Todd Rokita wants to teach Notre Dame how to be Catholic

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has a peculiar genius.

He is better than anyone else around at identifying problems that do not exist and pursuing “solutions” that not only waste time, money and energy, but often court disaster.

Rokita has already demonstrated this unusual talent in his relentless and nonsensical persecution of Dr. Caitlin Bernard.

Bernard angered our attorney general by helping a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had been raped and by following the law while she did it.

If that sounds as if it shouldn’t have been a problem, then you aren’t Todd Rokita and don’t view life through his peculiar lens.

The doctor helped the little girl by performing, with her mother’s consent, an abortion. Bernard mentioned the abortion to an Indianapolis Star reporter, withholding the little girl’s name, where she lived and other information that might identify her.

Rokita rushed before the cameras at Fox News to condemn Bernard in terms so ludicrous and scathing that even Fox backed away from them almost immediately. Even when it became clear his criticisms of the doctor had no basis in reality, the attorney general didn’t back off.

He doubled down.

Much legal jousting followed.

Rokita managed to prosecute the doctor in front of a state medical licensing board made up of political appointees—including some who had donated money to his campaign and none of whom recused themselves—and secured a mild reprimand and a minimal fine of $3,000 for Bernard.

That punishment was pilloried by experts in legal and medical ethics across the nation, largely because those experts grasped two things the licensing board apparently did not.

Bernard had said nothing about her patient that wasn’t routinely found in medical journals.

And Rokita had said all the same things—and more—about the little girl before a much wider audience.

Hoosiers have paid a price for Rokita’s feckless, reckless campaign to save himself from the consequences of tripping over his own tongue.

His language during the initial Fox interview prompted a disciplinary investigation that led to the Indiana Supreme Court reprimanding his conduct. It was a sweetheart deal—any other attorney likely would have been punished more severely for similar actions—that two members of the state’s high court, including Chief Justice Loretta Rush, said wasn’t tough enough on Rokita.

Rokita escalated things by trashing the reprimand and contradicting an affidavit he did during the proceedings.

This prompted yet another disciplinary investigation, one of lord knows how many that are ongoing at this time.

To save himself from his own self-destructive impulses, Rokita has assembled a small army of outside legal talent. Because he sees drunken sailors as models of budgetary restraint, he’s capped the costs for these private firms defending him at $20 million—or roughly 6,667 times the amount of the fine the state collected from Caitlin Bernard.

Public officials such as Todd Rokita, children, are the reason we Hoosiers can’t afford nice things other states have.

Our attorney general has now decided to turn his attention to Notre Dame University.

His model is the same as it was in the Bernard imbroglio—condemn first, investigate later.

Rokita claims, without citing any evidence, that Notre Dame has violated the law by trying to recruit and make comfortable students regardless of their race or ethnic background. He says, again without offering evidence, that the Catholic university’s devotion to its own policies of diversity, equity and inclusion violates state law.

Notre Dame quickly responded.

“Notre Dame is a premier Catholic research university, and as such, seeks to serve and reflect the broader Catholic Church, which is the world’s most global, multicultural, and multilingual institution. We do not engage in unlawful discrimination in our hiring or admissions processes and look to attract the best and brightest to our campus,” the school said in a written statement.

The second half of the first sentence in that statement is the interesting part.

It points out that the university’s policies are part of the church’s mission and all but dares Rokita to try to tell the Catholic Church how to be a church.

Because this is Todd Rokita we’re talking about, he likely will take the dare.

Who knows how much more of our money he’ll waste when he does.

There is a problem that is real in all of this, but it’s not Caitin Bernard or Notre Dame.

No, it’s Todd Rokita.