SG Nominee Clams Up:  Elana Kagan, President Obama's choice for Solicitor General, used to say "when the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce."  But now, as Washington Post writer Robert Barnes reports, nominee Kagan has embraced the call for change, by changing her mind.  During her confirmation hearing, which ended yesterday, she told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she is "...less convinced than I was in 1995 that substantive discussions of legal issues and views, in the context of nomination hearings, provide the great public benefits I suggested."