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 is alleging happening.
They have not only not — 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 — in unibus (sic), falsus in
omnibus, 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, emphasised 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.
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.
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 – Bumenthal
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 the single
most important Supreme Court decision on gays, a ruling that brings
gays under the ironclad shield of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
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 progressive Democrat hack afflicted with an unquenchable lust for favorable publicity?
