Senate assures Barret’s confirmation

WASHINGTON, D.C.: SENATE CONfiRMATION of US President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett appeared certain on Thursday (Friday in Manila) after four days of hearings that changed no minds and left her majority Republican support intact.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hashed through her testimony on her deeply conservative record and views on hot-button issues like abortion and the soon-to-be reviewed Affordable Care Act (ACA), with the two parties still in fundamental disagreement.

Democratic senators made lastminute pitches to Republican colleagues to honor their promises of four years ago not to seat a justice close to a presidential election, saying they would lose public trust if they pushed ahead.

But committee chairman Lindsey Graham repeated a favorite line of Trump’s underscoring their voting power — in the committee and the full Senate, which must approve Barrett. “Elections have consequences,” he said.

Graham said the committee

WOULD VOTE ON BARRETT’S CONfiRMATION on October 22, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the full Senate would begin debate the following day, making likely her fiNAL APPROVAL DAYS LATER.

If approved, Barrett would give conservatives on the court a 6- 3 majority over progressives.

Trump has said he wants a judge who will end abortion rights and help kill the ACA, the so- called Obamacare program that extended health care overage to millions of uninsured Americans.

The court will hear a case on the ACA a week after the November 3 election.

A long-time law professor at the University of Notre Dame and an appeals court judge for the past three years, the 48-year-old Barrett follows a somewhat fundamentalist school of US judicial thought, originalism, and is a devout Catholic.

But over two days of intensive questioning, she steadfastly avoided expressing her legal views, saying she would not address theoretical issues but only judge cases as they come on their own merits.