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| Blumenthal |
The blog below was Published Six Years Ago. Looking back on these events with the benefit of hindsight, we now know that Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the committee was dubious. She – and anyone listening to Blumenthal’s hearty assurance that she was telling the truth when she said that Judge Brett Kavanaugh had molested her when he and she were students at different high schools thirty (30) years earlier – had assured the committee that a witness to the molestation would testify on her behalf. That witness later testified that she had not witnessed the event as Ford had claimed. Three direct witnesses Blasey Ford identified as having been present when the molestation had occurred testified under oath that they could not support her charge.
___________________________
Kavanaugh
v. Blumenthal
Before Judge Amy Barrett is called to
answer possible objections to her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by
President Donald Trump, it may be useful to revisit U.S. Senator Dick
Blumenthal’s questioning of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
During the
Kavanaugh hearings, US Senator Dick Blumenthal warmly welcomed
Christine Blasey Ford as follows, according to a transcript of
the hearing testimony:
BLUMENTHAL:
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I
want to join in thanking you for being here today. And just tell you I have
found your testimony powerful, incredible [Blumenthal perhaps meant to say “credible”] and
I believe you. You’re a teacher, correct?
FORD:
Correct.
BLUMENTHAL:
Well, you have given America an amazing teaching moment, and you may have other
moments in the classroom, but you have inspired and you have enlightened
America. You have inspired and given courage to women to come forward, as they
have done to every one of our offices and many other public places. You have
inspired and you have enlightened men in America to listen respectfully to
women survivors, and men who have survived sexual attack, and that is a
profound public service, regardless of what happens with this nomination. And
so the teachers of America, the people of America should be really proud of
what you have done.
Let
me tell you why I believe you: not only because of the prior consistent
statements and the polygraph tests and your request for an FBI investigation
and your urging that this committee hear from other witnesses who could
corroborate or dispute your story, but also, you have been very honest about
what you cannot remember. And someone composing a story can make it all come
together in a seamless way, but someone who is honest — I speak from my
experience as a prosecutor, as well — is also candid about what she or he
cannot remember.
Q: It is
interesting, perhaps telling, that Blumenthal uses the word “credible” rather
than truthful. Blumenthal, as Attorney General for two decades in Connecticut,
is familiar with court jargon. He has himself argued cases before the U.S.
Supreme Court. Testimony can be credible – that is, believable -- without being
true, or in conformity with the architecture of facts. In a period of intense
partisanship – welcome to the 21st century – there are two
kinds of credible or believable world views, Democrat and Republican. We should
all bear in mind Otto von Bismarck’s observation: “People never lie so much as
after a hunt, during a war or before an election.” Supreme Court nominations
since Democrats first borked Judge Robert Bork have been a combination of all
three – hunt, war and election. Lies can be credible and believable; indeed,
they fail most conspicuously when they are neither.
When Blumenthal
says “I believe you” to Ford, he is asserting only his own certitude, not
her’s. There is a problem. Certitude is a quality of propositions. Blumenthal
is here imputing certainty to persons. He believes Ford because she is a woman
accusing of improper behavior a man he does not wish to join the Court.
In his role as a
U.S. Senator in the hearing proceeding, Blumenthal, as well as other
partisan senators, is a juror. There can be no adequate defense against a charge
viewed as true when a trier of fact, a jury, is willing to believe a charge
because a testifier is a woman, whereas the accused is a man whose public
reputation he wishes to despoil. Properly speaking, Kavanaugh, at the time the
incident was alleged to have occurred more than thirty years earlier, was a boy
in high school, and Ford was a girl in high school. Judges and jurors in trials
know that evidence three decades old is perishable.
Here are some
facts that were elicited during the hearing. 1) Blasey Ford did not report
the incident to police at the time it had occurred, three decades before her
senate testimony. Indeed, she initially spoke of the incident to no one; 2) at
first reluctant to testify, she was pressed into service after having been
identified publicly by Democrat politicians familiar with her account, many of
whom opposed the Kavanaugh nomination for political rather than jurisprudential
reasons. Kavanaugh was awarded the U.S. Bar Association's highest
rating. We do not know whether Blumenthal was one of those who outed Blasey
Ford; 3) three direct witnesses Blasey Ford identified as having been present
when the molestation had occurred testified under oath that they could not
support her charge. Senator Ted Cruz rang this point like a Liberty Bell when
he said:
A
fair-minded assessor of facts would then look to, “What else do we know when
you have conflicting testimony?” Well we know that Dr. Ford identified three
fact witnesses who she said observed what occurred. All three of those fact
witnesses have stated on the record under penalty of perjury that they do not
recall what she had alleging had happened.
