And Three More Things: Day Three — The Well-Qualified K. B. J. [UPDATE-1]
[NB: check the byline, thanks. Update(s) at the bottom of this post. /~Rayne]
It’s Day Three of U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s four days of confirmation hearings on the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Today’s hearing is already in progress.
Four. Long. Days.
Hearings which are half right-wing bloviating, achieving nothing to further the public’s interests. This is the fourth time this nominee has been through this tedious crap in her lifetime which should surely qualify as inhumane treatment and torture under UNCAT; it should also earn her a sainthood.
You can watch live feed at these sites (not the same links as yesterday’s as the previous links may lead to recordings previous days’ hearings):
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing feed
PBS Senate Judiciary Committee hearing feed on YouTube
Yahoo News (includes reporting)
You can also catch the hearings through these live Twitter threads:
Imani Gandy at Rewire News Group
Heaven help Judge Jackson get through the day without breaking a molar gritting her teeth.
~ 3 ~
Gallup took a poll ahead of these SCOTUS confirmation hearings as it has for past nominees. Judge Jackson has the highest approval rating apart from Chief Justice Roberts.
Initial support for Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination ties as the highest in Gallup’s trends. https://t.co/K1DYHZVod0
— GallupNews (@GallupNews) March 23, 2022
But do go on and attack her, GOP twits. Make asininely racist remarks about the nominee who has a higher approval rating than your party’s leader ever had as president. Let’s see how that pans out for you over the long run.
~ 2 ~
Meanwhile, outside the GOP’s shit show in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, another GOP senator was doing is share to push the nation back to the 1950s.
REPORTER: “You would be okay with the Supreme Court leaving the issue of interracial marriage to the states?”
SEN. MIKE BRAUN (R-IN): “Yes. If you are not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you are not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too.” pic.twitter.com/jiVTMOpC01
— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) March 22, 2022
I don’t have words strong enough for this crap. He just called into question the legitimacy of a seated SCOTUS jurist’s marriage (Clarence and Ginni Thomas) as well as that of the nominee now being grilled.
This is so intensely personal for me; my parents’ marriage wouldn’t have been legal in some states back in the 1950s and I’d be illegitimate having been born before the unanimous SCOTUS decision in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
Braun’s states’ rights crap doesn’t target interracial marriage (which has broad support across the U.S.); it targets same-sex marriage and any other personal decisions which may require government-regulated services — like reproductive health. He was literally questioned about Griswold v. Connecticut immediately following the question of interracial marriage and he gave an equally unsatisfactory answer about that.
It’s not just Sen. Hairspray-Abuser-from-Tennessee Blackburn attacking the right to privacy necessary for birth control.
Braun has since tried to backpedal on this which means he’s merely taken off the hood he donned.
Mike Braun walks back comments that interracial marriage ruling should have been left to states https://t.co/6vGkb4MceY via @kaitlin_lange / @indystar
— Max Gersh (@pd_cameraman) March 23, 2022
Except he really didn’t fully unwind what he said; he backed up over the body, and then rolled forward over it again by clarifying what he meant about states’ rights, and then claiming he didn’t understand the questions.
… The Times of Northwest Indiana reported that Braun “initially limited” his claim that the Supreme Court had usurped states’ rights over abortion in 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision. But when a reporter questioned him on other cases, including Loving v. Virginia, he reiterated his stance.
Braun later clarified his comments, saying in a statement that he “misunderstood” the questions. …
Sadly, he’s a senator until 2025. Indiana, you had better not forget this racist authoritarian crap come general election 2024. In the mean time Hoosiers should be lighting up his phone and telling Braun where he can stuff his racist states’ rights nonsense. Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121 or use Resist.bot.
~ 1 ~
I wish I could convey how deeply triggering and traumatic these confirmation hearings have been for BIPOC especially women.
I have been traveling, so not closely following #KetanjiBrownJacksonHearings but I’ve seen a succession of white supremacists yelling at her. And she is calm and composed and we must know that that all comes at a cost. A cost that none of these racist and misogynist fucks pay.
