Joe Biden’s pick to be Secretary of Health and Human Services is a horrible choice to head any cabinet. He is a radical progressive who has devoted a lot of time and energy as California’s Attorney General suing President Trump (62 times according to Wikipedia), promoting illegal immigration, and using the state’s coercive power to expand the acceptability of abortion. He is most noted for the malicious prosecution (and with the refiling of dismissed charges, persecution) of journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merrit for exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in chunks of dismembered babies. He is also famous for threatening legal action against journalists for publishing information they received legally via a public records request. Becerra was also the pivot man on the circle jerk defending the ObamaCare contraception mandate from an all-woman religious order, Little Sisters of the Poor, who said they had no use for the product. As you can see, from his contempt for the First Amendment and his obeisance to the abortion industry, he’s the quintessential Biden nominee.

Becerra has had a tough confirmation process in the Senate, but there have been no fireworks so far. This is how Politico describes it:

HHS Secretary-designate Xavier Becerra appears to be on a smooth path to Senate confirmation. But two 2 days of generally collegial hearings in Senate panels exposed fault lines that could shape Biden's post-pandemic agenda. Our takeaways 👇 https://t.co/y68Q7GP0Pb

— POLITICO (@politico) February 25, 2021

Becerra survives fireworks-free confirmation hearing: https://t.co/BmgAzyi0Fx

— Tal Kopan (@TalKopan) February 23, 2021

The only real faux pas he’s generated is his claim that he didn’t try to strongarm a religious order with a vow of celibacy into buying insurance that included contraceptive coverage.

Becerra Falsely Claims He ‘Never Sued Any Nuns’

"Joe Biden's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra misleadingly claimed he never took legal action against religious orders during his confirmation hearing Wednesday."https://t.co/noK9WpqsW0

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) February 25, 2021

Enter, stage left, Sister Carol Keehan of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. In a Newsweek op-ed titled Here’s why Xavier Becerra’s confirmation critics gained no traction by attacking his Catholicism (the subhead is Republican efforts to derail this nomination have focused on the nominee’s faith. Yet I’ve seen how he lives out its principles in his work.),Sister Keehan offers up this impassioned defense of Becerra against a claim that no one ever made about him:

Last month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., claimed on the Senate floor that Becerra’s health care experience was limited to suing those “who dare to live out their religious convictions” — a reference to the involvement of Becerra’s office, along with officials from other states, in lawsuits defending the women’s health-related provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

Skeptics like McConnell, driven mostly by this issue, seem to think Becerra lacks the family values that are inherently Catholic — but I know far better. Becerra comes from a long faith tradition and values integrity, hard work and treating everyone with dignity and respect. He has dedicated his life to public service and to improving the lives of the families he serves.

…

Becerra has long said he is driven by the belief that everyone who works hard in our country deserves an opportunity to get ahead, including being able to send their children to college and to retire with dignity. That is both a Catholic value and an American value; protecting that value starts with protecting our loved ones’ health.

We need a secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services who knows that everyone deserves access to health care — period. Xavier Becerra’s decades of experience, strong faith tradition and life of public service make him the perfect fit to bring our country through this catastrophe and ensure a healthy future for all Americans. He is a highly qualified nominee who knows what’s at stake in this country, and the Senate should ignore these spurious attacks on his character and instead move quickly to confirm him.

To fully understand this deranged op-ed, you have to understand a few things. First and foremost, Keehan is as much a radical pro-abort as Becerra or Biden. She is also a Democrat partisan. Here she is holding up a commemorative pen used by Obama to sign ObamaCare. Keep in mind that even our weak-kneed US Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed ObamaCare because of the way it wrote abortion and contraception into the very fabric of American health care. Here are some of my past posts on Keehan. This is on her support of ObamaCare in Return of the Vichy Catholics. While she gives the illusion of being fully obedient to the Catholic faith’s tenets as spelled out in excruciating detail, with footnotes, in the Catechism, in reality, she is a hardcore pro-abort. This is from the Return of the Vichy Catholics post:

Back in December 2010, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix withdrew Catholic standing from St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix and formally excommunicated Sister Margaret McBride for conducting at least one abortion at the hospital. Naturally, Keehan weighed in against the Bishop and the opinion of the actual doctor who advised the diocese on the matter.

Unfortunately, it is much rarer to find nuns of Keehan’s age who are orthodox Catholics than to find them living in lesbian covens, ordaining their own womyn priests and worshipping “the Mother, the Virgin, and the Wise Old Woman” as their Trinity. Fortunately, actuarial tables are real and the newer generation of religious women show every sign of disavowing the widespread and endemic heresy that has devastated women’s religious communities in the US over the past 50 years.

The second thing is that Keehan is trying to do is falsely and fraudulently frame opposition to Becerra, now and later, as opposition based on his Catholicism. She’s trying to manufacture something like Dianne Feinstein’s self-own during the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett for a seat on the Seventh Circuit. See Democrats Hammer Circuit Court Nominee Over Being Catholic.

In fact, it looks like Becerra used his purely cosmetic Catholicism as a cloaking device when asked about what he sees as limits on abortion (I would guess that he has the same limits and Virginia Governor Blackface Northam, which is “none”). READ What Biden HHS Nominee REFUSED to Say About Abortion During Confirmation Hearing Far More Troubling Than What He Did Say.

Becerra Dodges Abortion Limits Question By Talking About His Mother Praying The Rosary https://t.co/QQxw2BT6MC

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 25, 2021

In fact, it looks like Republican senators all recognized Becerra for exactly what he is, a “smells and bells” Catholic, like Joe Biden, like Nancy Pelosi, who claims to be Catholic but knows as much about his professed religion as your typical Golden Retriever.

Becerra is going to be confirmed. He will use his roost in HHS to carry out a direct and sustained assault of religious liberties. Based on this preview, any opposition he gets will be framed as being based on him allegedly being Catholic.