They
have not only not corroborated her charges, they have explicitly refuted her
charges.
A contemporary
calendar in which Kavanaugh disclosed his associations and whereabouts showed
that Blasey Ford’s timeline and accounts of Kavanaugh’s molestation could not
have been factual. By the time Blumenthal questioned Kavanaugh, the case
against him was already collapsing under the weight of elicited evidence, as
the transcript indicates.
GRASSLEY:
(OFF-MIKE) Senator Blumenthal.
BLUMENTHAL:
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Good
afternoon, Judge Kavanaugh. As a federal judge, you’re aware of the jury
instruction falsus in unibus (sic),
falsus in omnibus, [false in one, fa,se in all] are you not? You’re aware of
that jury instruction?
KAVANAUGH:
Yes, I’m — I am.
BLUMENTHAL:
You know what it means?
KAVANAUGH:
You can translate it for me, senator. You can do it better than I can.
BLUMENTHAL:
False in one thing, false in everything. Meaning in jury instructions that we —
some of us as prosecutors have heard many times, is — told the jury that they
can disbelieve a witness if they find them to be false in one thing.
So
the core of why we’re here today really is credibility. Let me talk…
The jury
instruction cited by Blumenthal apparently did not apply to Blasey Ford.
KAVANAUGH:
But (ph) the core of why we’re here is an allegation for which the four
witnesses present have all said it didn’t happen.
This was nervy of
the judge under scrutiny, and Blumenthal quickly changed gears, so he thought.
BLUMENTHAL:
Let me ask you about Renate Dolphin who lives in Connecticut. She thought these
yearbook statements were, quote, “Horrible, hurtful and simply untrue.” end
quote, because Renate Alumnus clearly implied some boast of sexual conquest.
And that’s the reason that you apologized to her, correct?
KAVANAUGH:
That’s false, speaking about the yearbook and she — she said she and I never
had any sexual interaction. So your question…
BLUMENTHAL:
But…
There can be no
“but.” The woman cited by Blumenthal denied the planted imputation that
Kavanaugh had had questionable sex with her. Kavanaugh rose to her defense,
genuinely angrily.
KAVANAUGH:
… your question is false and I’ve addressed that in the opening statement. And
so, your question is based on a false premise and really does great harm to
her. I don’t know why you’re bringing this up, frankly, doing great harm to
her. By even bringing her name up here is really unfortunate.
BLUMENTHAL:
Well, calling someone an alumnus in that way, was actually interpreted…
KAVANAUGH:
Well, implying what you’re implying what you’re implying about…
BLUMENTHAL:
… by a number of your football friends at the time of boasting of sexual
conquest. That’s the reason that I’m bringing it up. And it conflicts…
KAVANAUGH:
Yes. No, it’s false.
BLUMENTHAL:
… with…
KAVANAUGH:
You’re implying that. Look what you’re bringing up right now about her. Look
what you’re doing.
BLUMENTHAL:
… Mr. Chairman, I ask that…
KAVANAUGH:
Don’t bring her name up.
Blumenthal raised
a point of order. Kavanaugh’s objections were answers, or an unsuccessful
attempt at gallantry, not interruptions.
BLUMENTHAL:
… these interruptions not be subtracted from my time.
GRASSLEY:
Very well (ph). Ask your question and then let…
KAVANAUGH:
She’s a great person. She’s always been a great person. We never had any sexual
interaction. By bringing this up, you’re just — just dragging her through the
mud. It’s just unnecessary.
GRASSLEY:
Proceed, Senator Blumenthal (ph).
BLUMENTHAL:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You’ve made
reference, judge, to a sworn statement I believe by Mark Judge to the
committee. Is that correct?
KAVANAUGH:
I made reference to what Mark Judge’s lawyer sent to the committee.
BLUMENTHAL:
You know (ph), it’s not a sworn statement, is it?
KAVANAUGH:
It would — under penalty of felony.
