Now that the 'dust has settled' and the nomination hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson are concluded, it's worthwhile to get the takes of some other voices:
by Amanda Marcotte | March 25, 2022 - 7:05am | permalink
At the beginning of the confirmation hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina promised that Republicans wouldn't turn the whole thing into "a circus."
Spoiler alert: He was lying.
It wasn't long before the clown car doors opened and every flavor of right-wing idiocy came pouring out. The main attack line was openly stoking QAnon conspiracy theories by repeatedly floating false and truly basement-dwelling accusations that Jackson has some special sympathy for child molesters. There was a train wreck of rape apology, complete with calling an alleged attempted rape "teenage dating habits." Graham, auditioning as usual for "Real Housewives," threw not just one, but two storming-out-of-the-room tantrums. And there was the racism, so much endless, painful racism.
by Alex Henderson | March 24, 2022 - 7:09am | permalink
During the Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court — the 51-year-old Washington, D.C. native expressed a strong belief in the legal/judicial doctrine known as stare decisis, which essentially means “respect for precedent.” Never Trumper and Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin analyzes Jackson’s judicial philosophy in her March 23 column, arguing that modern-day Republicans have abandoned “judicial restraint” — unlike Biden’s nominee, and unlike Republicans of the past.
“Not so long ago, ‘conservatives’ used to insist that the judiciary operate within constraints,” Rubin explains. “Judges shouldn’t venture far from precedent, they finger-wagged. They should spell out the reasoning behind their rulings. In statutory interpretation, they should stick to the words of a text and the intent of its drafters.”
The 59-year-old columnist continues, “Indeed, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, during her confirmation hearing this week, has offered a refreshing reminder about how judges should comport themselves — and how radical the current majority on the Court has become.”
And one of the issues Rubin has with MAGA Republicans is what she considers their belief in judicial radicalism.
“It’s no secret that right-wing justices are on a crusade to rip up precedent,” Rubin argues. “From their efforts to weaken union rights to their threats of abandoning decades of abortion law, they have revealed their willingness to undertake dramatic shifts in law simply because they now have the votes to do so.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, Rubin notes, has “opined that New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, decided in 1964, should be overridden” and “has said the same about Roe v. Wade.”
Rubin observes, “As the late justice Antonin Scalia, no fuzzy-headed progressive, once said of Thomas, ‘He does not believe in stare decisis, period.’ Now, along comes Jackson, who repeatedly explained, on (March 22), the purpose of stare decisis and its roll in keeping justices in ‘their lane.’”
by Amanda Marcotte | March 24, 2022 - 7:59am | permalink
During Tuesday's Senate hearing to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., provided yet another reminder that his true talent as a troll lies in how shameless he is.
Certainly aware that by getting "racist babies" in headlines, people would assume he's talking about himself, Cruz forged ahead, indifferent to the inevitable jokes, just focused on getting that sweet, sweet attention. The immediately infamous "racist babies" exchange, of course, had nothing to do with the actual job Jackson is nominated for. Instead, Cruz used his allotted questioning time to freak out over "critical race theory," which is the trendy scare term in right-wing circles to demonize basic concepts like "racism is bad" and "racism is real." So Cruz ginned up the outraged over a book called "Antiracist Baby."
"Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?" Cruz raved, because, as part of their efforts to break the English language, Republicans now call it "racist" to teach kids not to be racist.
To her eternal credit, Jackson did not retort that the only racist baby she could see was the junior senator from Texas. Instead, she reminded Cruz that random children's books "don't come up as my work as a judge." She did, however, being a flesh-and-blood human, release a teeny but audible sigh over his childish display. It was enough for the New York Times, desperate for any crack in Jackson's placid demeanor, to run with "Cruz and Jackson spar over antiracism curriculum at a private school," rewarding Cruz's idiocy with the fireworks-style coverage he craves.
In reality, Jackson was no more "sparring" with Cruz than I'm "sparring" with a loud and persistent car alarm going off on my block. "Enduring" would be the more accurate description.
Jackson is the first Black woman ever nominated for the Supreme Court, and any hopes that Republicans would be respectful of this historic moment were thoroughly dashed this week. Instead, the nation is bearing witness — or in many cases, looking away in pained embarrassment — as Republicans have a lengthy, racist tantrum instead. It's enough to make one wish they all had a copy of "Antiracist Baby," as it's the kind of remedial picture book they clearly need. Too bad none of them would read it.
Seriously, it got so bad that Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana let slip that he would be cool with letting states ban interracial marriage, under the guise of "states rights." He was responding to Jackon's nomination with an extended tear about his — entirely false — belief that the Supreme Court was wrong in the past to prioritize federal protections for human rights over "states rights." A reporter asked him if this belief also applied to Loving v. Virginia, the ruling that blocked states from banning interracial marriage. Braun said yes, extolling "the beauty of the system" that "states ought to express themselves." In this case, the "beauty" would be in arresting people for interracial marriage.
by Marjorie Cohn | March 27, 2022 - 7:13am | permalink
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is inching toward confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice after sailing with strength and grace through days of racist and disrespectful attacks by GOP senators. Conservative Democrat Joe Manchin has now signaled that he will vote to confirm Jackson, showing that the often fractured Democratic senators are uniting to support her confirmation.
