The SCOTUS Nomination Dumpster Fire
We end this week on the Judge Ketanji Show, otherwise known as the Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Supreme Court Senate Confirmation hearings.
I have not been following these hearings very closely. Frankly, it’s been as predictable as expected. Aaron Sorkin could not have scripted it better for one of his political yawnfests: Evil Republicans ask racist and sexist questions of the noble Black female first Supreme Court nominee.
I am so damned sick of the paternalistic slathering of the Left; you have no idea.
In the hearings for judges nominated by Republican presidents, you never knew what rabbits the Democrat heads of the committee were going to pull out of their hat. You can thank our racist, loose cannon Dementia Joe for starting that precedent with two of those hearings. As Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, he was head of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversaw the infamous 1987 hearings of Judge Robert Bork. When the hearings appeared to be coming to an uneventful close, Masshole Senator Ted Kennedy decided to lie and slime Judge Bork on the Senate floor, talking about, “Robert Bork’s America,”
“is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, [and] schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution...”
Notice how the playbook to foment outrage has not changed, merely the terms used to ignite it.
Judge Bork was not confirmed by the Senate due to this. Because of the vitriol, shock and awe of this form of attack, a new term was created in our lexicon to describe it: “Borking.”
Then there were the 1991 Judge Clarence Thomas hearings, with the circus of Anita Hill and her flawed testimony (why keep following someone who has harassed you from job to job?), and a “high-tech” lynching fully engineered by Joe Biden. The Senate was no longer wholly ruled by the corrupt Ted Kennedy, and Thomas fighting back showed he was made of sterner stuff. Judge Thomas was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice; but that hasn’t stopped Democrats and Left from their attempts to take him out. Justice Thomas was recently hospitalized, and the number of ghouls dancing on his grave was a sight to behold.
And who can forget the 2018 Judge Brett Kavanaugh hearings? They are, “indelible in the hippocampus,” as Christine Blasey Ford testified. <insert *eyeroll* emoji>. The Democrats put on a show, baby—one that they should regret. They pretty much destroyed any norms left with their attempt to destroy Kavanaugh.
Much of the drama surrounding Judge Amy Coney Barrett was pre-hearings, with stupid tweets on Twitter from the Left’s intellectual brain trust about her white privilege in adopting two Haitian children.
Here we are in 2022, and with Justice Stephen Breyer announcing his coerced into resignation, we have a Democrat president who chose his nominee solely for the purpose of putting a Black female on the Supreme Court.
KBJ’s judicial qualifications and legal temperament? The Left is taking on the attitude of Hillary Clinton at the Benghazi hearings: at this point, what difference does it make? They got what they wanted and they’re going to ram this woman through, by hook or crook. Emphasis on the latter.
Jonathan Turley, who I don’t consider partisan one way or another—he just respects the Constitution and the law—had this to say about the Controversial KBJ:
While she obviously has opinions as a district court judge, there are few opinions that shed light on her judicial philosophy. That is not surprising for a trial judge who issues hundreds of insular decisions on trial issues or outcomes. This is not about the years of experience on the bench, which I have repeatedly noted is a great strength in the nomination. It simply means that we have fewer opinions offering substantive insights into her approach to legal interpretation. The question is whether we will learn substantially more in this confirmation.
Oh, we learned all right… more than the Left bargained for.
KBJ’s sentencing record seems to favor light or reduced sentences for sex offenders. This is a woman with children, so that’s cause for a major pause. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley read her reasoning from her written decisions, and they come off a bit sketch.
After being asked by Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn about CRT and its role in the school on which she is part of the board, I get the impression that KBJ was for CRT, until she was against it. Chris Rufo tweeted that she flat-out lied in her response.
This is my shocked face.
Sen. Blackburn is receiving hate for asking KBJ what should have been a simple question:
Clutch the pearls! How dare she?! Every legacy media headline about Republicans questioning of the Controversial KBJ and her judicial record has “attack” or “pounce” in it. One headline from The Guardian even accused Republicans of turning the confirmation hearings into a political circus.
I’m old enough to remember the 2018 Kavanaugh hearings, why aren’t they? Accusations by Blasey “Ballsy” Ford and others of rape, and gang rape all fell apart because they were made up out of thin air. Kavanaugh suffered under the indignity of questions about the minutiae from his high school yearbook, what “boofing,” meant, and how much beer he drank during the Summer. Questions about Kavanaugh’s judicial philosophy? Out the window, along with the Democrat’s credibility.
As usual, the legacy media is not only lacking in creativity, but showing how disingenuous they are. For the Controversial KBJ, the majority of the Democrats on the committee are simply preening and gushing rather than asking actual questions about KBJ’s judicial philosophy and record, of course any question about her actual record can be framed as an attack, when all the Republicans are doing is the job they were placed on the committee to do.
There’s not a lot of “doing ones’ job” happening in the halls of Congress these days, so I know it is probably strange.
I watched the entirety of the now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett hearings. With just a year-and-a-half of distance, the Kavanaugh hearings were still fresh in people’s minds. So Democrats attempted to mind their Ps and Qs, but not by much. Both sides asked direct, pointed, and sometimes what could be deemed as ridiculous questions. Justice Coney Barrett answered every one in detail, with aplomb, and in one famous moment, held up her notepad which had no notes, which reflected her knowledge of case law and judicial philosophy were ingrained, rather than indoctrinated.
Speaking of preening, when it came time for New Jersey Senator Corey “Spartacus” Booker to question KBJ, he practically had an orgasm.
This was followed by the legacy media defending him not asking any questions because, “the moment,” or something….
And apparently Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham got into a catfight, causing Miss Lindsay to storm out.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) walked out of Tuesday’s Senate hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson during a clash with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) over the release of terror detainees from Guantanamo Bay, exclaiming at one point that he wouldn’t care if they died in prison without trial.
Graham (R-SC) had grilled Jackson about her time representing Gitmo detainees while she was a federal public defender in Washington, DC and pointed out that those released from the military prison in Cuba often returned to the battlefield to kill Americans — with some even ending up in high-ranking Taliban positions.
Graham may also have been a wee bit upset that the Left and the Right tanked South Carolina Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was his choice for the nomination. After spending all his spare time before Ukraine shilling for her selection, he was not happy with her being rebuffed.
Sen. Durbin is also withholding pre-sentencing records on KBJ’s rulings on the child pornography cases that came across her bench.
Durbin said the reports contained sensitive information that could be “dangerous to the victims and to the innocent people who are mentioned in these reports and unnecessary at this point.”
Durbin called the request a “fishing expedition” and said it would not change anyone’s vote.
Very sus. But, this is Dick Durbin we’re talking about.
The rest of the hearing on Thursday involved witnesses corroborating KBJ’s record, demeanor, and character. No activists trying to tear down the doors, nobody being accused of secretly throwing up white supremacist hand signals, and no Alyssa Milano overseeing the proceedings to ensure they were fair to all women.
Funny how that works.
As I said earlier, thanks to the shenanigans the Judiciary Committee Democrats pulled on Justice Brett Kavanaugh (thank you, CA Sen. Dianne Feinstein), the ghosts from that hearing now hover over every new one. They jumped the shark. They know it. So all they can do is exhibit puffery and propping up of any nominee by a Democrat president, whether qualified or not. When the nominee is by a Republican president, they get huffy, manufacture problems that don’t exist, and pretend faux outrage over norms that they shot to hell four years prior.