BLUMENTHAL:
Well, it’s a statement signed by his lawyer, Barbara Van Gelder. It is six
cursory and conclusory sentences. Are you saying that that is a substitute for an
investigation by the FBI or some interview by the FBI under oath?
KAVANAUGH:
Under penalty of felony, he said that this kind of event didn’t happen and that
I never did or would have done something like that. And…
BLUMENTHAL:
As a federal judge, you always want the best evidence don’t you?
Here the
interrogatory descends into self-destructive irony. The “best evidence” had all
along supported Kavanaugh’s sworn testimony.
KAVANAUGH:
… Senator, he has said and all the witnesses present — look at Ms. Keyser’s
statement, she’s
BLUMENTHAL:
Let me…
KAVANAUGH:
Dr. Ford’s longtime friend… who denied Ford’s testimony that she was
present when the alleged molestation had occurred. Better run away.
BLUMENTHAL:
… let me move on to another topic. You’ve testified to this committee this
morning — this afternoon, quote, “This whole two-week effort has been a
calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger
about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked
about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of
dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.”
Is
it your testimony that the motivation of the courageous woman who sat where you
did just a short time ago was revenge on behalf of a left-wing conspiracy or
the Clintons?
KAVANAUGH:
Senator, I said in my opening statement that she preferred confidentially. And
her confidentially was — was destroyed by the actions of this committee.
Run away.
BLUMENTHAL:
Let me ask you this, in a speech that you gave at Yale you — you described,
quote, “Falling out of the bus onto the front steps of the Yale Law School at
4:45 a.m.” and…
KAVANAUGH:
I wasn’t…
BLUMENTHAL:
… then…
KAVANAUGH:
… I wasn’t describing me. I organized…
BLUMENTHAL:
… trying to…
KAVANAUGH:
… Senator. Senator, let me finish, please. I organized a third-year end of
school party for 30 of my classmates to rent a bus to go to Fenway Park in
Boston, which was about a three-hour trip.
I
bought all the tickets. You and I have discussed that before. I bought all the
baseball tickets. I rented the bus. I organized the whole trip.
We
went to Fenway Park. Roger Clemens was pitching for the Red Sox. We had a great
time. George Brett was playing third base for the Royals — actually, he was
playing left field that night. And he — and we went to the game, and got back,
and then we went out. It was a great night of friendship.
BLUMENTHAL:
I — I apologize for interrupting, judge, but I need to finish the quote before
I ask you the question…
KAVANAUGH:
I wasn’t talking about…
BLUMENTHAL:
… The quote ends…
GRASSLEY:
OK, we’ll let (ph)…
BLUMENTHAL:
… the quote ends that you tried to, quote, “piece things back together,” end
quote, to recall what happened that night. Meaning…
KAVANAUGH:
I know what happened.
BLUMENTHAL:
… Well, you…
GRASSLEY:
Judge, let — will you quickly answer your question? And then I’m going to let
him answer you…
KAVANAUGH:
I know what — I know what happened that night.
BLUMENTHAL:
I’ll finish asking my question…
GRASSLEY:
Please, go ahead…
BLUMENTHAL:
… your honor (ph).
GRASSLEY:
… but do it quickly.
BLUMENTHAL:
Doesn’t that imply to you that you had to piece things back together, you had
to ask others what happened that night?
KAVANAUGH:
No, it…
GRASSLEY:
OK. You — you take your time now and answer the question.
KAVANAUGH:
… Yes.
GRASSLEY:
And then, Senator Crapo.
KAVANAUGH:
Definitely not. I know exactly what happened that night. It was a great night
of fun. I was so happy that — it was great camaraderie. Everyone looks back
fondly on the trip to Fenway Park. And then we went out together, a group of
classmates. And I know exactly what happened the whole night. And I’m happy.
And here comes
the kitchen sink.
BLUMENTHAL:
Judge, do you — do you believe Anita Hill?
GRASSLEY:
Senator — Senator Crapo.
GRAHAM?:
(OFF-MIKE) Time is up (ph). Your time is up (ph)…
God bless the
clock. Barrett is due to be interrogated -- likely mauled by mostly male
Democrats -- by Kavanaugh's interrogators this Tuesday and Wednesday, after
having on Monday recorded and carved out their posturings for use in the
upcoming elections.
