Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), just spent much of his questioning time asking Judge Sonia Sotomayor whether she a) believes there is a right to privacy, as the Supreme court has ruled there is; b) whether she thinks Roe v. Wade is still good law; c) whether she agrees with the Supreme Court’s decision that allows a government to take land by eminent domain and turn it over to a private developer; and d) whether the Supreme Court’s decision in an antitrust case that allowed vertical price-fixing was right or wrong.

Kohl knows full well that no candidate to the Court can or would testify that she believes a recent Supreme Court decision is wrong, or that she’s intent on joining the court and then urging her colleagues to reverse their own precedent.  So why is he wasting his time?

Not to beat up on Kohl in particular, but it’s a perfect example of how nomination hearings are as much (or more) about political posturing for the senators’ constituents as they are about actually learning more about the nominee. In this case, it was also an easy way for Kohl to hand Sotomayor a golden opportunity to display that she would join the Supreme Court without biases or preconceptions and faithfully apply the law (just as Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, nominated by President George W. Bush, promised to do before her).

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A few days later on Fox, Palin rattled off a number of decisions she supposedly opposed. One of the rulings that Palin named is an eminent domain case, Kelo v. City of New London. In Kelo, the court ruled that local governments have the right to seize private property for the sake of economic development.

At first blush, it seems like a good pick for an Alaskan with a libertarian streak.

The only problem is that in 2002, Palin sued a local landowner in Wasilla to seize his property, the proposed site of a new sports complex that included an indoor ice hockey rink.

That eminent domain case has wound through the courts for six years, at a cost of about $1.75 million. As of this July, the matter was still being worked out.

The case didn’t come up in the Fox interview, when Palin said: “The Kelo case dealt with eminent domain. That affects me as a governor and it affected me as a mayor also. Private property rights are so precious in this nation, and for the Supreme Court to have sided with government instead of the people, the property owners on that–that was frustrating.”