One of the storylines from the Kagan confirmation hearings that the media picked up yesterday was an AP photographer catching a picture of Sen. Al Franken doodling while sitting at the hearings. As someone who's sat in the same hearing room covering the procedures for two days and counting, I just wanted to note there may be a little more to the story.
Franken may be doodling, but at least he was here most of the time, which is more than can be said for many of the other committee members. For the senators, these hearings are fairly pretty fluid - they come and go and will ask their questions when called on by the chair, but since it's usually done by seniority, you can often estimate when your time to ask questions will come. The chairman is present more often, as is the ranking minority member, but other than that, it appears that it's pretty much up to how much time the individual member wants to spend in the hearing room. As I type this, for example, only Hatch, Kyl, and Sessions are here on the Republican side, and Whitehouse, Specter, Klobuchar, Kaufman, Franken and Chairman Leahy on the Dems' side. Remember, there are other committee hearings going on that a member may be serving on. They also have votes and other responsibilities. And these hearings are long - the Kagan hearings went way over 9-5 yesterday.
I haven't kept a hard count, but just in the casual observations I've made being at the hearings, it seems like Franken is here more often than any other member. He may be doodling, but at least he gives the hearing the deference of his presence and sitting in the room.
This isn't to say he's going to ask good questions or do a thorough job of vetting the nominee or that it was good taste to doodle a fellow senator (I don't think that was smart) - I just wanted to point out that him doodling probably isn't enough reason to say that he's not taking this seriously. It just shows he's human.
