Congress Keeps Busy on Break

Lawmakers are taking some time off from Capitol Hill and working from home. To be more accurate, they're at home doing district work. But politics, as we know, rarely takes a break.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's, D-Calif., office put out a statement labeling Republicans as obstructionists for blocking a jobs bill that would extend unemployment benefits. (Although, Pelosi's officer later fired off a friendlier release acknowleding the Dalai Lama's 75th birthday.)

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is criticizing the Obama Administration after the Justice Department filed suit against Arizona for the state's recently passed immigration law.

"Suing the people of Arizona for attempting to do a job the federal government has utterly failed to execute will not help secure our borders," Sen. McConnell said in a statement. "If the President wants to make real progress on this issue, he can do so by taking amnesty off the table and focus his efforts on border and interior security."

Senate Republicans have conceded their opposition against President Obama's second Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan probably won't keep her from gaining confirmation to the nation's high court. The math is in her favor. Confirmation requires a simple majority, and Democrats have 58 members in their caucus.

Still, Republicans are making their feelings clear. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, is the latest to announce her opposition. She didn't support Kagan's nomination to be Solicitor General, citing a lack of experience. Now, Murkowski says she's opposing Kagan this time around because of her substantial "inside the Beltway" experience and lack of judicial experience.

Here is a sampling of some of the other public statements made by Republicans who oppose her nomination:

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.: "Ms. Kagan acknowledged that it is 'difficult to take off the advocate's hat and put on the judge's hat' ... I do not have confidence that if she were confirmed to a lifetime position on the Supreme Court she would suddenly constrain the ardent political advocacy that has marked much of her adult life."

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah: "General Kagan is a good person, a skilled political lawyer, a brilliant scholar, and was a fine law school dean.  I like her personally and I supported her to be Solicitor General.  But applying the standard I have always used for judicial nominees, I cannot support her appointment to the Supreme Court."

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, indicated he was following the lead of his colleague Sen. Hatch: "I agree that many of the things in Ms. Kagan's background are troublesome and justify a negative vote."

Democrats want Kagan confirmed this summer so she will have time to prep for the court's next session in the October.