Dark Days in the U.S. Senate


Written by Laurie Higgins

Every day, “progressives” provide evidence for their unfitness for any positions of leadership, power, or influence. Senate minority leader and master of hyperbole and prevarication Chuck Schumer (D-NY) provides a case in point.  In response to the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, Schumer made this comment on the U.S. Senate floor:

It will go down as one of the darkest days in the 231-year history of the United States Senate.

Amazing. The day that a woman who by all accounts possesses the skill, knowledge, experience, temperament, and integrity—something with which Schumer is wholly unfamiliar—was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Schumer called one of the darkest days in the history of the U.S. Senate.

No mention from Schumer of U.S. Senator Ed Markey’s (D-MA) bizarre statement that homosexuals had no rights when the U.S. Constitution was ratified. He continued,

Originalism is racist. Originalism is sexist. Originalism is homophobic. Originalism is just a fancy word for discrimination. For originalists like Judge Barrett, LGBT stands for ‘let’s go back in time.’

Maybe Markey can tell us when in American history those who experience homoerotic attraction couldn’t vote, exercise religion freely, or own a gun.

What Markey clearly signaled is that cultural regressives want to use the power of the Court to further normalize deviant sexuality, and that will come at the expense of the religious liberty and speech rights of persons of faith.

No mention from Schumer of the contemptible act of U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) who marched up to the desk where the confirmation vote was being called, gave a thumbs down, and said, “Hell, no.”

Hirono seems to have a life mission to embarrass the Senate. During Barrett’s confirmation hearing and in front of Barrett’s young children, Hirono asked this absurd and offensive question:

Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?”

That was a dark moment.

It was a very dark day in late March when the entire country was suffering from the Chinese Communist-caused plague and U.S. Senate Democrats stood in the way of the stimulus relief bill by stuffing it chock full of excrement having nothing to do with the pandemic—things like, “tax credits for solar energy and wind energy, provisions to force employers to give special new treatment to big labor, and … new emission standards for the airlines.”

Some intrepid reporters should ask Schumer where Barrett’s confirmation ranks on his U.S. Senate Darkest Day list relative to the committee appointments of Ted “Lady-Killer” Kennedy, who had a lengthy and well-known history of abusing women.

And what about the day when U.S. Representative Preston Brooks (D-SC) used his cane to beat to unconsciousness U.S. Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) for his speech on the U.S. Senate floor opposing slavery?

Or how about on September 26, 1996, when U.S.  Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) asked senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) if “killing a baby that had slipped entirely from the birth canal would still be a ‘choice’ that the mother … had a constitutionally protected right to make. …  Feingold said it would be up to the woman and her doctor. Lautenberg agreed.”

That was a dark day in the Senate.

More recently, there was the day when U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) made this constitutionally dubious comment to Barrett during Barrett’s previous confirmation hearing:

I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the [Catholic] dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s of concern.

It’s a pretty dark day when a sitting Senator suggests that there is something disturbing about Christians being shaped deeply by their faith and through such a suggestion gets dangerously close to applying an unconstitutional religious test for holding office.

U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have both tried to apply religious tests for holding office. Booker asked nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Neomi Rao if she believed homosexual relationships “are a sin.” And in a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for the nomination of Russell Vought as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, who happens to be a theologically orthodox Christian, Sanders asked Vought about a Facebook post in which Vought had made the theologically unremarkable statement that,

Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.

Sanders replied testily,

In my view, the statement made by Mr. Vought is indefensible, it is hateful, it is Islamophobic, and it is an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world. … This country, since its inception, has struggled, sometimes with great pain, to overcome discrimination of all forms … we must not go backwards.

It’s hard to believe that Sanders is that ignorant. The belief that all—not just Muslims—who reject Jesus Christ stand condemned before God is a foundational Christian belief, and it is not “phobic.” Such a belief is not born of either fear or hatred and does not bring joy to Christians. It is the reason Christians seek to bring the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ to all the world. Christians desire that none shall be eternally separated from God.

Regarding Sanders’ claim about discrimination: All religions “discriminate” in the sense of making distinctions among truth claims, and Sanders did himself when he criticized Vought’s truth claims. Does Sanders have anything critical to say to Muslims who believe Christians are eternally damned?

But Sanders’ comments were not solely biblically ignorant. There were constitutionally ignorant as well. The theological beliefs of elected and appointed leaders are none of Sanders’, Booker’s, or Feinstein’s business.

Those days when Inquisitors Feinstein, Booker, and Sanders queried nominees for federal offices about their religious beliefs were dark days indeed.

Then there were the contemptible hearings for the nominations of Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. Those shameful spectacles remain among the darkest days in Senate history.

Darker days may be on the horizon if Democrats win the Senate and the presidency. They have a host of dark plans that will destroy any hope for a rapid economic recovery, a sound financial future for our children and grandchildren, continued energy independence, Mideast peace, a weakened China, a non-politicized Supreme Court, more originalist judges, robust religious liberty protections, gun rights, school choice, private health care, police funding, and the rights of the unborn.

It’s not surprising that Schumer sees as dark the day a woman of intelligence, grace, and deep faith is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court: Democrats now call evil good and good evil. They put darkness for light and light for darkness.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:



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