The long knives are coming out: Yesterday the Wall Street Journal mysteriously ran a photo of Elena Kagan (gasp) playing softball, which according to the Journal basically establishes that she prefers the company of women and should therefore not be allowed to serve on the Supreme Court.

As the New York Post not-quite-honestly put it,

The Wall Street Journal’s decision to feature a front-page photo of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan playing softball has ignited a national discussion about why people assume that women who play the field are lesbians.

(Today the Post reprinted the photo next to this bombshell: “I was token straight gal on gay team.“)

Also today Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, says that Kagan violates all that we hold sacred by tolerating the presence of plagiarists on the HLS faculty.

Velvel discussed Kagan’s nomination as a guest on “The Tom and Todd Show” on WRKO-AM Radio in Boston on Tuesday morning. “That philosophy of protecting the Ivy League elite no matter what was reflected by the failure of Kagan and Summers to act strongly against the two famous Harvard law professors whose books were partly the result of plagiarism or ghostwriting, which are serious forms of academic dishonesty,” he said. “Neither Kagan nor Larry Summers had the guts or integrity to take on the incidents of plagiarism and ghostwriting at Harvard Law School, even though dishonesty is one of the major roots of all problems and is, as said, an academic sin.”

I am slightly sympathetic with Velvel here, as I thought Kagan’s rather glib treatment of HLS plagiarist professors sent the wrong message. (If you’re powerful, you can get away with it.)

This is probably not a disqualifying sin; after all, it’s not as if any Supreme Court justice actually writes her own opinions, but they all put their names on them. So they’re down with plagiarism.

But it does show, I think, Kagan’s willingness to either play ball with The Man when it helps advance herself, a, or b, compromise in order to resolve a dispute, depending on your perspective.