Places, places everyone.

Today, the curtain officially opens on the Senate “battle” over Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. “Battle” gets ghost quotes because all the poohbahs on Capitol Hill are already treating her confirmation as a “foregone conclusion.”

Beltway Republicans will put up just enough of a fight to placate grass-roots conservative activists on Kagan’s radical social views, while the nutroots will pout (but not too loudly) that Kagan isn’t enough of a liberal activist for them. And GOP Sen. Lindsay Graham, after several minutes of obligatory grandstanding mixed with obsequious suck-uppage, will cast his vote with Kagan and Obama — as he did with Sonia Sotomayor (whom he praised as “bold” and edgy”).

Here’s one MSM list of the “5 things to watch out for” during Kagan Kabuki.

I would add:

—Will Kagan impersonate Goodwin Liu? Confronted with his radical writings and speeches, Obama’s far Left 9th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee cut and ran from his long-held political beliefs on everything from the welfare state to racial quotas to the role of the judiciary.

— Will Kagan impersonate Joe Biden? Kagan’s hostility to the 2nd amendment is certain to be raised by Republicans. When faced with criticism from gun-owners regarding his boss’s views, Biden turned into a gun-slinging cowboy — and attempted to assuage self-defense activists by bragging about his own shotguns and Berretta.

(Speaking of guns, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a ruling today in the gun rights McDonald v. Chicago case.

—How many times will we hear the Kagan=”everyday people/compelling personal story” meme before the hearings are through? Hey, it worked for Sonia Sotomayor…

— How quickly will left-wing WaPo fashion writer Robin Givhan (who bashed Bush-nominated Supreme Court Justice John Roberts’ children’s clothes) crank out a piece praising Kagan’s sensible, down-to-earth, common people style?

— How many times will we hear Democrat Senators vouch for Kagan’s commitment to social-engineering “diversity” at Harvard?

— How many Senators have actually read through the 44,000-plus pages of Kagan-authored legal memos, analysis and other documents during the Clinton era just released less than two weeks ago. Answer: ZERO.

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Americans United for Life has a Kagan backgrounder and questions for the nominee h ere.

Lee Ross at FoxNews.com has a rundown of today’s events:

Monday’s kickoff will be the most scripted day of the confirmation hearing that is expected to last all week. The day is dedicated to opening statements from the 19 Senate Judiciary Committee members (12 Democrats and seven Republicans) and the nominee. Kagan will be presented to the committee by Massachusetts Senators John Kerry (D) and Scott Brown (R). In between her work in the Clinton and Obama Administrations, Kagan was a professor at Harvard Law School outside Boston. It is customary for nominees to be presented to the committee by their home state senators, though Kagan was born and raised in New York City and once taught at the University of Chicago Law School.

Kagan’s statement to the committee will not come until late in the afternoon and will end the hearing’s first day. It will mark the first substantive remarks from her since the May 10 nomination announcement at the White House. In the weeks since, Kagan has met with 62 senators and more recently has spent several hours each day preparing her answers to questions she expects to hear.

Here’s a brief summation of conservative concerns about Kagan from Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch. I know. I know. It’s Senator Open Borders Hatch. But at least he’s right about this:

“Judges who bend the Constitution to their own values and who use the Constitution to pursue their own vision for society take this right away from the people and undermine liberty itself.”