I haven't watched any of the testimony of Amy Coney Barrett before the Senate Judiciary Committee considering Senate consent for her to join the Supreme Court, except one clip which found its way on my Twitter feed.
This is the clip:
The only takeaway I have from this clip is that neither of these women is super bright.
I mean Barrett should have known that Kamala Harris was going to be a hostile questioner.
I wouldn't have given her an inch. If I was testifying and Harris had asked me if COVID-19 was infectious, and this is what I thought when first hearing Harris ask the question, I would have answered by stating that I was not an expert on viruses or infections and I try not to give opinions in my professional capacity if they are outside my field.
That would have stopped Harris's approach on that question completely. And if Haris plowed on, I could have been consistent in answering the COVID-19 question, the cigarette question and the climate change question.
Instead, Harris got a small gotcha. But the Harris series of questions was so poorly formed that Barrett was able to deflect with thigh-slapping babbling about degrees of knowledge--as if she has an informed scientific opinion about infections and cigarettes.
On the other hand, for a former attorney general from the state of California, Harris is not a very impressive questioner.
She is no Alan Grayson:
Harris and Barrett in very different ways know how to maneuver in the political world but I don't get the sense that either is exceptionally bright---just smart enough to work angles that will benefit themselves.
It is no wonder that the warring power establishment factions behind the curtains each support one or the other of these two. These two are not bright enough and independent enough to go renegade. They know who is in charge and who is never to be crossed--just the type the men behind the curtains favor.
-RW
I think she is very smart, but it is not coming through in these hearings. But why should it? The hearings are just a dance, where questioners try to tease-out some sort of politically-incorrect stumble or misstep, and the nominee tries to be as vague as possible with regard to opinions and values. It's the same charade we see every time: The nominee ducks and weaves and promises she will be an objective machine with zero value-judgements when interpreting the law.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Wikipedia, her performance in school would suggest she is very smart:
"After high school, Barrett attended Rhodes College, where she majored in English literature and minored in French. She graduated in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude and was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa and Phi Beta Kappa. In her graduating class, she was named most outstanding English department graduate. She then studied law at the Notre Dame Law School on a full-tuition scholarship. She was an executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review and graduated first in her class in 1997 with a Juris Doctor summa cum laude."
Alan Grayson is a clever and intelligent questioner and neither Harris or Barrett possess his skills. On the other hand, I don't recall the FED ever being audited in a way that reduced or controlled its power. Clever and intelligent people in government will never advance Liberty.
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