Amy Barrett's ignorance regarding the First Amendment — should disqualify her — then there's the Lamestream's ineptitude

© 2020 Peter Free

 

15 October 2020

 

 

We are, as a people . . .

 

. . . definitively sinking the American ship with our blazing lack of concern about anything actually important.

 

 

Allow me to illustrate on three fronts

 

(1) Amy Coney Barrett's surprising memory lapse about First Amendment rights, occurring during her Senate confirmation hearing.

 

(2) Senator Ben Sasse's misstatement about the right that Barrett forgot.

 

(3) And last, the American media's lazy perpetuation of of Senator Sasse's mispokenness.

 

 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett's memory lapse

 

From The Independent:

 

 

Conservative Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett struggled to name the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment on the third day of her confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.

 

Ms Barrett, president Donald Trump’s pick to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a justice on the US Supreme Court, was asked to name the five constitutional freedoms by Republican senator Ben Sasse during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

 

The senator asked: “What are the five freedoms of the First Amendment?” and the 48-year-old, replied: “Speech, religion, press, assembly.”

 

Ms Barrett then paused and started counting with her fingers, before she added: “Speech, religion, press, assembly... I don't know — what am I missing?”

 

Mr Sasse replied: “redress or protest” and Ms Barrett, who currently serves as a circuit judge on the US Court of Appeals, smiled and said: “OK.”

 

© 2020 James Crump, Amy Coney Barrett struggles to name all five freedoms protected by First Amendment, Independent (14 October 2020)

 

 

Let's dissect this, just a bit

 

First, we have a sitting federal appellate justice — Barrett, Seventh Circuit — who cannot remember the fifth right recorded in one of the American Constitution's most basic list of citizen rights.

 

Second, a US Senator (Sasse) misstates that right.

 

Third (as we will see below), the American press parrots the Senator in egregiously misrepresenting that same element.

 

Let's go down this list.

 

 

The First Amendment says . . .

 

. . . easily confirmed by resorting to the closest cell phone — that:

 

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

 

 

Notice

 

"Petition the government for a redress of grievances" is not conceptually identical to a right to "redress" or even, "protest".

 

The Constitution's wording leaves obvious room for government to decide which means of "petition" are permitted and which are not.

 

Presumably, the right to assemble means that one can — theoretically — indulge in mobilization of many people to "protest" in the modernly accepted sense.

 

Nevertheless, the Constitution's "petition . . . for redress" wording implies possible limitations on the right, which Senator Sasse's — and the Lamestream's — substituted word ("protest") does not.

 

Confusing those two concepts — without quoting a Supreme Court precedent in support of the conflation — is not an error that even a sleepy law student, much less an attorney should make.

 

 

Was it Justice Barrett's porous memory — or more?

 

Is her failure to remember the right to "petition" excusable?

 

Or does her memory void suggest — given that this was a Senate confirmation hearing, which she should have been prepared for:

 

 

(a) a contempt for Constitutional scholarship,

 

as well as

 

(b) a willingness to substitute her own political slant for whatever language the Constitution actually contains?

 

 

Justice Barrett's Senate demeanor arguably mirrors the regally inclined sort of person, who substitutes her own leanings for whatever unhandily lies in the Constitution's true wording.

 

From Barrett's (inferred) perspective — why bother to learn what the document really says, when she knows that she will ultimately twist whatever is in it to her Oligarchic Ilk's advantage?

 

This is why Jaime O'Neill so ferociously took Justice Barrett's prissy arrogance to task in the editorial that I quoted yesterday.

 

 

Am I being too harsh?

 

No.

 

One would expect:

 

 

(i) a sitting appellate justice

 

to

 

(ii) prepare for basic legal questions

 

at

 

(iii) a Senate confirmation hearing

 

for

 

(iv) appointment to the US Supreme Court.

 

 

Barrett's contempt for the Senate and the System oozed through in her complacently displayed memory lapse.

 

Senator Sasse's was not a difficult, impertinent or slyly inserted question.

 

Even a second year law student would have been prepared for it.

 

 

Imagine (in illustration) a hypothetical change in venue

 

If Barrett had been in front of the Supreme Court, do you imagine that she would have taken the justices' questioning as absurdly casually as she did the Senate's?

 

 

Let's move on to the American Lamestream's equally bad, subsequent performance

 

After the hearing, the Lamestream complacently announced — apparently parroting Senator Sasse's misstatement — that a "right to protest" was protected by the First Amendment.

 

Here, for instance, is a representative sample — taken from, for (politically correct) gender fairness's sake, a women's media platform:

 

 

The fifth freedom afforded to people by the First Amendment is the right to protest.

 

And given that 2020 has been a year marked by its protests against racial inequality and police brutality, a year that is encompassing decades of overdue reckoning, it's harrowing to realize that the woman who might be our next justice can't even remember protesting as a right.

 

© 2020 Sarah Midkiff, The First Amendment Freedom That Amy Barrett Forgot Is Really Revealing, Refinery29 (14 October 2020)

 

 

We see that the American press is too lazy to check the First Amendment for itself.

 

This is the non-fact-checking state of virtually the entirety of American media today.

 

 

The moral? — An institutionally competent Senate would deny Barrett's confirmation . . .

 

. . . after her so imperiously demonstrated legal vacuity.

 

Denial of the nomination, however, will not happen because the United States has no integrity left in its federal governance.

 

Historically existing institutional standards have been completely gobbled by the Reigning Oligarchy's self-satisfied interests.

 

Barrett will sail on to her lifetime Court appointment, with nary a whisper of American institutional self-questioning.

 

Barrett's too easy float is infuriating because it makes a mockery of law, justice and trounced liberties.