WASHINGTON – Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) delivered opening remarks at Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing today. A full video and transcript of the speech can be found here. Below are some highlights:

“We’ve heard this morning a number of arguments. They are essentially policy arguments, many of them geared toward actual policies, in some cases actual pieces of legislation.”

“If you were watching today’s hearing, and some of the statements made by some of my colleagues, in fact if you were to look at any of the countless posters put up in here, you would think that this was a political discussion, a policy discussion, a legislative discussion. You in fact are not being reviewed for a legislative position, or policy making position.”

“One might also have the impression from watching this morning’s proceedings so far that the Supreme Court of the United States is a remarkably bitter, cynical, and overwhelmingly partisan place. It is not… Despite its flaws, and despite the fact that it sometimes makes mistakes, the Supreme Court of the United States sits atop something that is the envy of the entire world: a judicial system, that despite the fact that it is run by human beings and is therefore imperfect, is the best judicial system that has ever existed on planet earth.”

“These tactics of creating fear and uncertainty and doubt, these tactics that result in relentless protests outside of the one branch of government that isn’t political, astound me; but they dismay me and they disappoint me. They reflect the fact that we have allowed for the politicization of the one branch of the federal government that is not political.”

Link to video and transcript.