Hirono: Wait, are you telling me policy considerations are something *we* should address?
Barrett: Yes, you write the laws.
Hirono: are you saying that the stories of people are legal arguments? The real life stories? Those are part of the law? [Yes, she's really this unintelligible]
The really astounding thing was how Hirono seemed genuinely baffled by the concept that maybe the job of a judge is not the same as the job of a legislator. As if hearing it for the first time.
Hirono says that a distinction between making policy & reading law is "a fiction" - wholly rejects the idea that judges are not exactly the same as legislators.
Hirono says that she guesses that Barrett disagrees with caring about people.
Hirono has to ask Barrett for the word "severability" which was unfamiliar to her, a person who writes federal laws for a living.
Hirono's tone of voice constantly suggests a person reading something aloud for the first time without knowing what most of the words mean.
Hirono has now reached the inflection where a question mark goes about a dozen times without stopping to see if Barrett might answer.
[Internal monologue: "Bless your heart, Senator']
[Pity for Hirono intensifies]
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Kamala Harris, talking about the history of flatly discriminatory treatment of black voters, unintentionally makes the case for an originalist interpretation of the 14th & 15th Amendments, without fear or favor, which the Court failed to apply for many years.
Barrett corrects Harris' claim that the Court
in Shelby County struck down Section 5's preclearance rule, as opposed to telling Congress that it had to cite some evidence to decide what jurisdictions were covered.
Harris rather obviously is framing these questions specifically to get Barrett to not answer them.
Whitehouse, who claimed yesterday to be against special-interest money in politics, now starting in against the Janus decision that restricted unions' special-interest right to extract money for politics from their members without their consent.
Whitehouse now against activist litigation groups & the class-action plaintiffs bar finding a plaintiff to challenge something - well, except that he's only against that if it is for a conservative cause, then he's for it.
Whitehouse now says that litigants should demand rulings in their favor by lower courts even when precedent precludes that. He should probably read about how Thurgood Marshall & Ruth Bader Ginsburg got cases to the appeals courts.
Feinstein is playing the game with the Voting Rights Act where you either are for everything ever in the statute, or against everything ever passed under the name "Voting Rights Act."
Barrett now explaining the preclearance formula issue in Shelby County. Feinstein still ranting about a Scalia remark at oral argument.
Now Feinstein, who is 87, is very concerned about age discrimination.
Barrett's face when Booker asks if she's against white supremacy.
Barrett refuses to get into what Trump has or hasn't said, but gives an eloquent defense of the vital importance of a peaceful transfer of power in the American system - pointedly including the acceptance of defeats.
Unsurprisingly, Barrett won't wade into the (long-disputed, never resolved) legal question of what would happen if a president tried to pardon himself.