Whirling Durbin

From The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal:

THE NEXT JUSTICE

Whirling Durbin
Which Democratic senator is most likely to damage himself politically in the Roberts fight?

BY MANUEL MIRANDA
Monday, August 22, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

One of the little imperfections of our American political system is that the qualifications of an excellent lawyer like John Roberts are judged, and often subjected to vituperative questioning, by politicians who are manifestly unfit for the job. Two of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin and Dianne Feinstein of California, are not even lawyers. You can tell by the questions they ask, how they ask them, and, in Ms. Feinstein's case, her look of incredulity after a nominee gives a straightforward answer any law student would give but that Feinstein deems "out of the mainstream."

Ted Kennedy barely made it through law school before buying his Senate seat, and the inquiring Chuck Schumer never practiced law a day in his life. By contrast, the Republican side of the Judiciary dais includes only one nonlawyer - physician Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. The other nine GOP members all are experienced lawyers, including a military judge and three former prosecutors, one of whom has also served as a state supreme court justice.

So it is odd that the senator who is, in my estimation, the most talented lawyer among his Democratic Judiciary colleagues is the one most likely to do himself harm during the Roberts hearings and debates: Dick Durbin.

***
In 2003 Mr. Durbin joined other Democrats in mocking judicial nominee Leon Holmes of Arkansas, a Catholic, for his personal religious views on sex roles and marriage. He blocked Mr. Holmes from getting a Senate vote for over a year. Then Mr. Durbin joined Democrats in blocking judicial nominee William Pryor, another devout Catholic, for Pryor's "deeply held beliefs."

When voices of all faiths, including the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, joined to complain and ads ran under the old banner "Catholics Need Not Apply," Mr. Durbin argued that he could hardly be accused of antireligious bigotry being a Catholic himself. This brought a near ex cathedra rebuke from Denver's Catholic archbishop, the Most Rev. Charles Chaput, in words not heard from any Catholic bishop before or after:

"At a minimum, Catholic members of Congress like Senator Durbin should actually read and pray over the Catechism of the Catholic Church . . . before they explain the Catholic faith to anyone. They might even try doing something about their "personal opposition" to abortion by supporting competent pro-life judicial appointments. Otherwise, they simply prove what many people already believe - that a new kind of religious discrimination is very welcome at the Capitol, even among elected officials who claim to be Catholic.

"Some things change, and some things don't. The bias against 'papism' is alive and well in America. It just has a different address."

[More]

(emphasis added)