Barrett v. Blumenthal, Day One
It has been said
of U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal that there is no more dangerous place in
Connecticut than the space between him and a television camera. On the day
after Judge Amy Barrett’s first appearance before the U.S. Senate, Blumenthal’s
picture appeared twice in a Hartford paper. He was prominently featured in both
an AP story, “Barrett makes case as next justice on the Supreme Court,” and a separate Connecticut story, “Blumenthal says fate of Obamacare is on the line.”
Blumenthal is
used to receiving gushingly favorable press in his home state. So, no surprise
there.
The first day of
Barrett’s testimony was not devoted to the questioning of the nominee by senators.
Barrett briefly addressed the assembled senators, after which the senators
addressed Barrett, sitting mutely before them, looking somewhat like a pillar
of salt wearing a medical mask. The interrogatories occurred on Tuesday and
Wednesday. What is the real purpose, some may wonder, of this awkward preamble
to the hearing?
Barrett, perhaps
anticipating hostile questioning from Democrats, was permitted to make an
initial statement, in the course of which she said, according to the AP story,
that Americans “deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our
Constitution and laws as they are written.” And the senators were permitted to
make statements – political pitches, really, to their separate constituencies that
later may be carved out and presented to voters in campaign clips before their
upcoming elections, which have already commenced.
As quoted by the
reporter in the Hartford paper, Blumenthal’s message was: “Your nomination” –
the senator, full of an unbending resolve, was speaking directly to the pillar
of salt – “is about the Republican goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act,
the Obamacare they seem to detest so much.”
Blumenthal has
not yet told us how a single likely Supreme Court Justice would be able to
“repeal” -- be it noted, a legislative term -- an act passed
by Congress. Supreme Court Justices should not be in the business of re-writing
congressional bills, the exclusive province of the legislature. This was a
point made by all sitting Associate Justices during their separate appearances
before the senators on the Judiciary Committee, not only originalist members of
the court. The point Barrett stressed in her opening statement, emphasized by
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her own testimony, was
that justices of the high court should say whether laws are or are not
constitutional and leave the legislative repair work to such as Blumenthal,
whose detestation of originalism and originalist justices was barely concealed
.
Perhaps
Blumenthal did not hear her statement because he was anxious to present a
political point before the November elections in his own state.
The point he did
manage to make was apparently lost on reporters in Connecticut, which was this:
Democrats, who believe the U.S. Constitution is a document that should be
altered – some would say deformed -- by high court decisions, want justices
to act as the spear points in a progressive remaking of the very nature of
constitutional governance.
Indeed, that is
why Barrett, whose ambition is far more humble, has been singled out by
Blumenthal and other progressive saboteurs as a menace. She was treated as such
by Blumenthal, who refused to meet with her prior to her hearing, a discourtesy
unusual even for Blumenthal. The snub heard round Connecticut is mentioned
in Connecticut
Commentary.
In
the meantime, Democrats such as Connecticut’s sainted Senator From Planned
Parenthood, Dick Blumenthal, who
denied Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett the courtesy of a private
meeting before her anticipated auto de fa, are busy strewing faggots at
her feet and will not be satisfied with anything less than a public
humiliation, followed by a public burning. The nation’s shameless mainstream
media will help light the Democrat’s Senate Judiciary Hearing pyre. Barrett,
don’t you know, is a member of a Christian “cult”, a Catholic charismatic
movement warmly embraced by papists such as Pope Francis and all the bishops in
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro’s Catholic Church.
The
message to Catholics could not be plainer: It’s OK for Pentecostals to
acknowledge the workings of the Holy Spirit in human history, but not
Catholics. It’s OK for Catholics to honor saints such as Francis and
Aquinas, but to aspire to be like either is cultism.
At the last
moment, Democrats apparently decided not to claw Barrett’s Catholicism during
their hearing. The pawing, Democrat senators decided, should be sufficiently
subtle, not embarrassingly overt. It is not good manners, but rather political
considerations that had persuaded Democrats to paw rather than claw.
Blumenthal v. Barrett, Day Two
U.S. Senator Dick
Blumenthal, before interrogating Supreme Court nominee Amy Barrett on day two
of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Hearings, laid before Barrett, according to a
story in The Hill, a non-negotiable demand.
