FUTURE OF THE SUPREME COURT

The rank hypocrisy of the Republican Party is once again on full display, as Moscow Mitch McConnell’s Senate, and Lindsey Graham’s Judicial Committee, are ramming through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, perhaps one of the most inexperienced and unqualified Supreme Court nominees in history.

Barrett is a devout member of a religious extremist group called the People of Praise, where she served as a “handmaid” and believed that men are “divinely ordained” as the head of the family and that wives must submit to them, and where members prayed in “tongues” to heal the sick and cast out evil spirits.

But, besides the scary prospect of nominating an “exorcist” to the highest court, the hypocrisy of McConnell and Graham is even more staggering. Neither of them had any problem with blocking President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, 10 months out from the upcoming inauguration, breaking from precedent and sensibility, and yet here we are less than one month from the election, and they once again change the “rules of the game” in contradiction to the McConnell and Graham of 2016.

In light of the dire and current circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, Republicans could easily just wait and confirm her during the “lame duck” session, but it is obvious that President Donald Trump and his enablers are desperate to have her on the court in time to overturn Obamacare, then Roe v. Wade, marriage equality and quite possibly the election result itself! This is how democracies die and tyrannical autocracies take over. — Richard Thesken, Bakersfield