Ted Cruz recently attacked Donald Trump by calling his sister, Third Circuit Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, a “radical pro-abortion extremist” for voting to strike down a New Jersey late-term abortion ban. (I discussed it here.) Cruz left out the fact that Nixon appointee Leonard Garth joined her opinion and W. Bush appointee Samuel Alito joined the result.
Now, David Eldridge further undermines the Barry-is-a-radical-extremist smear with this post at Insidesources.com, pointing out that Barry testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in effusive support of Alito’s Supreme Court nomination:
Appearing on Capitol Hill before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barry praised Samuel Alito, then a colleague on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as “a man of remarkable intellectual gifts.”
Alito, she told senators, “set a standard of excellence that was contagious, his commitment to doing the right thing, never playing fast and loose with the record, never taking a short cut, his emphasis on first-rate work, his fundamental decency.”
“You have heard the most glowing things said about Sam as a colleague on our court. I embrace every glowing statement,” she testified. “Let me just conclude with this … He is a man with impeccable legal credentials. He is a fair-minded man, a modest man, a humble man, and he reveres the rule of law.”
Maybe Barry supported Alito only because she figured he was a radical pro-abortion extremist, too?
Like your previous post on this topic, this piece of evidence is irrelevant.
Judge Barry’s recommendation of Judge Alito as a nominee to the Supreme Court does not tell us what her views on abortion are – unless you wish to argue that someone who believes in a more or less unfettered constitutional right to abortion could not endorse someone who does not believe in such a right. Yet people who disagree on important constitutional matters can still recommend each other, and sometimes do so – even publicly, even before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Maybe my list of radical extremists who have gone way above and beyond in support of a nominee near the opposite end of the political spectrum isn’t as long as yours. Who am I missing?
There are many instances in regard to nominees to the Supreme Court, other courts, and other offices as well. Examples can be found with research. (Left-wing former law clerks testified in favor of Judge Alito, for instance, and Judge Roberts received recommendations from the left, too.)
Speaking more generally, it seems that your core of your objection is that Judge Barry cannot be fairly characterized as a pro-abortion extremist on the basis of the one cited opinion – or perhaps, putting the example of Judge Barry aside, your objection is that no judge who supports an unfettered constitutional right to abortion can be fairly characterized as a pro-abortion extremist.
I think that core objection, however best described, is the more interesting point of discussion.