McConnell fumes at Dems over attacks on Supreme Court

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday excoriated Democrats over their recent criticisms of Supreme Court justices in the wake of reporting on their ethics disclosures.

Frustrated by a string of conservative judicial victories on affirmative action, abortion, gun rights, etc., numerous left-wing lawmakers have floated court reform as a remedy for their recent defeats. Others, meanwhile, have suggested impeaching conservative justices facing ethical scrutiny.

"These escalating attacks from the left betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the court’s structure and purpose," McConnell wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Monday. "It is an ideologically unpredictable body that takes cases as they come and produces diverse outcomes. Recent rulings put that reality in stark relief."

The Kentucky Republican pointed out the numerous unanimous decisions from the bench and the relative rarity of ideological splits in a bid to combat charges that the court had been taken over by conservatives.

His comments follow a Democratic announcement that upper chamber lawmakers will introduce an ethics bill for the Supreme Court, The Hill noted.

McConnell took exception to the prospect, saying "Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are trying to tell a coequal branch of government how to manage its internal operations, ostensibly to clean up its 'ethics,'" he wrote.

He further took potshots at specific comments from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Joe Biden that followed the court's rulings on affirmative action and the case of a Christian web designer who did not wish to design websites for same-sex weddings.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly rejected calls to add more justices to the court, but Senate Democrats have seized on recent reports to suggest that the court has an ethics problem to pursue a separate approach to regulating the judiciary.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on Twitter.