Opinion of Amy Coney Barrett

[Alcibiades]

Absolutely awful, but I do have some personal sympathy for her because of Feinstein's disgusting religion-baiting attacks on her during her Seventh Circuit confirmation.

I think Feinstein’s line of questioning was perfectly legitimate. I will stand corrected if the truth is otherwise, but as far as I can remember she did not lean into the “taking orders from Rome” trope, and her questioning could have applied equally to a Protestant or Muslim as a Catholic. ACB has expressed a worrying opposition to church-state separation, and keeping her religious views out of her rulings, and she should expect to be questioned on it.

[Alcibiades]

Absolutely awful, but I do have some personal sympathy for her because of Feinstein's disgusting religion-baiting attacks on her during her Seventh Circuit confirmation.

I think Feinstein’s line of questioning was perfectly legitimate. I will stand corrected if the truth is otherwise, but as far as I can remember she did not lean into the “taking orders from Rome” trope, and her questioning could have applied equally to a Protestant or Muslim as a Catholic. ACB has expressed a worrying opposition to church-state separation, and keeping her religious views out of her rulings, and she should expect to be questioned on it.

I might have felt differently about Feinstein's questions if the substantive issue behind them had been something else. What she was asking Barrett about was an article arguing that Catholic judges should recuse themselves in capital cases due to the Church's opposition to capital punishment, meaning that Feinstein was attacking a conservative jurist for being critical of the death penalty but framing the question in a way that made her look like the woke one. Classic DiFi bullsh**t.

OK, that bit sounds a little bizarre, but I think that it is legitimate to ask a nominee if their religious views could impair their ability to hold follow the secular law of the land in their rulings and hold all equal before it, and if they would try to impose their religious morality on others.