Judiciary Republicans distance themselves from RNC attack

Two high ranking Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee distanced themselves today from an RNC attack on Elena Kagan.

The RNC criticized Kagan yesterday for once quoting a speech in which Thurgood Marshall said the Constitution, "as originally drafted as conceived, was defective."

Democrats have since pounced on Republicans, pointing out that the original Constitution allowed slavery, counted slaves as three-fifths of a person, and did not allow women to vote.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, acnkowledged today that the original Constitution had some problems.

"I would say that the original Constitution was a document that needed amending, and after the Civil War it was amended and removed those offending parts," he told reporters.

Another Judiciary Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), agreed.

"I don't like to see anybody downgrade the Constitution, but let's face it: The Constitutition, to get passed, had to give the three-fifths language to the South, and that's what Thurgood Marshall was referring to," Hatch said. "And I think most people in retrospect say that was a compromise that they had to make in order to have the Constitution, but it wasn't right. The rest of the Constitution was right."