Of their choice, including abortion, Voting Rights, the Affordable Care act, and religious liberty. [gavel banging] good morning, everyone. Welcome back. Judge, thank you. A good day yesterday. Your family did great. Cleanup well. You look good. The game plan for today is to do our first round of 30 minute questioning. Each senator will have 30 minutes to interact with judge barrett and then we will follow up with a second round of 20 minutes. We will not get it done today, but we should get through the first 30 minutes and then come back wednesday and finish up and then we will go about our business. I will make sure i stay within 30 minutes and if i can shorten it, i will. Let us get to it. You can start the clock. You can relax a bit, judge, and take your mask off. Yesterday, we had a lot of discussion about Affordable Health care. What i am going to try to do briefly this morning is demonstrate the difference between politics and judging. All of my colleagues on the other side had
Last year. Its on so many peoples minds. Thats why our first order of business in the senate should be to take action on hr8, the house passed bipartisan background checks act. We must grapple with the stark reality that gun violence is becoming an alltoo routine occurrence and that we in congress have both the ability and responsibility to do something about it. Hr8 is the most common sense way for the senate to save american lives. Its bipartisan. It has already passed the house. And as a matter of policy, its absolutely necessary to close the loopholes in our background check system in order to make other gun laws effective. We can and should pass a very strong red flag law. But what good would a red flag law do if someone were adjudicat adjudicated, unable to get a gun, could go online and get that gun without a check at all . If you dont have background checks, bad people will get guns, felons, spousal abusers, those mentally ill and those will get red flags. So, its critical we p
Furthermore pointing to mark mu eaddow, leader of Freedom Caucus, 30plus House Republicans strong leading leadership effort to revamp the Health Care Law, he pointed out, honestly, a loss is not acceptable, folks. He pointed out to meadows and said reportedly i believe mark and his group will come along. I dont know if that is Donald Trumps version of tony soprano. The message is undeniable. Get on the stick here. We can sort out the details later f we lose on this, we can kiss our heinies goodbye. That is my quick take that is the prevailing view dominating the bond market. 10year note, good reflection how the bond market fools, it seems to be saying runup in yields and tumbling in prices that might have been overdone. That was seemingly presaging a pickup in economic activity. What if that is not a given . The bond market taking all that back. Enjoying a flight to quality here, on belief, order of events and Promising Development of events wont go the president s way, wont go republi
Its inconsistent with policies. Nobody wants to live in the world of the law of amy, my children dont want to do that even. So i cant get up on the bench and say you have to live by my policy preferences because i have lifetime tenure and you cant kick me out if you dont like them. Even if the Supreme Court strikes down a statute, congress can come back and revisit the topic and do so in a way that doesnt violate the constitution. Ultimately we can amend the constitution itself, correct . That is correct. The basis of legitimacy of governmental power is consent of the governed. Do you agree with that . I do agree with that. Not what nine people in black robes, the high nigh on the potomac i think theyre sometimes called. Thats not the word we are a law, a government of laws, not of men. Judge barrett, im almost through but i cant pass up the opportunity to ask you a question about the establishment clause. I did with Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch as well. Its borne out of my fr
Be, i respectfully say i would have to study it in the course of a judicial case. Let me where i it right down to the operative words. Whether employees should or should not make inquiries aas to whether an applicant or employee intends to become pregnant. Senator, it sounds like youre asking me a case for a controversy, and with all respect, when we come to cases and controversies, a good judge will listen. Sock tease said the first virtue of a good judge is to i think you know why im asking these questions. This one i dont. The reason im asking is because about your views on pregnancy women in the workplace is because two of your former students from legal ethics and professionalism class last spring wrote to this committee to say how troubled they were by your comments in april 19th class. It was a gender targeted discussion regarding the hardship to kbrsz of having female employees who may use maternity benefits. One of these students signed her name publicly to her letter, which i