Kyl concerned about Kagan's Gitmo views

WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) -- Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., said Sunday he had concerns about Elena Kagan's sharp critique of legislation on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainees he helped draft.

Kyl, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said a letter signed by the Supreme Court nominee and other academics describing the legislation that defined the classification of Guantanamo prisoners as "enemy combatants" was one of the issues he wanted to explore when the committee meets to confirm or deny Kagan's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"She compared our bill to the fundamentally lawless actions of dictators," Kyl said on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday. "Now, that's not very judicious."

Kyl added that while he supported Kagan's nomination as solicitor general, he was not prepared to give her a free pass to the high court. "The key question that I will have … is whether she will lay her political beliefs aside when she's deciding cases and decide those cases strictly based upon the facts and the law of the case."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told "Face the Nation" she believed Kagan was "inordinately qualified" to be a justice and dismissed the notion that she was "anti-military" due to her opposition to the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuality.

"I think that's really a far reach," Feinstein said.