Sen. Kamala Harris once suggested that those who adhere to Catholic doctrine may be unfit for office. And Democrats like Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin trashed Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic faith when holding hearings on her nomination as a federal appeals court judge.
Now Harris is doubling down, claims Barrett may have a “bias” just because she’s a Christian.
Harris has a poor track record when it comes to her role on the Judiciary Committee and judicial nominees. In 2018, she pressed a nominee for the Nebraska federal trial court about his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal service organization of the Catholic Church.
She submitted written questions in December to Brian Buescher, an Omaha lawyer nominated to the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska, proposing that he resign his affiliation with the Knights, which they call an “all male society” that “has taken a number of extreme positions” on social questions.
SIGN THE PETITION: Vote to Confirm Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett
“The Knights of Columbus is a Roman Catholic service organization with approximately two million members worldwide,” Buescher wrote in response to Hirono and Harris’ questions. “The organization has a religious and charitable purpose. I joined the Knights of Columbus when I was 18 years old and have been a member ever since. My membership has involved participation in charitable and community events in local Catholic parishes.”
But, now, when asked bout whether questions of Barrett’s faith were on or ff the table, Harris says Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic faith doesn’t disqualify her from serving on the Supreme Court but she may have a “bias” that does.
“One’s faith should never be the basis of supporting or rejecting a nominee, so absolutely not,” Harris told KPNX-TV in Phoenix.
“But any questions that are about bias, any questions that are about perspective on adhering to jurisprudence and precedent — of course,” she said.
Kamala Harris says “of course” questions about Amy Coney Barrett’s Christian “bias” are on the table. #ConfirmACB pic.twitter.com/HWW8puYVuz
— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) October 9, 2020
From her adopted children to her choice to live with Christian friends during law school, leftists are sinking to new lows in their efforts to attack U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
On Wednesday, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed “Senate Democrats and the media” for their disgraceful smear campaign against Barrett, Fox News reports.
“Our coastal elites are so disconnected from their own country that they treat religious Americans like strange animals in a menagerie,” McConnell said in a statement.
Barrett, who is conservative, Catholic and pro-life, is President Donald Trump’s third nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the U.S. Senate confirms her, she would fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an idol of abortion activists, and solidify a 6-3 conservative majority on the high court.
Already, Barrett has borne baseless attacks against her faith and family, including criticism about adopting two of her children from Haiti. And with her confirmation hearing scheduled to begin Monday in the U.S. Senate, more are expected.
McConnell praised Barrett as a “brilliant” legal mind who will judge fairly and follow the U.S. Constitution.
Yet, Democrat “Senators are suggesting that Judge Barrett is too Christian, or the wrong kind of Christian, to be a good judge,” the Kentucky Republican said. “The ongoing attacks by Senate Democrats and the media on Judge Barrett’s faith are a disgrace. They demean the confirmation process, disrespect the Constitution and insult millions of American believers.”
For example, McConell said, The Guardian recently questioned why Barrett chose to live with her Christian friends in faith-centered student housing while she was in law school.
The Washington Post also ran an article that was critical of the People of Praise, a conservative Christian group that Barrett and her husband belong to. The group meets to encourage and support each other through life, but because it uses the term “handmaid,” some have wrongly associated it with the dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
McConell responded: “The word ‘handmaid’ appears dozens of times in the King James Bible. It was good enough for the Virgin Mary. But now, because one liberal author put it in the title of an anti-religious novel in the 1980s, the press tries to imply that one of the most brilliant and powerful women in the legal world is anti-woman.”
Earlier this week, Senate Democrats questioned Barrett’s character in a letter to Attorney General William Barr, implying that she may have purposefully omitted a pro-life ad that she signed in 2006 in her Senate questionnaire. According to a White House spokesperson, however, the questionnaire “requires disclosure of material that a candidate has ‘written or edited’ … Judge Barrett neither wrote nor edited the ad in question.”
U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, a pro-abortion Democrat from Hawaii, also asked last week if Barrett can be a fair judge because she holds such strong religious views against abortion, Breitbart reports. Notably, Hirono was accused of anti-Catholic bigotry against another judicial nominee in 2019.
In essence, Democrat leaders do not think Barrett will follow their modern interpretation of the Constitution, which, they believe, supports the killing of unborn babies in abortions through all nine months of pregnancy.
Pro-life advocates hope and abortion activists fear that Barrett could lead to the undoing of Roe v. Wade and help restore protections for unborn babies. Barrett signed a letter in 2006 that described abortion as “barbaric” and called for an end to Roe.
Barrett is a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and a former clerk of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Like Scalia, she has been described as an “originalist” judge. Though her judicial rulings on abortion are few, she did rule in support of two Indiana pro-life laws during her time on the Seventh Circuit.
Barrett was a member of the Notre Dame University Faculty for Life Group from 2010 to 2016, and she received an award from the Thomas More Society, a pro-life Catholic legal group, in 2018.
She also has made several statements about the value of babies in the womb. According to the Law and Crime blog, Barrett signed a public letter in 2015 that emphasized “the value of human life from conception to natural death.” She also said she believes that life begins at conception.
Pro-life leaders have praised her as an excellent choice for the court.