“Sen. Richard
Blumenthal (D-Conn.), The Hill reported, “on Monday urged Supreme Court nominee
Amy Coney Barrett to recuse herself from any case involving the election that
comes before the Supreme Court, as Democrats prepare to push her for such a
commitment as part of her confirmation hearings.”
In a prepared remark,
Blumenthal intoned, “Your participation, let me be very blunt, in any case
involving Donald Trump's
election would immediately do explosive, enduring harm to the court's
legitimacy and to your own credibility. You must recuse yourself. The American
people are afraid and they're angry, and for good reason. It's a break the
glass moment."
The quotable
Blumenthal was at one time an editor of the Harvard Crimson, and his brief
stint as a reporter armed with explosive adjectives shows. Euphemistic
detonations of this kind, wholly inappropriate for a U.S. Senator attempting to
gage the suitability of a possible associate justice to the high court, had
been frequently deployed by Blumenthal during his twenty years stint as
Connecticut’s Attorney General, and they had always played well in his state’s
left of center media.
Blumenthal has
not said precisely how he took the measure of the American people’s fear at the
prospect of Barrett’s elevation to the court. Could the fear he feared not be a
projection on the American people – all of them? – of his own somewhat frantic
and fantastic misgivings? Barrett’s past record of decisions on a circuit court
has not resulted in explosions or enduring harm to judicial probity, and none
of Barrett’s decisions have discredited her high American Bar association
rating.
Blumenthal did
not demand the recusal of the other two justices seated on the Supreme Court
who were also nominated by President Donald Trump should the legitimacy of the
coming election be referred to the high court.
If the Blumenthal
principle were to apply equitably to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, any
decision made by the court likely would favor Democrat presidential contestant
Joe Biden, a bosom pal of both Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton, still wincing
from her presidential defeat in 2016; we see here the hidden scorpion’s stinger
in Blumenthal’s demand.
The Senator From
Planned Parenthood has not said, nor has he been asked, what sanctions he will
apply to Barrett should she, maintaining her political independence, as befits
a Supreme Court Associate Justice, refuse to bow under the lash to Blumenthal’s
will. Will Blumenthal-Schumer-Feinstein-Pelosi move for impeachment, a
sanction, most would agree, that has lost its puissance as a threat, having
been much overused by Democrats seeking to impeach Trump before his four year
term as President is affirmed or repudiated by voters at the polls?
All Blumenthal’s
threats were blunt arrows. Barrett is not made of inimitable stuff, and she is
a brilliant jurist. When a Republican interrogator asked her on the second day
of her testimony to show senators and the public the reference documentation
she had before her as an aid to answering complex legal questions, she
laughingly held up an empty note pad.
Democrat
senators, always with a compassionate critical edge in their voices, were
making political points. To a person, they painted a gruesome picture of what
would happen after Republicans and their court jesters had been successful in
killing Obamacare and its various iterations, hoping perhaps the resulting
conversation would tailspin into a political discussion concerning the benefits
of what really amounts to universal healthcare, a government run operation that
would drive up medical prices in the long run, ration health care and put out
of business insurance companies clustered in Blumenthal’s Connecticut, once the
insurance capital of the world.
Barrett deftly
avoided the trap by reminding legislators that Supreme Court Justices were not
in the business of settling partisan political disputes among legislators,
though she put the point in polite judicialese. As her predecessors had done in
previous judicial appointment hearings, Barrett told the trap-baiters that she
could not both render just decisions from the bench and prejudice such
decisions by answering questions on hot button issues – abortion and gun
control have long been two of Blumenthal’s staple campaign subjects – that she
would be called upon in the future to consider.
At the end of a
long day, Barrett appeared unflustered; nearly every commentator, on the left
or the right, seemed certain that Barrett would be confirmed; and although
there is one day yet for Democrats to pull a rabbit out of their hats, Barrett
seemed serene and refreshed. Her life has prepared her well against the ravages
of quick witted students, rambunctious children and senators in campaign heat .
At the end of his own dispiriting interrogation, Blumenthal’s hands were visibly
shaking, not, one hopes, with suppressed indignation or some affliction as yet
unnoticed by his hometown media.
Blumenthal v. Barrett, Day Three, “I won’t do
that!”
