Ted Kennedy is unhappy with Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Ted Kennedy complains about Supreme Court confirmation hearings in an American Prospect opinion piece that's as long as one of those speeches he gives when he's eating up most of the time that allotted to him for questioning a nominee at a confirmation hearing.

He begins by going on about the Ledbetter case, which involved the interpretation of the limitations period for making a discrimination claim:

[I]n a 5-4 opinion, the Supreme Court held that Ms. Ledbetter was entitled to nothing at all. The majority ruled that she should have filed her case within a few months after the employer decided to pay her less than her male coworkers. Never mind that she had no way of knowing what other workers made, or that the discrimination continued with each paycheck.

Yes, because you and your fellow members of Congress wrote a bad statute. Fix it.

But, no, Supreme Court justices are supposed to correct your mistakes, and if they don't, you'll huff and puff about how cruel and heartless they are. They're "dangerous."

Kennedy doesn't like their constitutional decisions either, but his argument is a mess because of the way he spotlights a statutory interpretation case.

Anyway, he thinks that nominees should have to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee how they would have voted in cases that the Supreme Court has already decided. Since the briefs and transcripts of the arguments are publicly available, Senators should be able to throw a case name at the nominee and get a decision on the spot.

How much respect for the judicial process does that show? Virtually none. In fact, it betrays Kennedy's belief that the justices are making purely political decisions. In which case, your real problem is that you don't like the person who has the appointment power, and the problem boils down to presidential elections. Or mobilizing enough opposition in the Senate — which you just can't do — and shouldn't be able to do — as long as the President picks highly qualified individuals like John Roberts and Samuel Alito.