Opinion by Hal Brown
Some more or less random thoughts about the next Supreme Court Justice
For someone who got into and graduated from law school, and passed the bar exam, which I understand requires a good memory, she sure has forgotten a lot about what she knew about Trump’s well publicized positions.
She does remember, however that Trump doesn’t admit to believing in climate change so she knew she had to play her tawdry non-answer game with that question.
“Asked whether President Trump could unilaterally move the election, she said she would ‘need to hear arguments from the litigants and read briefs and consult with my law clerks and talk to my colleagues.’ Asked about whether voter intimidation is illegal, Judge Barrett replied, ‘I can’t apply the law to a hypothetical set of facts.’ Of course the president cannot unilaterally move the election, and voter intimidation is illegal.” From The Washington Post
Here’s how Nicholas Kristof put it in this column in The NY Times today, Will We Choose the Right Side of History? In Amy Coney Barrett, Republicans are once again backing a Supreme Court nominee who could take us backward:
Amy Coney Barrett has been following recent precedent in her confirmation hearing before the Senate, pretending that she has never had an interesting thought in her life.
Is it illegal to intimidate voters at the polls? She didn’t want to weigh in. A president postponing an election? Hmm. She’d have to think about that.
What about climate change? “I have read things about climate change,” she acknowledged, warily emphasizing that she is not a scientist. “I would not say I have firm views on it.”
If she had been asked about astronomy, she might have explained: “I have read things about the Earth being round. I would not say I have firm views on it.”
Here’s a summary of Jennifer Rubin’s Washington Post column: Barrett seeks refuge in ignorance and evasion. She wrote “Either she has lived her life in a soulless vacuum, or she is terribly afraid of offending President Trump.”
So it is when someone knows that no matter what happens in a confirmation hearing the fix is in.
Our only hope is for a clean blue sweep and for the Democrats to expand the court once they have the power to do so.
On a related topic, she sure is lucky that People of Praise, the group to which she and her husband belong to is a Christian group which is open Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians and other denominational and nondenominational Christians. (from their their website.) Consider:
Revealed: Amy Coney Barrett lived in home of secretive Christian group's co-founder
Try to imagine if she was a Scientologist. I wonder if the Democrats would have let her adherence to those beliefs slide in the hearing.
I’m trying to find an ironic connection between what happened when Sen. John Cornyn asked her to show what notes she was using to prep for answers and she held up a blank notepad, supposedly proving that she was capable of talking for hours without any notes and Trump holding up the Bible outside the church in his famous photo op. (Click here to enlarge image.)
In her case it proved she could weasel and lie her way out of any substantive question without crib notes, and in Trump’s case he might as well have been holding up a book with blank pages. Both were props.
I wonder how she would have answered a question about what she would tell a child who expressed doubt about their parent’s religious beliefs.
I wish someone had dug deeper into her views about reproductive rights. For example, what does she think about pre-marital sex and grade appropriate sex education in the schools? Certainly she should have been asked about whether she thought family planning through contraception was acceptable, and if so, were there any forms of birth control she thought shouldn’t be used.
I would like to see if she could have been rattled if asked what she would tell a teenager who was entering puberty and experiencing an intense sexual drive for the first time. I would like her to answer a question about who she would tell a parent about how to handle it if their child expressed sexual attraction to a member of the same sex, to if their little boy liked to dress up in girls clothes.
If religion is off limits because it is a third rail in a confirmation hearing, and she’s not about to talk about Roe v. Wade, I wonder if she could have been pinned down with questions about her beliefs about sexuality in general.
I admit I really wanted someone to ask her questions that broke through her aloof self-confidence and too-clever-by-half evasiveness by finding an Achille’s Heel and asked a question which she couldn’t refuse to answer by claiming that a case might come before the court on the subject.