She Sounds Like I Thought She Might

 

Mike Johnson’s wife Kelly just responded after it was revealed her “Christian Counseling Services” compare gay people to bestiality and say sex out of wedlock “offends God.”

She said she “felt burdened for so many people” & says “God” made Mike Johnson Speaker. “It’s Biblical.” pic.twitter.com/Ar00R7F50R

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) November 3, 2023

It's the Michelle Dugger sort of little girl voice that first catches my ear. Out where I work in the world, I had to develop my "Big Girl Voice" to make people hear me. I don't keep sweet. Her voice is like pancake syrup. She says she stopped teaching (a worthwhile profession) to start minding other people's sexual business because she felt "burdened for them". 

Wasn't her load to carry. Not her cross. Not her battlefield. Not her mission. Not her business. And why in the world did why think she had a calling to practice authority over people's misery that was solely caused by not being accepted, but reinforceing their feelings of the conditionality of their worth? 

And as for her husband's "win" by being a guy no one knew was kind of a bizarrely radical character? Yeaaaahhh, God didn't do that. Unless Matt Gaetz and an exhausted GOP House is God now. (Not that I want to give them ideas.) It isn't Biblical that her husband became Speaker, unless she means God ran out of locusts and frogs.  

Justice Thomas has Very Dear Friends

 

The owlish device of Bohemian Grove says" Weaving spiders come not here" and this is the crux of the story--weaving spiders be everywhere when a Supreme Court Justice is accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from politically involved billionaires.  Why, yes, that story was from 2011. Clarence Thomas has told on himself when he admits his dear friendship with Harlan Crow has been for something on the order of 25 plus years, when he has been on SCOTUS for nearly 32 years. 

Did he get endeared by this very good friend after having become a SCOTUS? and wouldn't any one of you find the lavishing of multi-million-dollar trips and so on very endearing? Of course, you are dear friends--now. 

Now, where this stands in the current court, where a leak was probably covered up, shouldn't we worry? Don't we respect this court though, all warts and blemishes aside?

She Does Have Children, Though

It was just last year that I asked the facetious question on this blog: Oh, Does Amy Coney Barrett Have Kids?  My point was that looking to her personal narrative and ignoring her stated biases was a mistake. So consider this quote from her recent inquiry regarding the Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks: 

"So petitioner points out that in all 50 states you can terminate parental rights by relinquishing a child after [birth], and I think the shortest period might have been 48 hours, if I'm remembering the data correctly. So it seems to me, seen in that light, both Roe and Casey emphasize the burdens of parenting. And insofar as you and many of your amici focus on the ways in which forced parenting, forced motherhood, would hinder women's access to the workplace and to equal opportunities, it's also focused on the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy. Why don't the safe-haven laws take care of that problem?"

How does one account for a mindset that seems to be that life starts at conception, but parenthood doesn't start until birth? Separating the burden of pregnancy itself as a part of parenthood creates a false state where a person considering an abortion is not a parent because of an intention not to bear and raise the resulting child. But how can that be? If the embryo or fetus is a separate being, the person who carries is unquestionably, a parent of that being. Parenting starts with the decision to carry or not, though--and for all reasonable parental reasons, such as wanting a child to have a healthy, good life that the parent can't give it. And no, carrying for nine months and giving up the child is not the same thing. 

How can she appear unaware that the state of pregnancy, before birth, is a state that results in employment discrimination and heightens the risk of partner abuse for the pregnant person? Or that pregnant people can face housing discrimination. Is she so ill-acquainted with the legal system that she understands why the law is no immediate remedy for these issues even if laws against domestic violence and housing and work discrimination on the basis of pregnancy exist, and that a pregnant individual can face poverty or physical danger during the course of that pregnancy? 

And how can she be unclear regarding the reluctance a pregnant person has to relinquish parental rights regardless of personal repercussions? The fear of what happens to the child you carried from an early-term pregnancy to the viable and separate entity whose destiny is not now within your control--it is a consideration. That one's child is not readily adoptable for reasons that pregnant person's understands far better than the court. The fear that bad people will abuse this child and not give it a life better than it would have faced with the birth parent. Once born, the emotional burden of parenthood isn't easily disposed even if the physical burdens can be. 

