 |
| Judge Amy Coney Barrett |
No doubt Democrat U.S. Senate opposition researchers (AKA “dirt diggers”) have for some time been combing through Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s pristine past in search of some errant behavior they might use to derail her possible appointment by President Donald Trump to the U.S. Supreme Court. Before the curtain rings down on her U.S. Senate hearing, the real Barrett will likely be buried beneath mounds of rhetorical rubble as the Democrat Javerts on the Judicial Committee proceed with the dismantling work at hand.
The most notorious wrecking job in recent Senate hearings
involved present Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, although Supreme Court appointees Robert Bork, from
whom the term “Borking” is derived, and Clarence Thomas were earlier publicly
defamed by Democrats anxious to preserve a presumed liberal presence on the
Court.
Kavanaugh was accused by a witness at first unwilling to
come forward, professor of psychology Christine Blasey Ford, of sexual
improprieties that she testified had occurred many years earlier. During the
course of the hearing, it transpired that the only direct witness cited by Ford
as having been present during the unreported crime had no recollection of being
been present on the occasion. By the time Kavanaugh was appointed to the Court,
he had been sufficiently mauled to quell temporarily the sometimes bestial
instincts of Democrat senators riven by anxiety, none of whom were able
seriously to fault Kavanaugh, given an AAA rating by the American Bar
Association, on his many court decisions.
Barrett’s curriculum vitae is entirely
unexceptional -- but not, one supposes, to Connecticut’s own Javert, former
Attorney General, now U.S. Senator, Dick Blumenthal. Along with New York’s
Javert, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, Blumenthal has served in the front ranks of
Supreme Court oppositionists. Blumenthal already has announced that he would
not view favorably ANY Supreme Court nominee put forward by President Donald
Trump, a prime example of triumphant prejudice that would quickly eliminate
Blumenthal for service on any jury in the United States. “First the verdict,
then the trial” says the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the
Looking Glass.”
Should Trump nominate Barrett for a position on the Court,
she will have faced Democrat interrogators twice. During her first go-around,
Barrett was found too Catholic by Senior U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein of
California. Feinstein noted that Barrett had a “long history of believing that
religious beliefs should prevail.” Having reviewed Barrett’s speeches,
Feinstein remarked “the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly
within you.” Pointing inferentially to abortion, Feinstein added, “And that’s
of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought
for years in this country.” The “dogma”
that so offended Feinstein is, of course, Catholic dogma.
According to a brief biography in SCOTUSblog, “Barrett has been
married for over 18 years to Jesse Barrett, a partner in a South Bend law firm
who spent 13 years as a federal prosecutor in Indiana. They have seven children
(only two fewer than her old boss, Scalia). At her 7th Circuit confirmation
hearing, Barrett introduced three of her daughters, who were sitting behind
her. She told senators that one daughter, then-13-year-old Vivian, was adopted
from Haiti at the age of 14 months, weighing just 11 pounds; she was so weak at
the time that the Barretts were told she might never walk normally or talk. The
Barretts adopted a second child, Jon Peter, from Haiti after the 2011
earthquake, and Barrett described their youngest child, Benjamin, as having
special needs that “present unique challenges for all of us.” These acts of
love and charity are likely the result of some residual Catholic dogma living
loudly within Trump’s possible Supreme Court nominee.
Barrett already has answered the principal objection voiced by
pro-abortion senators such as Feinstein, Schumer, Blumenthal et al, which is this: In any conflict between
Catholic dogma and a fair reading of the U.S. Constitution, which will prevail
in Barrett’s Supreme Court judicial reasoning?
Questioned on the point during her 7th Circuit confirmation hearing, Barrett stressed, according to SCOTUSblog,
“that she did not believe it was ‘lawful for a judge to impose personal
opinions, from whatever source they derive, upon the law,’ and she pledged that
her views on abortion ‘or any other question will have no bearing on the discharge
of my duties as a judge.’ She acknowledged that, if she were instead being
nominated to serve as a federal trial judge, she ‘would not enter an order of
execution, but she assured senators that she did not intend ‘as a blanket
matter to recuse myself in capital cases if I am confirmed’ and added that she
had ‘fully participated in advising Justice Scalia in capital cases as a law
clerk.’”
The real ongoing
struggle between “liberal” and “conservative” senators over appointments to the
Supreme Court centers upon their differing views of acceptable judicial manners.
Liberal Democrat senators, who have now refashioned themselves as progressives,
view the court as a helpmate in advancing progressive legislative measures; and
most Republicans, conservative or middle-of-the-road, want to maintain the
integrity of the court as originalist interpreters of the Constitution, a body
of judicial interpreters who should leave legislating to elected legislators.
Barrett is an
originalist, which is not at all the same thing as a conservative.
Comments