These days any drop of bipartisanship must be savored like the world’s rarest wine. Ironically enough, a wine that’s thoroughly disgusting to voters because there’s so little of it and it’s sourer than vinegar. Senator Lindsey “Nelly Bottom” Graham was the only Republican to throw in the towel and vote for SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan yesterday. Kagan’s 13-6 escape from the Senate Kangaroodiciary Hearings is about a bipartisan as they come in an environment where one (really) is the Loneliest Number.

Graham’s an unusually magnanimous loser… for a Republican. “What’s in Elena Kagan’s heart is that of a good person who adopts a philosophy I disagree with,” Graham said. “She will serve this nation honorably, and it would not have been someone I would have chosen, but the person who did choose, President Obama, I think chose wisely.” Alas, there was a time when statements like that were normal.

Not now.

Congressional hearings aren’t really hearings, they’re foregone conclusions where the naysayers get to bitch and moan and the triumphant get to do the moonwalk and say, “We win! You lose! It sucks to be you!” The nominees are coached to say as little as humanly possible about how they might decide cases while being subtle enough to blend with the fabric of the chair they are soaking through with sweat.

The past several times around, questions have followed such preset patterns they may just as well have asked the nominee for a form – and not even a notarized form at that.

Republicans, like top Rebumblican Jeff Sessions, have traditionally kvetched about “judicial activists”. That’s code for “someone who I’m going to call a Commie and who doesn’t agree with me.” Oddly, they never seem too concerned about judicial activism when it comes from one of their own.

Scalia, I’m talking about you!

They also like to whine that whatever nominee sits before them will be totally unable to separate personal choices from ones made on the bench. Again, nominees are de facto impartial when they happen to vote the Jeff Sessions line.

By and large, Presidents should be able to choose anyone for the Supreme Court they want, provided they’re minimally qualified for the job (see Harriet Miers). The fact is that all judges are going to be “activist” if they’re doing anything. Laws need to breathe in order to support society and that’s part of what SCOTUS does. If it was as simple as a checklist for subtle Constitutional interpretation, we wouldn’t need a SCOTUS – we’d all agree already

By the same token, none of them will be totally impartial either. People bring who they are, what they know, and how they’ve lived into court with them. Despite Sessions’ great displeasure with Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” quote, these are part of us all and not in an altogether bad way either.

Had Sessions’ actually made it to the bench instead of failing years ago, I’m sure he’d decide against abortion on any case appearing before him. He would do this by bringing in a spring-loaded, prickly, conservative, intolerant white male, demeanor into court with him. I think he’d find it nearly impossible to look “only at the law” as he demands. I’m confident that he couldn’t look at the long history of precedents that have made abortion the law of the land for decades now and not vote only on that law as it stands.

In other words, Sessions’ couldn’t honestly strike down abortion in front of his own court unless he defied the law previously expressed in Supreme Court findings and lower court precedents while simultaneously acting like a judicial activist bent on “changing the(available abortion)  law” as it stands.

Jeff, if you want to see the face of your judicial impartiality and judicial activism look in the mirror. Your dishonest, and frankly troubling, face will be looking back.