dianne-feinstein

The Supreme Temptation of Amy Coney Barrett

And Republicans expect — and want — liberals to be so freaked out by thisthat they oppose her in a manner that can be branded anti-religious. They’re setting her up to be a Christian martyr, minus the grisly end, and daring Democrats to take the bait.

.. Aaron Blake sagely sized up the appeal of this dynamic to Trump, writing that it’s “exactly the kind of battle he generally relishes: One that invites his opponents to overreach.” My Times colleague Ross Douthat tweeted that if Trump wants to “trigger the libs,” he’ll nominate Barrett. Douthat further predicted that her nomination “might bring on the culture-war apocalypse.”

.. She’s the most tactically fascinating of the front-runners in several ways. At 46, she’s the youngest, so her time on the court could easily cover four decades. She’s a longtime resident of Indiana, which happens to be home to Joe Donnelly, one of three Democratic senators whose votes are most clearly in play when it comes to confirming Trump’s nominee.

.. She’d be the only justice on the Supreme Court without the imprimatur of the Ivy League, and there’s little whiff of the coastal elites about her. She did her undergraduate work at Rhodes College in Tennessee and then attended law school at Notre Dame

.. her own time on the bench is limited to her eight months on that court.

.. her promoters revel openly in the idea of Roe v. Wade being overturned after the addition of another woman to a Supreme Court that would then have an almost even gender balance of four women and five men.

.. her Senate confirmation hearings after her nomination for the circuit court made her a hero to conservatives, especially religious ones. They took issue in particular with questions that Senator Dianne Feinstein

.. “The dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said

Wanted: Justice Amy Coney Barrett

The fight over Barrett’s confirmation would almost certainly build trust between President Trump and social conservatives. It would energize Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.

The facts of Barrett’s life — that she is a mother of seven children, and that when she speaks about her Catholic faith, she speaks about God as if she really believes in His existence — will provoke nasty and bigoted statements from Democratic senators and liberal media personalities. Again.

.. Dianne Feinstein surveyed Barrett’s public statements on her personal faith and told her that she worried that “the dogma lives loudly within you.” The bizarre idiom she created was a sign that Feinstein didn’t have an easy way to say what she wanted to say: A Catholic is fine. A believing Catholic is not.

.. Professor Barrett’s qualifications become stronger by virtue of her willingness to write candidly and intelligently about difficult and sensitive ethical questions: Our universities, our judiciary, and our country will be the poorer if the Senate prefers nominees who remain silent on such topics.”

.. the fight to confirm her will contain edifying political lessons. We don’t have religious tests for public office in this country, and having a republic that does not have an established religion does not require excluding sincere believers from positions of authority.

.. they should be able to compel religious people to conform to liberal moral norms — which just so happen to track exactly to doctrinal developments in the once dominant Mainline Protestant churches.

.. The ACLU would compel Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.

.. Evangelicals at a crisis pregnancy center will be made to advertise for abortion... contain an even deeper lesson, one that is salutary for both liberal secularists, who once indulged in triumphalism, and conservative believers, who have been tempted to despair: Believing Catholics and Evangelicals will continue to make their contributions to the common good of this country. You will live with us. If we’re going to have peace, we’re going to make it together.

Senate Judiciary Committee to Take Up Bill Protecting Mueller

Bill would mark the first major congressional action aimed at protecting the special counsel and the probe into Russian election meddling

A spokesman for Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said that he would put a bipartisan bill that would prevent Mr. Mueller from being dismissed without cause on the committee’s agenda. It is expected to be considered, debated and amended next week, which would set up a vote on the measure on April 26.

.. . Grassley tried to bring the bill up under an expedited process at a meeting scheduled for this week, but Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, objected under committee rules. Ms. Feinstein said she wanted more time to study proposed amendments to the measure but supports efforts to protect Mr. Mueller.

.. The bill would propose to enshrine into law a Justice Department regulation that a special counsel can’t be fired without cause. In addition, iIt would give a special counsel a 10-day window to challenge his or her firing in federal court. It would also ensure that any work product from a special counsel investigation couldn’t be destroyed until the courts ruled on the matter.

.. “I haven’t seen a clear indication yet that we needed to pass something to keep him from being removed because I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters Tuesday. Mr. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Mr. Mueller “should be allowed to finish his job.”

The proposal was authored by two Democrats and two Republicans— Cory Booker (D., N.J.), Lindsey Graham (R, S.C.), Chris Coons (D., Del.) and Thom Tillis (R., N.C.).

In Video, Erdogan Watches as His Guards Clash With Protesters

Nine people were hospitalized after the skirmish, and the State Department issued a stern statement condemning the attack.

.. Investigators were paying particular attention to two members of the Turkish security detail who assaulted American Diplomatic Security officers assigned to protect the visiting delegation.

.. The men were briefly detained on the scene Tuesday and their guns confiscated. But when it was determined that they held diplomatic status, they were promptly released

.. By the time video of what had happened outside the ambassador’s residence shot across the internet Tuesday night, stoking outrage in the United States, the two men were on their way out of the country with Mr. Erdogan and the rest of his entourage.

.. The two men remain the subject of an active criminal investigation and will not be allowed to re-enter the United States, the aide said.

.. They declined to identify the two members of the Turkish security forces who were detained, but said their immunity was no longer in place.

.. The embassy issued a statement on Wednesday contradicting much of the American officials account and laying blame for the episode on protesters who they said had incited the violence.

.. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill showed less restraint. In an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the United States “should throw their ambassador the hell out of the United States of America.”

“This kind of thing cannot go unresponded to diplomatically,” Mr. McCain said. “And maybe in other ways. Maybe bring lawsuits against so we can identify these people.”

.. Later in the day, Mr. McCain and Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, sent a letter to Mr. Erdogan demanding that he hold members of his staff implicated in the attack responsible. Their actions, the senators wrote, constituted “an affront” to the nation’s legal rights “and reflects poorly on your government.”

The episode Tuesday was not the first in which Turkish security forces have incited violence in Washington. The police and members of Mr. Erdogan’s security team clashed with demonstrators last year outside the Brookings Institution, where Mr. Erdogan was delivering a speech.