "I am sure that more than one was mistaken."

Asked about others that might have been "mistaken," Kagan said she hasn't reviewed every memo. "Of those I have seen, the memo about Bowen v. Kendrick seems the 'dumbest.'"

3. How about a transnationalist? You one of those?

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) detailed Obama appointee Harold Koh's beliefs on transnationalism and asked Kagan if she is one. (Koh, a top lawyer for the State Department, riles up conservatives. For more, read this.)

Kagan's reply:

I would not characterize myself using Professor Koh's categories, which I do not find particularly helpful in thinking about the issues involving foreign or international law that are likely to come before the Court. I have never used these terms for any purpose.

For the numbers 4 & 5, you'll just have to click on over to TPM.

Interesting what's going on behind the scenes, eh?

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