From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., announced opposition to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan just hours after President Obama selected her Monday to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports. "Inhofe's quick response kicked off a GOP debate about Kagan's resume."

• "The White House is wasting no time getting its campaign under way to sell" Kagan "to the Senate, with an onslaught of phone calls and Hill visits on tap this week in preparation for a final vote by the July Fourth recess," Roll Call (subscription) reports.

• "Interest groups from across the spectrum took their places along predictable ideological fault lines Monday in ruminating the merits of" Kagan's "nomination to the Supreme Court," Roll Call (subscription) reports.

• "The selection of" Kagan "to be the nation's 112th justice extends a quarter-century pattern in which Republican presidents generally install strong conservatives on the Supreme Court while Democratic presidents pick candidates who often disappoint their liberal base," the New York Times reports in a news analysis.

• "With his second Supreme Court nomination in as many years," Obama "has laid down clear markers of his vision for the court, one that could prove to be among his most enduring legacies," the Washington Post reports.

See commentary after the jump.

• Obama "may know that his new nominee to the Supreme Court," Kagan, "shares his thinking on the multitude of issues that face the court and the nation, but the public knows nothing of the kind," complains the New York Times. "Whether by ambitious design or by habit of mind, Ms. Kagan has spent decades carefully husbanding her thoughts and shielding her philosophy from view."

• Kagan "has become a legal scholar without the interest scholars normally have in the contest of ideas," remarks David Brooks. "She seems to be smart, impressive and honest -- and in her willingness to suppress so much of her mind for the sake of her career, kind of disturbing."

• "Obama has tapped the legal world's version of himself: a skillful politician whose cautious public persona belies a desire to transform the court and shape a new Constitutional liberalism," contends the Wall Street Journal (subscription).

• "The president -- a constitutional scholar -- made the mistake (or perhaps the political calculation) to attribute personally to Kagan the viewpoints of her government client in a few, select cases. Yet few lawyers are ever perfectly in sync with those they represent," warns Eva Rodriguez.

• In defense of Kagan's "lack of experience on the bench," the Washington Post argues that "judicial experience is valuable but no prerequisite.... What is indispensable is a first-rate mind and a proven ability to deal thoughtfully with complex legal issues. Ms. Kagan has demonstrated such qualities during her tenure as a law professor and her briefer time as solicitor general."

• "Outside observers may disagree with the moral and policy judgments made by those at Harvard Law School. But it would be very wrong to portray" Kagan "as hostile to the U.S. military. Quite the opposite is true," attests former dean of Harvard Law School, Robert Clark, in the Wall Street Journal (subscription).