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The Republican Party has decided to attack Elena Kagan by pitching a fit about Thurgood Marshall, an honest to gosh American hero.

“I’m not saying that Republicans are mortified by intelligent black people,” Juanita begins this morning, “but Republicans are mortified by …. wait a minute, that is exactly what I’m saying.”

“In an silly-boy attempt to discredit Kagan, they went all off on Thurgood ByGawd Marshall, a personal hero of mine and a fine cowboy if ever there was one,” Juanita shakes her curls and taps her high heels again the tile floor making all manner of indignant noise.

As confirmation hearings opened Monday afternoon, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee took the unusual approach of attacking Kagan because she admired the late justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked more than two decades ago.

“Justice Marshall’s judicial philosophy,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, “is not what I would consider to be mainstream.” Kyl — the lone member of the panel in shirtsleeves for the big event — was ready for a scrap. Marshall “might be the epitome of a results-oriented judge,” he said.

“Bless their hearts, Republicans are still angry over Brown vs Board of Education,” because most of them are so old that they remember what happened yesterday but think 1954 was yesterday,” she surmises.

“And speaking old crazy old people,” Texas Senator John Cornyn went whack again during the hearing.  He started babbling in tongues that got so many people shaking their heads that the National Weather Service issued a wind warning.”

The lack of a coherent attack on the nominee became apparent when Cornyn began his opening statement with a quotation that he said he received in an e-mail: “Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man of war, and we’re all the crew.”

“I don’t know why I thought of that,” Cornyn told the perplexed audience.

“Poor John.  They have to plug his ears at night to keep his brain in.”

“It is disturbing to me that Thurgood Marshall, a genuine American hero who granted full citizenship to millions of people, could not get confirmed by Republicans today because, according to Senator Kyl, he is not mainstream.  Mainstream?  You have Antonin Scalia on your side and you’re worried about mainstream?  Sneeze, your brains are dusty.”