A lede in a story
covering Senator Dick Blumenthal’s second day questioning of Supreme Court
nominee Judge Amy Barrett correctly reports that the senator “spent most of his
allotted half hour Tuesday questioning Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett
about her support for an organization that says life begins at fertilization
and on her controversial dissent in a gun case.”
At the beginning
of his questioning, Blumenthal assured Barrett that her Catholic faith was not
on the senate’s chopping block. But it was. Blumenthal is a master of
insinuation, and pro-abortion-at-any-stage-of-pregnancy-Democrats such as
Blumenthal, a regulator-in-chief Attorney General in Connecticut who
unaccountably has opposed all and every attempt to regulate the abortion
industry, is clearly combative in the presence of Catholics. The anti-Barrett
forces, who are legion, have feverishly questioned Barrett’s association with a
Catholic group regarded as a cult by many progressive ascendant elements in the
Democrat Party.
Blumenthal has
not been questioned closely concerning his own associations with extreme groups
on the left. And, of course, there are in the country some fervent
anti-Catholics who believe – half a century after
historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the author of more than 20
books and President John Kennedy’s biographer, told us that anti-Catholicism is
the oldest prejudice in the United States – that Catholics are programmatically
incapable of permitting their First Amendment constitutional religious rights
to be discarded by revolutionary progressives.
Blumenthal,
not always reckless, who can speak with the tongue of
an angelic lawyer, knows that he must tread softly in a state heavily populated
by Catholics of all races – second wave Irish, heavily persecuted in
post-potato-famine days, second wave Italians from the poorer sections of
Italy, Hispanics seeking shelter from atheist, pro-socialist communists in Latin
America, and Greek Orthodox Catholics fleeing the sword of Islam, most of whom
still cling faithfully to their bibles and, not surprisingly, to their guns.
Not everyone in
Connecticut is a Harvard graduate who has overcome the Catholic dogma that
sings loudly within them. And not everyone in Blumenthal’s home state,
Connecticut, trusts that the police, whom progressive Democrats want to defund,
will arrive in a timely manner on their doorsteps after they have been called
for assistance. In Connecticut, every attempt to cage Second Amendment rights
after a horrific and murderous assault – the fatal attack by two parolees on
the wife and two children of Dr. William Pettit,
now a state senator, comes to mind – causes gun sales in the state to spike
sharply.
On the very last
day of her public testimony before the Judiciary Committee, Blumenthal prepared
a cunning trap for Barrett. He asked her to affirm or “grade precedents” in
three prior Supreme Court cases, 1) Brown v. Board of Education, 2) Loving
v. Virginia, and 3) Griswold v. Connecticut. In
1) the court ruled that that racial segregation in public schools was
unconstitutional, in 2) that laws banning interracial marriage were
unconstitutional, and in 3) that the purchase and use by married couples of
contraceptives without government restriction was protected by the
constitution.
Barrett responded
that Brown and Loving had been correctly
decided. She was willing to say so on this occasion because what she had said
“in print, either my scholarly work or in judicial opinions is fair game,” and
she had in the past said that Brown had been correctly
decided. However, she declined in the case of Griswold to
“grade precedents,” that is to give a “thumbs up or down” to rulings she had
not commented on-- for the best of reasons: the canon of judicial ethics
forbade her from doing so. Blumenthal, for 20 years the Attorney General of
Connecticut, knew that he was asking Barrett to violate a judicial Canon;
never-the-less, he pressed on, pulling out all the emotional stops.
“Every time you
ask me a question about whether [or not] a question was correctly decided,”
Barrett responded, “I cannot answer that question because I cannot suggest
agreement or disagreement with precedents of the Supreme Court. All of those
precedents bind me now as a Seventh Circuit judge and were I to be confirmed I
would be responsible for applying the law of stare decisis to all of them.”
Blumenthal asked
the judge “to think of how she would feel as a gay or lesbian American ‘to hear
that you can’t answer whether the government can make it a crime for them to
have that relationship, whether the government can enable people who are
happily married to continue that relationship,” at which point “Barrett pushed
back, saying the senator was implying she would cast a vote to overrule Obergefell [
v. Hodges],” a case in which the high court found that same-sex
couples had a constitutional right to marry.
