The Ketanji Brown Jackson Hearings: Hits and Misses

   It's almost certain that Ketanji Brown Jackson will be approved by the Senate to the Supreme Court, because the Democrats have enough votes, and no dissenters. That makes the hearings and questioning of her almost a pro-forma theater. What is interesting is the difference in the media coverage between Democrat and Republican nominees, and the scrutiny of the nominees. The Left wing media has decried the GOP senators' questions, and tone toward Judge Brown Jackson, while they supported the much rougher and insulting questioning that Justice Kavanaugh received at his hearings. That's partisan political media at work, but I also saw some other reporting, that wasn't as one-sided. 

   Let's face it: Republicans tried to go for the jugular, but they didn't go as far as Dems did, in creating a fictitious rape story against Justice Kavanagh. They stuck to factual matters, but many of their attacks were a waste of time. Sen. Graham going after her for representing Guantanamo detainees was one such line of questioning. I remember how angry he was at the Dems during the Kavanagh hearings, so I can give him a pass for this. He actually was far softer on her than he could have been, focusing only on her work for a private law firm, and not her public defender service. If he wanted to go "full-on stupid," as the Dems did against Kavanagh, he could have asked her why she didn't resign, rather than defend an enemy of the US, and imply that to be disqualifying for the SCOTUS. Again, it would've been a dumb argument, so Graham's limiting his questions to her private employment in filing amicus briefs for Gitmo detainees, while somewhat less dumb, still didn't amount to anything that would disqualify her for the SCOTUS.

   Another line of questioning that struck me as partisan "point-scoring" was Sen. Hawley's questioning of her sentencing of child-porn sex offenders, specifically an 18 year old who she sentenced to three months for possessing hundreds of child-porn images, when the prosecutors asked for twenty four months. He may have been right, and I certainly felt outraged when I watched parts of his questioning. However, she wasn't able to explain her reasoning in depth, and as the WSJ notes, the sentencing guidelines have not kept up with technology, and there is bipartisan agreement on this. It didn't seem like an attack that had any relevance to her qualifications for the SCOTUS, much less a relevant line of questioning. It smacked of the way Dems try to smear GOP nominees with emotional appeals that have no factual basis.

Update: I have seen new info regarding this aspect of her record, and have to retract the last paragraph. 

   Finally, there were the questions about "dark money" promoting her nomination. This was the dumbest of all, but I understand why the GOP had to do it, politically. Democrat Sen. Whitehouse, a total blithering idiot, has made a fool of himself by accusing SCOTUS justices nominated by the GOP of being bought and paid for by "dark money." The fact is that "independent expenditures" are legal, and used to a much greater degree by Democrats, as Kimberley A. Strassel points out. She also notes they also are protected free speech, and Sen. Whitehouse's efforts to suppress them, or force the publicizing of their donors are against that ideal. My final point about this is an old saying, sometimes attributed to Ronald Reagan: "Just because they support me doesn't mean I support them." 

   Not to say that all GOP questioners fell flat. In fact, Judge Brown Jackson was exposed as a skilled dissembler in a number of exchanges. Before I get into the specifics of them, I want to say a few words of my initial impression of her. She didn't strike me as a great orator, but more of a person who was reciting a speech by rote, in her first public statement. That, in itself, was not the issue. There was something about her delivery that seemed almost too practiced, and it left me feeling skeptical about anything she said. This was just my first impression, and the first time I had ever seen her give a speech, so I can't say anything more specific. On a lighter note, she kind of reminded me of a female version of Steve Urkel, which was kind of cute and endearing, but had nothing to do with whether she'd be a good Associate Justice on the SCOTUS.

   My first big red flag was when she declared not to have any judicial philosophy, and kept trying to deflect the question by saying she had a methodology instead. That is prevarication, or a lie, in layman's terms, that either she, or some advisor came up with. I can't help but think that this is another case of Democrats thinking they can get away with substituting one big word for another, and that most Americans are too dumb to know the difference. "I have a methodology, not a philosophy," or "my philosophy is methodology," or any of the several attempts she made to substitute one for the other, and conflate the two were frankly insulting. I would prefer if she just came out and said "I'm not going to tell you my judicial philosophy," but nobody does that. They all dance around it, usually in a theatrical way. That's why this fell flat. Her answer, besides insulting my intelligence, lacks imagination. Perhaps she remembers Justice Sotomayor's continuing criticism for her "wise old Latina" (Oops, she didn't say Latinx! Cancel her!) answer in her hearings, so tried something new. In any case, as an opening gambit, it pretty much gave up the game she was playing, as well as what her judicial philosophy is. She won't admit it, but she believes that the Constitution can mean whatever serves her policy goals, and will never disappoint her Democrat supporters, unlike most GOP appointed SCOTUS Justices. 

