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Amy Coney Barrett has been impressive as hell throughout the confirmation hearing process this week, and perhaps nothing illustrates that better than pointed remarks she made in response to a question from Democratic Sen. Chris Coons earlier today.

Coons, who is the junior senator from Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, was pressing Barrett on a 1996 case in which the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia dissented. Coons seemed to be suggesting – or at the very least trying to draw it out – that Barrett’s judicial style would mirror Scalia’s, who she has said she admires and views as a mentor.

She shut him down quick:

As she has done many times during these hearings, Barrett drew a distinction between the late Justice Scalia and a “Justice Barrett,” despite their sharing an originalist approach to the Constitution and Scalia having been her mentor.

“I hope that you aren’t suggesting that I don’t have my own mind or that I couldn’t think independently or that I would just decide like — ‘let me see what Justice Scalia said about this in the past’ — because I assure you I have my own mind,” Barrett pointedly told Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. “I share his philosophy, but I have never said that I would always reach the same outcome as he did.”

Watch the video below:

Amy Coney Barrett to @ChrisCoons: "I hope you aren't suggesting that I don't have my own mind.

Or that I couldn't think independently."

"I assure you I have my own mind." pic.twitter.com/rVf3fEHykM

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 14, 2020

The longer version is here:

Judge Barrett to Democrat Sen. Chris Coons: “I hope that you aren’t suggesting that I don’t have my own mind…I assure you I have my own mind”https://t.co/a2lJLFNRch pic.twitter.com/ug2SGwZwQO

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 14, 2020

Coons, who had a picture of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in front of him throughout the hearing, then virtue signaled and yada yada’d for a short time about how, in his view, “memorable dissents [like Scalia’s] may make for great academic reading, but I think most Americans don’t expect them to become the law of the land” before letting Judge Barrett know that he would be voting against her confirmation.

(Hat tip: Twitchy)

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