The confirmation process begins this week for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, and while we’ve been fed a steady diet of talking points from Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell praising her for her strict constructionist credentials, it appears more than likely she’s another conservative fraud.
After years of capitulation in Congress to the judicial branch of government — where the Supreme Court has been appointed as the sole arbiter of the Constitution — judicial appointments have become a political football where the majority party plays offense and the minority party plays defense.
Instead of making appointments based on a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution, nominations are made based on the political ideology of the party in control and how closely aligned the nominee is likely to be with that ideology. In an election year, they are made based on the controlling party’s need to protect their majority.
For those clinging to the Republican Party lie about how they are the only protectors of liberty and the Constitution, let me remind you that the Supreme Court has been dominated by Republican appointments since before the infamous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
Regarding the Roe v. Wade decision — a ruling Republicans claim can be overturned by Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment — the 7-2 vote was made by a court dominated by Republican appointees. Here’s the breakdown of the vote along with the president who appointed each justice:
In support:
*Harry Blackmun (Richard M. Nixon, R)
*Warren Burger (Richard M. Nixon, R)
*William Douglas (Franklin D. Roosevelt, D)
*William Brennan Jr. (Dwight D. Eisenhower, R)
*Potter Stewart (Dwight D. Eisenhower, R)
*Thurgood Marshall (Lyndon Baines Johnson, D)
*Lewis Powell Jr. (Richard M. Nixon, R)
In opposition:
*Byron White (John F. Kennedy, D)
*William Rehnquist (Richard M. Nixon, R)
Republican-appointed justices held a 6-3 majority when Roe was decided. Five of the six justices voted in favor of Roe. Democrat-appointed justices weren’t even necessary for Roe to pass.
If confirmed, Amy Coney Barrett will be the latest non-constructionist justice to receive a lifetime appointment to the high court — just like conservative frauds Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh with whom she has more in common than she has with Antonin Scalia, the justice she once clerked for.
Barrett’s track record shows a lack of strict constructionist rulings. She appears to be a big government, police state advocate who will continue the assault against our constitutionally protected liberties and will likely do nothing to overturn Roe v. Wade — a point she made during a 2013 lecture at Notre Dame on the 40th anniversary of the decision:
“I think it is very unlikely at this point that the court is going to overturn Roe [v. Wade], or Roe [v. Wade] as curbed by [Planned Parenthood v.] Casey. The fundamental element, that the woman has a right to choose abortion, will probably stand. The controversy right now is about funding. It’s a question of whether abortions will be publicly or privately funded.”
“Motherhood is a privilege, but it comes at a price. A woman who wants to become pregnant accepts this price, but in an unplanned pregnancy the woman faces the difficulties of pregnancy unwillingly.”
The abortion issue is only one area where Amy Coney Barrett appears to lack the strict constructionist qualities we need on the bench. Constitutional attorney Robert Barnes has reviewed over 40 cases involving Barrett and issued these warnings in a Twitter thread:
Few judges in America would be worse on #FISA & #FourthAmendment issues than #Barrett. In 40+ cases I read & reviewed by Barrett, she sided w/ the government over 90% of the time, a near-record, calling judicial remedy for 4th Amendment violations “not a personal right.”
#Barrett excuses for 4th Amendment violations: blood draws don’t “invade” your privacy; it’s ok to be incompetent in violating civil rights if not “egregiously” or “mostly” incompetent; cops acting “outside jurisdiction” is just “too bad” & no “personal right” to remedy 4th.
In another Twitter thread, Barnes notes how Barrett has “sided with the government on almost every civil rights case, every big employer case, every criminal case, while also siding with the government on the lockdowns, on uncompensated takings, on excusing First Amendment infringements & Fourth Amendment violations.”
Amy Coney Barrett’s non-constructionist track record is also troubling as we fight the tyranny wrought by coronavirus hysteria.
Barrett concurred with the majority in Illinois Republican Party et al. v. J.B. Pritzker, Governor of Illinois to keep an illegal lockdown in place, effectively shredding the Constitution in the name of so-called safety. Barrett hid her support behind the precedent established in 1905 in Jacobsen v. Massachusetts to avoid taking responsibility for her decision.
“At least at this stage of the pandemic, Jacobson takes off the table any general challenge to [Pritzker’s executive order] based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of liberty,” the majority stated in their opinion.
They continued: “[W]hile in the face of a pandemic the Governor of Illinois was not compelled to make a special dispensation for religious activities (see Elim), nothing in the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment barred him from doing so. As in the cases reconciling the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, all that the Governor did was to limit to a certain degree the burden on religious exercise that [the governor’s executive order] imposed.” (emphasis mine)
The Jacobson decision gave the green light to forced vaccines, and it carved out the emergency exception to Constitutional protection in “public health” or “emergency” cases used to justify state-mandated vaccinations. It was also the legal basis used in Korematsu v United States where the court ruled in 1942 that the internment of Japanese Americans was acceptable.
Evangelicals, conservatives and pro-lifers have been dancing in the streets over the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the U.S. Supreme Court, but they shouldn’t be because she isn’t the strict constructionist we have been told she is.
The judiciary was designed by the Founding Fathers to be the weakest branch of government; the real power is supposed to belong to “we the people” via the legislative branch and the individual states. In post-Constitutional America, unelected judges have taken that power from us.
Like Trump’s previous Supreme Court appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett is a conservative fraud who will do plenty to protect the big government police state of the Washington establishment but will do very little to protect the Constitution and liberty.
That’s OK with Donald Trump and the Republican Party because they don’t care about “saving” the courts (as Mitch McConnell claims to be doing), nor do they care about returning America to a Constitutional Republic.
They only care about saving their jobs . . . and the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court might help them do so.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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