How Kagan Got on the Court.

Scoop Althouse delivers:

"But I hope he sends us someone smart," said Scalia to David Axelrod. "I hope he sends us Elena Kagan."

Writes Axelrod, at CNN.com today.

He's relating a conversation he had with Scalia when they happened to have been seated together at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, right after David Souter had announced his retirement.

I was surprised that a member of the court would so bluntly propose a nominee, and intrigued that it was Kagan.... Later, I learned that Scalia and Kagan were friends.... Each was a graduate of Harvard Law School and had taught at the University of Chicago Law School, though in different eras. They were of different generations, he the son of an Italian immigrant, she a Jew from New York City's left-leaning West Side. But they shared an intellectual rigor and a robust sense of humor. And if Scalia could not have a philosophical ally in the next court appointee, he had hoped, at least, for one with the heft to give him a good, honest fight.

Kagan did not get that nomination, though she got the next one, when Justice John Paul Stevens retired a year later.

Aww... he asked for, and got, a little Jewish hunting buddy to accompany him on trips.

Too bad she wasn't along for this hunting junket. She might have become more concerned when he wasn't there for breakfast, and had the door to his room opened sooner.

I wonder, how much time did Family Man Scalia spend with his wife, 9 children and 36 grandchildren, or was it all just a numbers thing for show?

Valentine's Day weekend, alone at a hunting ranch in West Texas.
Does that seem unusual to any others, that he would choose to be there, by himself, and away from his family. Was this a regular thing, taking buddies or taking just himself away from the family for weekends?

Hmmm... that's what I find oddest about the death.

Dude, you're 79 and physically obese. What are you doing alone, in a hunting party, with nobody accompanying you for the weekend?? Just odd behavior for such a famous "family man" is all, I'm saying...

I think he liked hanging with that little noodlenuck Kagan, and teaching her to finger her weapon, as she was pretty much a virgin hunter before she met him. He kinda procured her, you might say... like Bill Clinton even?