Optics

 

I probably have a lot more to say about recent events than I want to or should right now, but I will say this: knowing that her selection and rapid confirmation process right before the election is a big political issue, and realizing that this White House event is yet another way Trump using his office as a staging place for campaign photo ops, is this the image she wants associated with her time as a Supreme Court Justice?

Because regardless of claiming she will decide without fear or favor and based on the law and not her own preferences, this image is one that will taint things. 

I want Democrats and liberals and even just folks who don't think the court should be partisan to let the image of the newest justice standing with this particular President on a White House balcony, not so many weeks from the super-spreader event that was her nomination, at this particular point in American history, really sink in.

If this image was her choice, it is not great. If it was chosen for her, to be lashed to the president who put her here in such an indelible way that her independence is questionable, it is still less great. I do not like it, but Mitch McConnell was very clear today on how much people's feelings count when compared to the consequences of elections.

So be it.

Does She Think The Constitution Matters?

 

Wow. Under questioning from Booker, Coney Barrett won't even say that she thinks presidents should commit to the peaceful transfer of power pic.twitter.com/C7JveeawKZ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2020

It's a little bit much when Judge Coney Barrett pretends that she hasn't paid attention to the President's pronouncements regarding the ACA and hardly suspected at all that she might be nominated to SCOTUS by this president.  She says she isn't hostile to the Act, but I surmise this only means she would strike it down cold-bloodedly and without any particular passion as a part of the job. 

Coney Barrett also equivocated on whether a president could delay an election or whether voter intimidation was okay--and these are black letter sorts of things. She also seemed loathe to nix the idea that a president could issue himself a blanket pardon. I'm not sure what kind of originalist or textualist comes up so empty regarding our established norms, but I highly doubt that any person who swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and takes it seriously, should think these things are actually open for discussion at a later date, as opposed to just being entirely understood as wrong. 

To my mind, this fails a test regarding her fidelity to our creedal nation's actual basis for existence, being superimposed by her own ideology. Or maybe, it just reveals a failure of the spine, to stand up against the possibility that a capricious president might nominate a judge on the basis of supposed loyalty, but then withdraw nomination if they proved not loyal enough. Either is disqualifying. 

The more I see of her, the less impressive she seems. 

Oh, Does Amy Coney Barrett Have Kids?

 

Amy Coney Barrett is the least popular Supreme Court nominee in modern times#ACB https://t.co/BHPrb3zKgB

— Raw Story (@RawStory) October 13, 2020

It really feels like after today's hearings, it would be ammmmaaaaaazzzzzing if more people brought up that she has seven whole young humans that she's looking after not including the big lug who is the head of her household, making her exactly comfortable in a party of nine (See!) and wouldn't it be boss indeed like hot sauce if we talked some more about the part where the church plays as much a part as her children do in her worldview? (Has she any kitchen table commentary to add, or is this too much?) Gosh, I would love more of this rich discourse about her ID politics. 

 Oh wait. I would not. See, I already know like anyone else does where this person is on Roe, and I don't trust her re: Obergefell, Griswold, Lawrence v Texas, I think she'd be Shelby all day every day, and I don't even trust her with Brown v BOE. 

 It really for some reason (my lifelong feminism, probably) annoys me a lot that people are using her being a mom to say she would necessarily support people's rights, etc. All kinds of people have kids. It doesn't require a license or anything. Would we use having fathered many children to be a sign of a man's fitness for a job? (Unless the answer is "sperm donor"--I don't think so.) So why pretend that Barrett's seven children make her less likely to rule against the ACA than Justice Scalia's nine children did? 

 I'm still hung up on the likelihood of her potential inevitability though, so I agree with Sen. Whitehouse, it would do immeasurable damage to the legitimacy of the court if she did not recuse in the event that Trump takes the election results to court (as did a previous campaigner, George W. Bush--and for that matter, Kavanaugh better abstain as well--or really the whole court should just tell Trump's orange peel ass he's on his own.).