Barrett joins SCOTUS

Amy Coney Barrett, the anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, religiously radical right-winger who hid her radical religious associations and viewpoints from public scrutiny, wasn't so much "confirmed" as bum-rushed onto the U.S. Supreme Court. In the end her nomination garnered 52 senatorial votes, all Republican. (One Republican honorably voted against her.)

Don Trumpone is counting on Barrett to cement the radical right's hold on SCOTUS, and not incidentally, to support him and his administration in any cases that come before her.

What might such cases be? Hmm. How about any number of Republican challenges to local elections, whose aim will be to suppress likely Democratic voters' ballots?

How about any number of civil or criminal cases alleging Don Trumpone has committed wrongdoing?

How about any number of lawsuits against the Don's administration's policies, like its horrendous treatment of asylum-seekers; or its deployment of pseudomilitary federal forces to municipalities without local or state requests; or its recent change of civil-service rules to permit civil service professionals to be dismissed without cause? (The latter hasn't resulted in lawsuits — yet.)

Now, it must be said that Supreme Court Justices in the past have sometimes disappointed the president that nominated him or her by ruling in ways that don't accord with that president's views. But those past Justices weren't dyed-in-the-wool religionists like Barrett, whose strict and unforgiving Catholicism is extreme even by the standards of the Roman Catholic Church. I'm not counting on Barrett to experience the kind of personal growth exhibited by past Justices like John Paul Stevens. If you've looked at her judicial record, you know her hostility to Supreme Court precedent that cuts against her personal religious views, notably Roe v. Wade. This leopard won't change her spots.

The spectacle of the supersonic rush to get her on the Court, too, sticks in the craw of the majority of those who witnessed the disgusting and flatly unjust spectacle of the Mitch McConnell-supervised stonewalling of Merrick Garland. I trust Barrett will send flowers to McConnell and Trump — not just sometime in the next few days, but every year for her entire tenure on the Court, because she owes them big-time.

Justice Barrett, you join Justice Kavanaugh in my books as a flatly illegitimate member of the Court.

It would be delightful if one day I had occasion to apologize to you because you proved yourself an independent, thoughtful voice for real justice.

But I doubt any apology will be merited.