Earlier this afternoon, Breitbart.tv released a short clip of a 1997 Case Western Reserve University speech in which Kagan said she thought Bork’s 1987 hearings “were the best thing that ever happened to Constitutional Democracy.” Here’s what she said:

I loved what happened in the Bork hearings. I wrote a review of Stephen Carter’s book recently where I said, “no, he has it all wrong. The Bork hearings were great, the Bork hearings were educational. The Bork hearings were the best thing that ever happened to Constitutional Democracy.” So, I share that view with Professor Toulouse.

Though Kagan herself was tight-lipped in her confirmation hearing for Solicitor General last year, ABC News’ Ariane de Vogue reports that Kagan had given even more effusive praise for the way the Bork hearings were conducted in a law review article published two years before the speech.

In the article, Kagan wrote that Bork’s hearing should be a “model” for all others, because even though it ended in the candidate’s rejection, the hearings presented an opportunity for the Senate and the nominee to engage on controversial issues and educate the public.

“Not since Bork,” she said, “has any nominee candidly discussed, or felt a need to discuss, his or her views and philosophy.”

This morning, before the video of Kagan’s speech went online, we learned that Bork himself is opposed to Kagan’s confirmation and will come out against her during an Americans United for Life news conference Wednesday.

While Kagan may not choose to give expansive replies to senators’ questions, there is a massive paper trail for political junkies to read through. The Senate Judiciary Committee has uploaded all of the materials she submitted to them. All of the files Bill Clinton’s presidential library released in the last few weeks on Kagan’s White House work are also available online via the National Archives.

The Estrada experience comes up all of the time, as a justification for filibusters of Obama nominees (it’s rarely reported how extraordinary it is that the smallest Republican conference since the 1970s can keep on blocking the likes of Dawn Johnsen) and as a straight-up whine that George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, should have broken the barrier by appointing a Hispanic justice.

Neomi Rao, a law professor at George Mason University who worked on judicial nominations for Mr. Bush, said Mr. Bush “should have gotten to name the first Hispanic justice on the court.”

“He really wanted to do so,” Professor Rao said.

But she said that he was largely stymied when Democrats blocked Mr. Estrada from going on the appeals court.

Here’s the thing: Bush didn’t have to appoint Estrada to make a historic move. In 2005, when the Supreme Court seats opened up, Bush could have appointed his then-50-year-old Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. But Bush declined to pick Estrada in part (based on reports from the time) because social conservatives did not believe that Gonzales was a solid vote against abortion rights. The buzz phrase, according to Ramesh Ponnuru, was “Gonzales is Spanish for Souter.” The idea that an ultra-forward-looking President Bush and collection of racially conscious Republicans were denied the opportunity to appoint a Hispanic justice when they lost Estrada is simply bunk.

Sam Alito — soft-spoken. John Roberts — affable and soft-spoken. Sanda Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, all of them, soft-spoken. This nominee’s more like Judge Bork. She has a temper. She has an attitude. She could come across as hubristic in the hearings, as arrogant. And so she could Bork herself. It’s very possible.

I asked Miranda about the basis of this theory after the luncheon. “I’ve read Jeff Rosen’s piece ["The Case Against Sotomayor"],” he said, “and that’s what I’m going on. I haven’t met the lady.” He added this to “what I’ve heard from practitioners on the second circuit, and they don’t like her” and wondered if the coming American Bar Association survey of lawyers’ opinions of Sotomayor could reflect all of this negative feedback.

“When that survey comes out, if it reflects Jeff Rosen’s article, it could be pretty explosive. I think she she might want to take the committee on, to engage, in a Bork-like fashion. The more recent two [nominees] have been very disciplined, more controlled.”

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