If The View were a horror movie—and sometimes it’s not that far off—Joy Behar would be the final girl. The comic, who looks better than any 78-year-old has any right to, is the only original panelist left on the daytime talk show, which is currently in its 24th season. When I reach Behar by phone, there’s audible commotion in the background. After telling the background noisemakers, […]
Amy Coney Barrett
21 posts
On Sunday night, John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight took on a truly chaotic week. President Trump sweated and bellowed through an unhinged NBC town hall where he voiced his support for the baseless QAnon conspiracy-theory crowd, who allege that Democrats and Hollywood are trafficking and murdering babies. He resumed his COVID superspreader rallies and shared a batshit-insane conspiracy theory that Barack Obama and Joe Biden did […]
The Supreme Court retains a strong but largely undeserved reputation as a protector of the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. In fact, there is a long history of right-wing Supreme Court majorities serving as dead hands to enforce reactionary policies favored by political minorities who have lost electoral power, or even wars. Most notoriously, a right-wing court favored the South’s radical, pro-slavery positions before the Civil […]
I kept a little running tab of questions Amy Coney Barrett said she couldn’t possibly answer without compromising her future Supreme Court tenure. I’m sure I missed a lot of them, but here were six: One: Lindsey Graham asked her if there existed a constitutional right to polygamy. She couldn’t say. Two: Pat Leahy asked if a president could self-pardon. Couldn’t touch that one. Three: Amy […]
Maine Senator Susan Collins says she will vote ‘no’ to confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, since it’s too close to the election, while refusing to say anything critical about how Barrett’s originalist judicial philosophy might imperil a woman’s right to choose. Collins is a Republican who supports abortion rights, a brand that has carried her to victory four times, but with Barrett’s confirmation […]
The malfunctioning mics ensured that the Senate Judiciary Committee fell awkwardly silent at times during the third day of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing. Outside the room, however, the din of politics surrounding the nomination kept getting louder. With the Senate’s ultimate confirmation of Barrett largely a foregone conclusion, both parties set about making the hearings work for them in the final weeks before the 2020 […]
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld described two Democratic female senators on Wednesday as “mean girls” who came across as “petty” during their questioning of Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett, claiming they are likely “jealous” that Barrett “happens to be smarter and more successful than they are.” During Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)—who is also currently […]
On a surreal day of GOP-generated alternate reality, every Senate Democrat tried to get America to awaken out of the Matrix but only one succeeded. “This is not normal,” said Senator Cory Booker, before asking a Supreme Court nominee if she would condemn white supremacy. (Good news: she did.) “This is not normal,” said Amy Klobuchar, before reminding viewers that 7 million Americans have gotten the […]
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) used her first allotted questioning time during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court to zero-in on the Democratic ticket’s closing campaign message: an unambiguous defense of the Affordable Care Act. “Over the last nine years, Republicans in Congress have tried 70 times—70 times—to repeal or roll back the ACA,” Harris said on Tuesday […]
“This,” began Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), “is not normal right now.” She was the 10th senator to speak on the second day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett—but the first to state the obvious. The signs were everywhere: the masked members of Barrett’s family sitting behind her and the senators sitting in front of her, flanked by bottles of hand sanitizer, ensured […]
After spending hours swatting away Democratic questions about her personal judicial views, Judge Amy Coney Barrett made a significant admission on Tuesday afternoon: that she did not consider the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling to a settled legal matter, or a “super-precedent,” at the U.S. Supreme Court. While Barrett did not signal that she intends to vote to undo Roe if given the opportunity, she […]
In Amy Coney Barrett’s America, the Supreme Court will take health care away from millions of people during a deadly pandemic. That is inevitable, at least, if you believe what Democrats had to say on the first day of Barrett’s confirmation hearing. Democrats had plenty of visual props to reinforce this point: Photos of people with pre-existing conditions on easels, which had the effect of making […]
Beset by controversy and lagging in the polls, President Donald Trump this week was handed what his allies described as a gift: an opportunity to recede from the national spotlight while his party scored a win that would rearrange the tectonic plates of government. Trump promptly squandered the opportunity. For weeks, operatives from both political parties have picked up on a defining phenomenon of the presidential […]
At first, the opening confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court not only sounded like the senators were in different hearing rooms—some were, in fact, due to COVID-19 concerns—but like they occupied different political universes altogether. In their opening remarks on Monday, each Democratic senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee cast the stakes of Barrett’s confirmation as nothing less than the […]
Amy Coney Barrett’s beet pink dress spoke before she did: it looked sensible, practical, and stoically feminine, an image she aims to project. It was a pretty dress, maybe even stylish by DC’s standards. A flat bow rested on her right shoulder, just underneath a string of pearls. The justice picked a very nice outfit for her first confirmation hearing. Too bad it was curated for […]
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is so determined not to know whether or not he is carrying a dangerously contagious disease that he is outright refusing to get tested for it. And yet on Fox & Friends Monday morning, just minutes before the Senate Judiciary Committee chair was set to begin the hearings to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court, Graham insisted that those […]
When Republicans committed to filling the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court before the November election, they vowed to get it done no matter what came in their way. With hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee set to begin on Monday, just three weeks after Ginsburg’s death, it’s clear that Republicans didn’t anticipate everything that would get in their way. And […]
Stopping Mitch McConnell from his latest SCOTUS power grab will take an act of providence even with three GOP senators sidelined by COVID-19 and Senate rules requiring an in-person vote to advance the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett and then confirm her before the election. There is nothing McConnell won’t do to get Barrett on the Supreme Court. If senators infected with COVID can’t be in […]
Republicans who control the Senate are rushing to put 48-year-old Barrett on the Supreme Court before the November 3 elections, as if Joe Biden takes the White House and Democrats were to gain seats in the Senate then it would become harder to confirm Barrett. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is set to tell senators during her confirmation hearing on Monday that while she has been nominated to fill […]
Dear Judge Barrett, Everyone who knows you says that you are a person of principle, conscience, and strong moral character. Having read much of your writing, I am inclined to agree with them. I therefore urge you to reflect on the profound moral questions that your judicial nomination process raises. I believe that if you do so, you will make the painful but necessary decision to […]
The next time you’re in the presence of someone who tries to tell you that Donald Trump is a political genius, I’d like you to grab the nearest copy of Men’s Hairstyles magazine and whack them upside the head. Maybe not too many people are saying that these days, as he’s clearly in the early stages of a ’roid-driven meltdown. But people have remarked many times […]