I have submitted this column to the Eureka Springs Independent almost every week for a couple of years. I can address practically anything under the sun, but a few weeks ago there was so much wacko news I felt tongue-tied.
And here we go again. Last week I looked at headlines before bedtime to learn Justice Ruth Ginsburg died. Next morning Senator Mitch McConnell had invoked his anti-logic to ram through a replacement as soon as the president nominated someone, which he did, 24 hours before The New York Times published preliminary reports on a four-year investigation into tax evasion by Trump, Inc.
This, two days before he hooks up with challenger Joe Biden for the first presidential debate, which will be old news when this paper is printed. All against the backdrop of a global pandemic which no one outside of New Zealand seems to know how to deal with, and the concomitant disasters visited upon working people, schools and colleges, arts and entertainment, travel, restaurants, old folks and children—life as we thought we knew it.
Nothing seems familiar anymore.
I have sympathy for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump nominated to take the Ruth-less chair on the Supreme Court. If we disregard her politics, she is a plausible variant of her predecessor—smart, well-respected, dedicated to her family, hard-working. She is a pawn in the McConnell hypocrisy, not the cause of it.
What kind of qualified, dedicated lawyer would refuse the invitation to land a lifelong appointment to the Supreme Court? When she attains the age that Ginsburg died, Trump and McConnell will be long a-mouldering in their graves.
There has been talk that Democratic senators should boycott not only the hearings to confirm her, but also the traditional “courtesy” visits that senators host for nominated justices. This is precisely where Michelle Obama’s dictum must come into play: “When they go low, we go high.” Biden has called for a handful of Republican senators to “vote their conscience,” and delay a confirmation until after Inauguration Day. Not much chance of that; it would require a handful of Republican senators to admit owning a conscience.
Some of them say if the tables were turned, the Democrats would do the same dang thing. But that hypothesis cannot be proven unless the tables actually get turned. The ruckus McConnell raised is precisely because the previous time a justice died suddenly in an election year, President Obama nominated moderate Judge Merrick Garland, who had been previously praised by Republicans as not merely acceptable, but exemplary, until Mitch said no. Yes is no, black is white, 2 + 2 = 5. 1984 lives in 2020.
Democrats should participate in Amy Barrett’s confirmation hearing with all of the dignity and grace they can muster, proving they possess the principles their GOP colleagues abandoned. Republican Senator Josh Hawley—our neighbor in Missouri—has already said Supreme Court nominees must pass the abortion litmus test, so they needn’t waste their time on that one—let Hawley follow that line of questioning.
Most important, if 2020 presidential election returns were examined by the Supreme Court, would Barrett recuse herself, as having been named there just weeks before by the sitting president who has already stated he cannot lose unless the election is rigged, denigrated the process, tried to muck up the Postal Service in its duty to efficiently process mail-in ballots, and insisted that the Supreme Court needs nine justices to solve any dispute on his behalf?
Chief Justice John Roberts has earned a reputation as working to keep the judiciary out of the noisome political games the two-party system plays. If Amy Coney Barrett assumes a chair on the Supreme Court, she could singlehandedly destroy any remaining shred of nonpartisanship the Court retains. A promise to recuse herself would raise her status as a serious arbiter, regardless of how she attained her position.
It’s about the best the Democrats can do in this situation. If she pulls a Mitch, and lies under oath, she demolishes Roberts’s argument for the Court’s independence. Hell in a handbasket approacheth.