Perhaps everyone should meet this with a giant “yawn”, but it’s worth a gander.  And here I thought we could just discard Patrick Leahy’s reference to “Moses the Law-Giver“.
First he starts by framing the problem of Elena Kagan by rhetorically putting black Americans into sympathy with his argument.  In terms of identity politics, ironic — as I’ll get back to his arguments from the Nixon Adminstration.  Then he brings in who he sees as over-represented and under-represented.

Indeed, of the last seven justices nominated by Democrats JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, one was black, Marshall; one was Puerto Rican, Sonia Sotomayor. The other five were Jews: Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats.

Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity?

But while leaders in the black community may be upset, the folks who look more like the real targets of liberal bias are white Protestants and Catholics, who still constitute well over half of the U.S. population.

This is a good time to back-track and say one thing more about the issue of Kagan’s supposed homosexuality.  I think I tripped in the meager fact that David Souter did indeed get some of that “wait.  He’s gay!” treatment.  I guess it wasn’t as bad or as much, and I also suppose that the sexism remains prevalent despite the fact that, strictly speaking the answer to the question “Would a man get this?” is — historically — possibly.  The next question comes up, tangeantlly, “Would the American Family Association and Focus on the Family” have called for a man disqualified because he’s gay?”   In the case of David Souter, they would have if they had known what his voting record would be, chiefly but not limited around Roe v Wade.  But I guess they didn’t.

Relevant for Pat Buchanan’s brief during the Sotomayer hearings, relevant now.

Here is a 1971 document* from the Nixon Archives, written by Pat Buchanan, showing Buchanan proposing a strategy for Nixon’s outreach to Catholics.

In it, he suggested that Nixon “instead of sending the orders out to all our other agencies– hire blacks and women– the order should go out– hire ethnic Catholics preferable [sic] women, for visible posts. One example: Italian Americans, unlike blacks, have never had a Supreme Court member– they are deeply concerned with their ‘criminal’ image; they do not dislike the President. Give those fellows the ‘Jewish seat’ or the ‘black seat’ on the Court when it becomes available.”

The odd arrangements of how the Supreme Court have been diversified have changed during the years, sometimes arbitrary categories redefined and redefined.  I guess Buchanan wants a single token “Jewish” seat, and a single token “black” seat — kudos, I guess, for George H W Bush in his hat-trick of trading a Thurgood Marshall for a Clarence Thomas, and thus finding a black man Pat Buchanan can approve.  In the beginning, or toward it, we sort of established a geographic assignment for seats.  It evolved from there to various ethnic placements.  And of course, the male to female quota is completely unbalanced through our history.

The thing that becomes really convenient in Pat Buchanan’s formulation is the lumping together of Catholics and Protestants.
The folks who look more like the real targets of liberal bias are white Protestants and Catholics, who still constitute well over half of the U.S. population.
No fooling — when Kagan gets confirmed, the Supreme Court will be made up of SIX Catholics and THREE Jews, and… zero Protestants.  Pat Buchanan, it should be noted, is Catholic — thus his “kind” is over-represented.  (Then again, he’s disinclined to accept Sotomayor as one of him.)  From a gander at wikipedia, I’ll roughly approximate HALF of Americans as Protestant, and A QUARTER of Americans as Catholic.  In that respect, there should be — what?  4 or 5 Protestants, and 2 or 3 Catholics?  This needs some shoring up!
A proposal for Pat Buchanan, therefore, to rebalance the Court: Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, and Justice Kennedy will retire — and Obama will replace all three with Protestants, bringing us back to a form of balance.
OR:

Richard A. Posner, a conservative appeals court judge in Chicago, and William M. Landes, his colleague from the University of Chicago law school, ranked all 43 justices from 1937 to 2006 by ideology and found that four of the five most conservative ones are on the current court. Even the moderate swing vote, Justice Kennedy, was the 10th most conservative over that period. By contrast, none of the current justices ranks among the five most liberal members, and only Justice Ginsburg is in the top 10.

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