There are many arguments to be made against Elena Kagan receiving a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land, and not the least amongst them are her opposition to military recruiters on campus and the fact she’s never actually been a judge. But this is a good launching point.

Kagan is currently Solicitor General, and in that role she represents the federal government of the United States before the Supreme Court. Her office determines the legal position of the government before the Court and files amicus briefs for cases the government decides it has a vested interested in. Considering she’s never been so much as county judge, it would seem Kagan’s experience as Solicitor General is important.

A reader forwards to Ed Morrissey this transcript from Kagan’s opening remarks to the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Her incompetence is stunning.

ORAL ARGUMENT OF ELENA KAGAN

ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLEE GENERAL KAGAN: Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court:

I have three very quick points to make about the government position. The first is that this issue has a long history. For over 100 years Congress has made a judgment that corporations must be subject to special rules when they participate in elections and this Court has never questioned that judgment.

Number two -

JUSTICE SCALIA: Wait, wait, wait, wait. We never questioned it, but we never approved it, either. And we gave some really weird interpretations to the Taft-Hartley Act in order to avoid confronting the question.

GENERAL KAGAN: I will repeat what I said, Justice Scalia: For 100 years this Court, faced with many opportunities to do so, left standing the legislation that is at issue in this case — first the contribution limits, then the expenditure limits that came in by way of Taft-Hartley — and then of course in Austin specifically approved those limits.

JUSTICE SCALIA: I don’t understand what you are saying. I mean, we are not a self — self-starting institution here. We only disapprove of something when somebody asks us to. And if there was no occasion for us to approve or disapprove, it proves nothing whatever that we didn’t disapprove it.

GENERAL KAGAN: Well, you are not a self-starting institution. But many litigants brought many cases to you in 1907 and onwards and in each case this Court turns down, declined the opportunity, to invalidate or otherwise interfere with this legislation.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: But that judgment was validated by Buckley’s contribution-expenditure line. And you’re correct if you look at contributions, but this is an expenditure case. And I think that it doesn’t clarify the situation to say that for100 years — to suggest that for 100 years we would have allowed expenditure limitations, which in order to work at all have to have a speaker-based distinction, exemption from media, content-based distinction, time-based distinction. We’ve never allowed that.

It doesn’t take an attorney, much less the Solicitor General, to know that Citizens United was dealing with expenditure and not contribution limits. And yet there was Elena Kagan, Solicitor General, beginning her argument with nonsense about contribution limits.

Her opening argument was so fundamentally flawed that two justices, including one known for his moderate ideology and swing vote, had to not only correct her version of history but point out exactly how the Court works. And she still ignored them.

Now Elena Kagan is facing a lifetime appointment to the same Court. Scary.