Orrin Hatch, R-Utah

Read Michelle Malkin’s reasons to vote against Hatch list. Most of it boils down to “he says nice things about Democrats.” That is bad and wrong, because Democrats are evil. So Hatch learned to abandon his entire life of being respectful and civil, as he was presumably brought up to be, in favor of lashing out angrily all the time and being “fiery.”

Use swears.

Orrin called the democratic healthcare reform plan “an awful piece of crap” and a dumb-ass program. Hatch is a 77-year-old Mormon, I don’t think he’s supposed to be talking like that?

Stop cooperating!

Being civil is what got Hatch into this mess in the first place, so while the healthcare negotiations dragged on, Hatch took to disingenuously bemoaning the absence of his good friend, the then-ailing Ted Kennedy, whose presence would’ve apparently magically made the bill more palatable. This allowed Hatch to have his cake of not cooperating while eating his cake of thinking of himself as something more respectable than a miserable old party functionary no longer allowed to stray from party dogma lest he lose the cushy position that has come to define his life since he’ll never make it onto the Supreme Court. So he joined the Senate GOP in making 60 votes the new standard for getting any business at all done, while pretending it had always been thus.

Suck up to the Tea Parties

They really love nothing more than to be flattered, the small angry minority of far-right Christian wingnuts who have declared themselves a grass-roots populist movement, and so Hatch pretends the people who screamed insults and threats at him last year are different from the wonderful Tea Partyers he has always supported.

“Rude” town hall attendees who had shouted at him last summer, he declared, “were not tea party people,” they were “other party people.”

Raise a shitload of money

And make it hard for your Tea people opponent to do the same. This seems to be what actually scared Chaffetz off, and it is obviously good advice for anyone running for anything.

So after you’ve finished spending the better part of a year completely discarding your entire carefully crafted public image as a gentleman legislator of the old school, make sure you have millions of dollars. Now you’re probably mostly safe from an insurgent candidate!

Reid is going to attach the DREAM Act to defense appropriation bill, which is a common, slightly dirty trick that represents one of the few ways to get anything voted on in our stupid Senate.

This bill would only help young, American-educated model citizens. Only about 825,000 people would probably become citizens. The act was proposed — in 2001! — by Republican Orrin Hatch. Even those lovable, Democrat-hating cranks at Reason like the bill. In 2007, Hatch and Bob Bennett voted to add the act to the defense authorization bill.

And this year, of course, Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett will vote against the bill. And John McCain will block the defense appropriations bill if it includes shamnesty for innocent children or allows patriotic gay Americans to serve their country in the military.

It’s obviously cynical to attach this bill to the defense appropriations on the eve of the midterm elections, but if cynical electioneering is the only way to get things done, I’ll take it. Hatch, however, will not.

“Senator Hatch doesn’t support cynical political stunts,” spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier said in a statement. “This defense bill shouldn’t be held hostage to unrelated measures that have no chance of becoming law. He believes we need to keep working to regain the American people’s trust by securing the borders.”

Right, of course. Except that Hatch voted for the same stunt three years ago, but whatever.

Meanwhile, Tom Coburn, the Senate’s most conservative obstetrician, is now blocking the new food safety bill, because he is a raging prick. Oh, and because of the deficit.

Coburn can single-handedly halt action on the bill just by threatening to object, which is a pretty cool way for our nation’s legislature to work. Just remember to not eat any eggs until this bill is paid for, Americans.

And, of course, Fed nominees and judges are just not happening.

I can’t wait for the next Congress!

Here’s what he said to the Salt Lake City Fox affiliate:

HATCH: Let’s be honest about it, in the First Amendment, religious freedom, religious expression, that really express matters to the Constitution. So, if the Muslims own that property, that private property, and they want to build a mosque there, they should have the right to do so. The only question is are they being insensitive to those who suffered the loss of loved ones? We know there are Muslims killed on 9/11 too and we know it’s a great religion. … But as far as their right to build that mosque, they have that right.

I just think what’s made this country great is we have religious freedom. That’s not the only thing, but it’s one of the most important things in the Constitution. [...]

There’s a question of whether it’s too close to the 9/11 area, but it’s a few blocks away, it isn’t right there. … And there’s a huge, I think, lack of support throughout the country for Islam to build that mosque there, but that should not make a difference if they decide to do it. I’d be the first to stand up for their rights.

And now he will surely lose his next election, in 2012, unless this whole controversy is just another cynical effort to gin up the base during a long, hot August, and everyone will have basically forgotten about it in two years. (Except maybe for some Muslims in America and abroad.)

And, for some reason, John Cornyn approvingly quoted a far-right secessionist novelist guy.

But while the Republicans hate Thurgood Marshall for extending those damn “special protections” (like regular protections, but for non-white people) to minorities, they want to make it clear that they expect any potential Supreme Court justice to always support the rights of their favorite put-upon minority groups: the United States military, incumbent senators, Republican presidential candidates, and corporations.

After Pat Leahy’s interminable opening questions about how much Kagan loved her parents and how nice and well-respected she is, Sessions began hammering her on the military recruiters thing. The issue was, the military was unable to sign Harvard’s nondiscrimination pledge, because it is, you know, a discriminatory employer. So it had to use the veterans’ organization instead of the Harvard Office of Career Services.

Sessions, in repeatedly asking why Kagan did not grant special treatment to the military, kept asking her why she discriminated against the military and treated our brave recruiters “in a second-class way.” Silly legal progressive — you’re only allowed to treat gay people in a second-class way.

(Kagan was asked if she thought Bush v. Gore was decided correctly. In 2003, she knew that it was not decided correctly. This morning she declined to answer.)

Orrin Hatch questioned Kagan on the Citizens United case. Kagan, obviously, argued that case, which would seem to make her position on the matter of the constitutionality of campaign finance laws known. But she told Hatch that as a judge, she would consider it “settled law.”

Hatch nearly got teary-eyed when discussing the poor corporations of Utah that were discriminated against by campaign finance laws. Why does Kagan hate Utah’s thousands of corporations that are made up of only one person? (Though theoretically this one-person corporation could conduct political speech as a one-person ,,, person.)

The conversation got weird when Hatch seemed to claim that restrictive campaign finance laws were somehow not bad for incumbents:

Kagan says campaign finance laws were “selfless” act of Congress, because all empirical evidence suggests union and corporate money protects incumbents.

“Tell that to Blanche Lincoln,” Hatch says. “Lincoln is one of the nicest people around here who had ten million spent against her by the unions, just because they disagreed with her.”

OK, but … Blanche won. And doesn’t Orrin think money is protected political speech? And if so, isn’t spending money to defeat her because you disagree with her policies … basically the entire point of politics? Unless Orrin wants Kagan to decide that unions aren’t allowed to be mean to his Senate friends, I guess.

Hatch was also outraged that the president criticized the Citizens ruling … while the Supreme Court was in the same room as him. The nerve! The court is very sensitive! Obama should’ve formed a one-man corporation in Utah and bought thousands of TV ads, if he wanted to exercise his right to express an opinion on the decision.

Kagan is expected to be easily confirmed because this whole thing is basically a fun way for the Senate to pass the time without having to pass legislation or anything.