   Sen. Marsha Blackburn elicited the most remarkable statement of the hearing, and possibly in the history of SCOTUS nominee hearings. She asked Judge Brown Jackson if she could provide a definition for the word "woman." Here is the initial exchange:

The SCOTUS nominee answered "Can I provide a definition? No." 

Sen. Blackburn: "yeah." 

Judge Brown Jackson: "I can't." 

Sen. Blackburn: "You can't?" 

Judge Brown Jackson: "Not in this context. I'm not a biologist."

   That beats Justice Sotomayor's "Wise old Latina" (cancel her for not saying Latinx!) answer, but it may or may not beat Justice Thomas' "high tech lynching" answer. In any case, the next day Sen. Cruz followed up by asking her how she could determine a plaintiff's standing in a gender-based lawsuit if she couldn't define a woman. She replied "I know that I'm a woman. I know that Sen. Blackburn is a woman, and the woman I admire the most in the world is in the room today, my Mother." That obviously didn't answer Sen. Cruz' question, but it sounded like a coached reply after the previous day's debacle. He pressed on, asking if defining himself as a woman or Asian man would give him legal standing in court, but she didn't answer. These exchanges go directly to her qualifications to be a SCOTUS Justice, and show her to be severely lacking.

   The next red flag I will mention has to do with her responses about "critical race theory." Her professed "limited familiarity" with the concept was unconvincing, considering her previous praise for the NY Times widely discredited "1619 Project," and it's author. She also fell back on the ubiquitous statement that critical race theory "is not taught" in K-12 schools. Of course it's not, it's taught to the teachers of K-12 students, as a means of instruction, or rather indoctrination. To use another big word, it informs the pedagogy, which means the method and practice of teaching, of K-12th grade children. This means that while it is not directly taught to children, it is actually indoctrinated into them by teachers that have been taught how to use this racist theory. Forgive me if I don't believe a word that Judge Brown Jackson says about it, because she clearly repeated several open misrepresentations that I, and many others have previously exposed. This is another HUGE strike against her qualification to be a SCOTUS Justice, because she might well support the idea that racial preferences are constitutional, for certain races.

   Finally, one of the most astounding misdirectional dodges I read about was her attempt to pass herself off as an "originalist." This, after her statement about having no ideology, but a methodology (see my first red flag, above). Okay, maybe she meant that "look(ing) at the original intent, original public meaning of the words" was part of her methodology, adding that it would be "a limitation on my authority to import my own policy." That second part was a fairly honest admission that she will import her own policy goals to her rulings, to some degree. It's little admissions like that, combined with her gross evasiveness and denial of any ideology that have convinced me of her absolute political bias. I could go on, about how she refused to oppose packing the court, but again, that has no relevance to her rulings as a SCOTUS Justice. I almost forgot one that actually is relevant, which is her view of law school students preventing free speech on their campuses through threats of violence. It has nothing to do with any SCOTUS case, but it is a clear indication of judicial and political philosophy. Unfortunately, she wasn't asked about the recent incident at Yale, so we don't have any insight to her thoughts on that issue.

   Regardless of her obvious flaws and flubs in the hearings, it's doubtful that any Dems will oppose her. They also have gripes about recent SCOTUS nominations, specifically the GOP shutting down Merrick Garland's nomination at the end of Pres. Obama's second term, while rushing Amy Coney Barrett's through at the end of Pres. Trump's first term. I don't have a problem with that. While the SCOTUS should rightly be apolitical, the process of nominating and confirming it's members is extremely political. That's why she will be confirmed, and even Senators in conservative states like Joe Manchin won't pay a political price. His killing of Pres. Biden's Build Back Better bill inoculated him from any backlash over this, because Judge Brown is replacing another Democrat appointed Justice. One of the biggest disparities I notice is how the media always make any Republican nominee to be a threat to women or minority rights, but never blink an eye, or try to divulge the extreme positions any Democrat nominee may have. Just look at their reaction to Judge Brown Jackson's statement that she can't define a woman. It's like something from the Twilight Zone. "Nothing strange about that, only a biologist knows for sure." That's common sense, to people that are enthralled to a political philosophy that denies reality for political gain and government power over the people that are supposed to have power over it. 

   I can see a time when this ends, because even Democrats are getting fed up with it. I even hope Justice Brown Jackson may end up being more moderate than her supporters think. If she's such an obvious prevaricator, who's to say she hasn't been selling the progressives a dream for years? Stranger things have happened, though it's usually GOP nominees that swerve left, not vice versa. Her answers at the hearings have only shown that she is hiding much more than she is telling us about herself.