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| Blumenthal and Harris |
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 shows. This is the sort of sentiment,
wholly inappropriate for a U.S. Senator attempting to gage the suitability of a
possible associate justice to the high court, that may play well in
Connecticut’s left of center media.
Blumenthal has not said precisely how he took the measure of
American people’s fear at the prospect of Barrett’s elevation to the court.
Could the fear he fears not be a projection on the American people – all of
them? – of his own somewhat tremulous 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 so overused by Democrats seeking to impeach Trump
before his four year administration is affirmed or repudiated by voters at the
polls?
All these were empty threats. 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 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 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
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
subjects – 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 and rambunctious
children. 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.
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