Her personal
feelings, she had said dozens of times during her testimony, cannot and would
not be permitted to color her prospective decisions on the court. Defendants
and plaintiffs in every court in the land expect judges to apply the law and
the Constitution to their decisions – not their personal feelings.
“I’m not even
expressing a view in disagreement of Obergefell,” Barrett told
Blumenthal, stepping nimbly and properly around a snare that would have
impaired her objective decisions in future cases. “You’re pushing me to try to
violate the judicial Canons of ethics and to offer advisory opinions and I
won’t do that.”
Canons of
judicial ethics, of course, mean nothing to former state attorneys general on
the hunt for votes during elections. “People never lie so much,” said
a refreshingly honest Otto von Bismarck, “as after a
hunt, during a war or before an election.”
Early in his
interrogation, Blumenthal promised his victim that the front door would be
closed to anti-Catholic prejudice. In the end, the back door was flung wide
open, and all the snot-nosed devils in Hell rushed through it.
Blumenthal’s Last Stand
The title of the
news report was, “Sen. Richard Blumenthal makes last-ditch effort to delay
Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to
the Supreme Court, but Republicans prevail on party-line vote.”
Blumenthal’s last
stand occurred following the termination of the Senate public
hearing convened to pass on Amy Coney Barrett’s fitness to serve on the U.S.
Supreme Court. Barrett’s elevation to the high court is a virtual certainty,
since Democrats in the Senate do not have the votes to block her admission to
the court.
Unlike Custer’s
last stand, Blumenthal’s occurred on an empty battlefield. And Barrett, who
already had been through Blumenthal’s drill, certainly will not respond
publicly in the pages of Connecticut papers to issues Blumenthal had previously
raised in the public Senate hearing, exhaustively covered by the anti-Barrett
media.
During her public
hearing, Barrett was peppered with questions from Blumenthal and others that
she wisely chose not to answer.
At one point
during her public hearing, a polite and mild mannered Barrett, sensing the
snare tightening around her ankle, told Blumenthal, “Every time you ask me a
question about whether [or not] a question was correctly decided, I cannot
answer that question, because I cannot suggest agreement or disagreement with
precedents of the Supreme Court. All of those precedents bind me now as a
Seventh Circuit judge and, were I to be confirmed, I would be responsible for
applying the law of stare decisis to all of them.”
Blumenthal
tightened the snare. He asked Barrett how she would feel as a gay or lesbian
American “to hear that you can’t answer whether the government can make it a
crime for them to have that relationship, whether the government can enable
people who are happily married to continue that relationship,” at which point
Barrett pushed back, saying the senator was implying she would cast a vote to
overrule Obergefell [ v. Hodges],” a case in which
the high court found that same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry.
“I’m not even
expressing a view in disagreement of Obergefell,” Barrett said,
stepping nimbly and properly around a cheap trap that would have impaired her
objective decisions in future cases. “You’re pushing me to try to violate the
judicial Canons of ethics and to offer advisory opinions and I won’t do that.”
Blumenthal,
having stoked the fires of resentment among gays, folded his tent and marched
off the battlefield. But he would live to fight another day -- when Barrett was
not present to challenge his discreditable political tactics.
Prior to the
appearance of Neil Gorsuch before his committee, Blumenthal wrote on his own
site: “We know that conservative organizations have spent millions on the
prospect that he will move American law dramatically to the right. And we know
that he will not answer questions that his predecessors answered about core
tenets of American jurisprudence. In short, he has left us with substantial
doubt. That doubt leaves women wondering how long they will have autonomy over
their health care decisions, same-sex couples questioning whether they might be
denied the right to marry the person they love, workers and consumers doubting
their rights, and Americans fearing the court will abandon protections of
privacy, equality and the rule of law. That doubt is why I cannot support this
nomination, and why I will work to block it using every tool at my disposal.”
Much later,
following his elevation to the Supreme Court, Justice Neil Gorsuch, an originalist
constitutional interpreter, would write a majority decision in which the Court
held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Gorsuch pointed
out in his decision that employers discriminating against gay or transgender
employees accept a certain characteristic (e.g., attraction to women) in
employees of one sex but not in employees of the other sex. The ruling has been
hailed by legal scholars as one of the most important Supreme Court decisions
regarding LGBTQ rights in the United States, along with Lawrence v. Texas
(2003) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).
