The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Blumenthal moves to postpone Amy Coney Barrett confirmation
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal moved to indefinitely postpone the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on Thursday as Democrats unleashed tactical maneuvers and impassioned appeals to slow or stop her appointment to the nation’s highest court.
Blumenthal, D-Conn., argued the process should be delayed not only because of its timing before the election but because of new evidence emerging about speeches Barrett failed to disclose prior to the hearings.
The motion failed in a party-line vote, but it sparked a long debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee with speeches about the direction of the Senate
and the nation, filled with heartfelt asides about the state of discourse in 2020. The committee plans to cast its final vote on the confirmation on Oct. 22, sending it to the full Senate.
“I believe this rush, sham process has been a disservice to this committee,” Blumenthal said. “We’ve had inadequate time to review this nomination.”
In reporting published Thursday evening, CNN found at least seven additional talks that Barrett participated in at the University of Notre Dame law school, according to public calendars, which were not listed on Barrett’s Senate disclosures.
Barrett previously failed to list two documents she signed that expressed viewpoints opposing abortion. Blumenthal chastised Barrett for not disclosing these materials during his questioning Tuesday.
“I assure you I was not trying to hide it from you,” Barrett said, noting she supplied over 1,800 pages of documents to the Senate and previous nominees have supplemented their disclosures as well.
The confirmation process requires Supreme Court nominees to complete a detailed questionnaire and hand over past documents and records reflecting their public statements. Blumenthal said Wednesday night he would push to delay a preliminary vote Thursday on the basis of these new talks.
In grave tones and emotional hues, both sides argued the Senate’s traditions of deliberation, honesty and and civility were evaporating in the polarized political environment.
Sen. Cory Booker, DN.J., compared the Senate to a “frog in boiling water.”
“Right now we are doing tit for tat,” he said. “Each of us are participating in the erosion of this body.”
Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the Judiciary Committee chairman, blamed Democrats for changing the process for confirming Supreme Court nominees in 2013, when Democrats lowered the threshold for confirming lower court judges from 60 votes to a simple majority of the 100-member body. Republicans then expanded that change to apply to Supreme Court nominees.
Republicans repeatedly said elections have consequences and the effect of U.S. voters electing Republicans to the White House and Senate led to this nomination.
“No one thought they would lose in 2016, including me,” Graham said of Democrats.
Democrats charged Republicans with breaking their word by advancing this nomination after they blocked the Supreme Court confirmation for Merrick Garland in 2016 because that was an election year.
“We also have another precedent in the Senate that senators keep their word,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. “I wish you had kept what you had said then. You haven’t.”
Blumenthal also brought up senators keeping their word. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., asked Blumenthal if he was accusing him of breaking his word. Blumenthal said he was not pointing to Kennedy specifically, but Graham and other Republicans. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., jumped in to say she had 15 quotes from 15 Republican senators commenting on not passing a confirmation in an election year.
Democrats also raised objections to the number of questions that Barrett declined to answer on Tuesday and Wednesday as she followed a tradition of nominees to the high court giving vague, safe responses. In a terse exchange Wednesday, Blumenthal pressed Barrett to take a stand on past court precedents on same-sex marriage and contraception and charged she was not being “forthright” enough, when she refused.
Barrett accused Blumenthal of “pushing me to violate the judicial canons of ethics and to offer advisory opinions and I won’t do that,” she said.
Barrett’s responses followed a tradition in which opposition senators try to pin down a nominee, who avoids committing to any position on issues that could come before the court or matters of politics. But Blumenthal suggested Barrett and the Trump administration was taking this concept to a “new level” to conceal her real views.
Barrett, 48, is a judge on the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. She’s also a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, who identifies as an originalist in interpreting the Constitution — meaning she attempts to hew as closely as possible to the intent of the framers of the document. She lives in South Bend, Ind. with her husband and seven children.
Barrett did not appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, but instead the committee held debate and heard from witnesses speaking in favor of and against Barrett’s nomination. After nearly two hours of debate, all Republicans voted not to delay the proceedings with all Democrats voting in favor.
In a break in the proceedings, Blumenthal and some other Democrats spoke to protesters agitating against Barrett’s confirmation outside the U.S. Capitol. Blumenthal asked them to vote.