Although Judge Jackson is exceptionally qualified to sit on the Supreme Court, she was subjected to snide, condescending and racist attacks by Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing this week. Jackson remained remarkably unflappable in the face of grueling questions and hostile, vicious assaults.
Jackson is likely to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. It is anticipated that all Democratic and Independent senators as well as Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) will vote to confirm her nomination.
by Thom Hartmann | March 24, 2022 - 7:45am | permalink
It’s somewhere between comical and tragic watching the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Lindsey Graham throws his trademark hissy fit and storms out, John Cornyn tries to sound erudite and fails, Marsha Blackburn outs herself as a fanatic, Ted Cruz thinks Black judges should vet children’s books about racism, and Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton just end up making fools of themselves.
But none of them really care. None of the Republicans do.
And I don’t mean that as the frame for a polemic. This is intended as a serious analysis of what’s happened to the GOP over the past 40 years, which informed their behavior in that committee meeting yesterday.
In 1976 (Buckley) and 1978 (Bellotti) the Supreme Court legalized political bribery, unleashing a flood of cash for the Reagan campaign of 1980. Most Democrats at that time were still funded mostly by the unions, so they weren’t paying such attention to the possibility of dark money.
As I lay out in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, the Court doubled down on those decisions in 2010, blowing up over 100 federal and state laws that regulated money in politics in Citizens United.
It opened a door the GOP and a handful of Democrats were eager to rush through.
The entire Republican Party has since sold itself out to rightwing billionaires and giant corporations and as long as they have that support — and the billions of dollars to carpet-bomb their states with advertising every election — they don’t give a rat’s ass about the things they’re pretending to be so very, very concerned about.
Every one of those Republican senators had two simple goals for the hearings.
The first was to smear the Democratic nominee in a way that will guarantee that — over the next 24-hour news cycle — the name “Judge Jackson” will repeatedly occur in the same headline or sentence as “child porn,” “Critical Race Theory,” or “terrorists from Gitmo.”
The second was to craft a short soundbite of their own performance art that Fox “News” and other hard-right media can play on a loop. White Republicans dressing down a Black woman? Perfect for conservative hate media.
by David Badash | March 23, 2022 - 7:47am | permalink
— from The New Civil Rights Movement
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley‘s misleading and false allegations have been debunked by mainstream, left-leaning, and even right-wing media and news outlets and yet during his remarks on Monday he brought them up again. The Republican Senator from Missouri’s charges, which are tinged with a QAnon taint, basically are that Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was soft on those found guilty of child pornography.
At the opening of Tuesday’s Senate confirmation hearing Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin decimated Hawley’s attack with a litany of facts, but also by giving Judge Jackson the opportunity to speak to the allegations directly to the Senators and to the American people.
Joyce Vance, an MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst and a former U.S. Attorney observes that “Judge Jackson’s brilliance as a jurist is on full display as she responds to a question about whether she’s soft on crime when it comes to child pornography. Does not shy away from describing the crime as depiction of sex abuse but notes she must follow Congress’ sentencing law.”
by Amanda Marcotte | March 22, 2022 - 7:22am | permalink
Fox News host Tucker Carlson's efforts to "raise questions" about Jackson's credentials fell mostly flat. More importantly, Democrats have a slim majority in the Senate. Republicans can't block her nomination, since Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell destroyed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 when he wanted to seat Donald Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch. Her nomination won't really change the balance of the court, as Jackson is replacing liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, so the assumption is that Republicans won't bother to put up much of a fight. But, of course, that assumption overlooks one critical factor in the hearing process: Senate Republicans with presidential aspirations see these hearings as a way to pander to the racist, misogynist, conspiracy theory-loving GOP base.
Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri — who is heavy competition with fellow Senate Judiciary Committee member Ted Cruz of Texas for the title of "Most Repulsive Creep In The GOP" — previewed his nakedly QAnon-inspired line of attack against Jackson last week in a series of tweets where he insinuated, and not with any subtlety, that she supports child pornography.
Jackson "has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes," Hawley falsely claimed, adding that she believes it's "controversial" to send "child predators to jail."
Needless to say, Hawley's accusations are lies, as Ian Millhiser of Vox carefully explained. For one thing, Jackson "ios one of the most scrutinized individuals in the entire legal profession," having been vetted "by the Senate on three separate occasions, by the nation's largest police union, and by an organization representing over 30,000 police leaders." Millhiser has done the hard work of laying out the compelling but highly technical case for why none of these accusations make sense, and how Hawley, a graduate of Yale Law, knows full well that Jackson has done nothing wrong or even controversial.
But, of course, Hawley's outrage is wholly fake. He's counting on the fact that few, if any, of his followers will pay attention to the legalese-drenched debunkings on his lies. Instead, they will focus on the titillating accusations that Jackson supposedly champions pedophiles for reasons. Hawley doesn't need to spell out what reasons Jackson, the mother of two, supposedly has for protecting child pornographers. Instead, he can count on QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory cult that is increasingly colonizing the Republican base, to do that dirty work for him.
American Bar Association lauds Jackson
Their appearances follow two days of questioning by committee members. Democrats repeatedly said Jackson would be a welcome addition to the court, while Republicans aggressively questioned whether she had been soft on crime as a federal trial court judge and public defender. ABA representatives said Thursday that their review did not support such criticism.