No recent nominee
to the Supreme Court, originalist or not, has agreed to answer the kinds of
questions put by Blumenthal to Barrett -- because in answering such speculative
and hypothetical questions on abortion or gay rights as Barrett correctly
refused to field, the prospective justice would not thereafter be free to
decide such questions should he or she be elevated to the Supreme Court – very
likely in Barrett’s case, much to Blumenthal’s chagrin.
There are highly
relevant questions Connecticut’s deferential media has not and will not put to
Blumenthal, a progressive white-hatter.
Blumenthal had
said that Barrett, should she become an Associate Justice, must recuse herself
from making decisions on the high court involving election laws because
President Donald Trump, who had nominated her to the court, might become
involved in suits concerning ballot impropriety. Put aside for the moment that
recusal and presidential court nominations are wholly unrelated, an obvious
question raises its horned head: Why didn't Blumenthal at the same time call
for the recusal of two other Associate Justices nominated to the court by
Trump, Brett Kavanagh and Neil Gorsuch, both male Associate Justices? Do we
have here an example of senatorial white privilege – Blumenthal is a
millionaire by marriage several times over – once again exercising patrimonial
rights over a woman?
The objections
raised by Blumenthal against Barrett, all swirl around originalism -- a mode of
Constitutional interpretation different in kind from
conservatism, a political worldview and another of Blumenthal’s bugbears.
Blumenthal made
use of the Barrett snares in his 2017 Gorsuch interrogatories.
Here is a 2017 report from CTMirror on Blumenthal’s
interrogation of Gorsuch:
On
Griswold v. Connecticut, a 1965 decision that overturned the state’s ban on
contraceptives for married couples and bolstered Americans’ right to privacy,
Gorsuch said, “It has been repeatedly reaffirmed.”
Pressed
by Blumenthal to give an opinion on the case, Gorsuch demurred.
“My
personal views have nothing to do with my job as a judge,” he said.
On
Eisenstadt v Baird, which established the right of unmarried people to possess
contraceptives, Gorsuch said, “To say I agree or disagree with the United
States Supreme Court as a judge is an act of hubris.”
“Precedent
is more important than what I think, and my agreement or disagreement doesn’t
add weight towards it,” Gorsuch said.
Gorsuch
called Loving v Virginia, which ruled that banning interracial marriage is
unconstitutional, “a seminal, important vindication of the original meaning of
the Equal Protection Clause.”
But
he said little else.
“I’m
drawing the same line that Justice (Ruth Bader) Ginsberg, (David) Souter and
(Antonin) Scalia… Many, many people who have sat at this confirmation
table and declined to offer their personal views on this or that precedent,” he
said.
Of
Lawrence v. Texas, which held the government can’t criminalize gay and lesbian
relationships, Gorsuch said, “I’m going to give you the same answer every
time.”
Blumenthal
also failed to secure Gorsuch’s personal opinion on a couple of key abortion
rights cases, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
A
frustrated Blumenthal told Gorsuch, “Your declining to be more direct leaves
doubt in the minds of millions of Americans.”
But
Gorsuch said it was important to hide his views.
“If
I start suggesting that I prefer or not or like this or that precedent, I’m
sending a signal, a ‘promise of preview,’ as Justice Ginsberg called it, about
how I would rule in the future,” he said.
He
said Blumenthal, and other senators, are grilling him on issues that are “very
live with controversy, which is why you are asking about them.”
When Blumenthal
questioned Barrett, he was simply retracing well-worn old ground.
It has rarely, if
at all, been mentioned in stories on Blumenthal that Gorsuch, an originalist
Associate Justice elevated to the high court by Trump, wrote one of the most
important Supreme Court decisions regarding LGBTQ rights in the United States,
along with Lawrence v. Texas (2003) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). Why isn’t
this telling but inconvenient datum mentioned in every story
that displays Blumenthal’s always cleverly buried axiom that originalists
appointed to the high court are bound by their originalism to issue decrees
shoving gays back into the closet?
Why, to put the
question in other terms, is Blumenthal consistently treated by Connecticut’s
media with the solicitude one reserves for holy icons when, in fact, he has
shown himself, time and again, to be a work-a-day neo-progressive Democrat hack
afflicted with an unquenchable lust for favorable publicity?
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