— Mona Eltahawy (@monaeltahawy) March 23, 2022
What these hearings tell us is that the white cis-het minority in Congress which retains an illegitimate stranglehold on power demands that any and all competent BIPOC particularly women must submit to belligerence and abuse before they will be allowed to participate in this flawed democracy.
What we are witnessing is the re-normalization of overt racism and misogyny. Yet media has failed to punch up, instead punching down, reinforcing the normalization.
Local news is dumbasses. But even national news:
NBC—”defending her sentencing record”
CBS—”Republicans pointed to her sentencing record in child pornography cases”
ABC—”allegations she let child porn offenders off the hook”
CNN—”child pornography was another contentious issue”— Matt Negrin, HOST OF HARDBALL AT 7PM ON MSNBC (@MattNegrin) March 23, 2022
We’re constantly deluged by the left about the lack of accountability for the January 6 insurrectionists and seditionists, and yet the left fails to hold accountable the wholly integrated abusive racist and misogynist behavior the media augments in these same insurrectionists and seditionists.
The Venn diagram is a single circle and the media continues to treat the persons outside it as the objects to be despised and subjugated and oppressed.
The problem isn’t just the GOP senators or the media when constituents fail to do anything at all to express displeasure let alone organize effectively for change.
~ 0 ~
I may have more to add here as today’s hearing continues.
So long as I can keep my blood pressure under control, that is.
UPDATE-1 — 6:35 PM —
Senator Cory Booker saves this horrible day.
Just watch this video. Just watch. pic.twitter.com/wmERvmniL5
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 23, 2022
Stay strong, Judge Jackson. Like Frederick Douglass in his Fourth of July speech, leave off this process where you began — with hope.
Lindsey’s apparently got a fetish like the rest of the GQP about kids, and not just the stuff making it into the hearings, mostly Q-Anon driven. His questions went well beyond time and I would suspect would have been stopped in a real courtroom for badgering a witness as well as failing to show relevance to the topic at hand (though IANAL). He also name checked Soros like he did yesterday (drink if it’s safe) who has bupkis to do with the process, especially in contrast with all of the dark money groups trying to hammer away on Judge Jackson. Will those be revealed by the GQP (no).
Are there any cases of the sort the GQP is sniveling about headed to SCOTUS? It remains clear that no GQP Senator will pay the slightest interest in anything that Judge Jackson says.
I would love to know what polling tools they are using to determine the course of questioning each day. You just know there’s some method by which they determine [Hot Topic 1] did better than [Hot Topic 2] so they’re incorporating [Hot Topic 1] into as many questions as possible to keep the money flowing.
Well the topic at hand is almost universally considered to be awful and likewise causes visceral revulsion. But to figure out the talking points du jour, someone who can access the daily Frank Luntz brief is your best source. The GQP has been in messaging lockstep with this document for decades, even before W’s administration.
They simply ask Tucker which part he liked best – the racism, the misogyny, the theocratic religiousity, the homophobia, etc.
Of course, Real Pollsters know that this is trick question, as the answer is always “all of the above.”
“But do go on and attack her, GOP twits. Make asininely racist remarks about the nominee who has a higher approval rating than your party’s leader ever had as president. Let’s see how that pans out for you over the long run.”
I hope you are right, but it’s really difficult to imagine any meaningful consequences for the GOP. Frankly, I’ve found myself skipping over the domestic posts around here and paying more attention to the fascinating Ukraine ones. Crazy as it sounds, it feels like there’s more hope in rooting for a positive outcome in Ukraine than in the USA at this point.
I really don’t think he’s objecting to just Loving v. VA. You know he’s really objecting to the Reconstruction Amendments 13-15, especially 14)
& the Democratic party better not leave this up to his opponent in 2026. The messaging had better make clear *this year* that if we don’t hold on to or, preferably, increase the Dem majority in the Senate, this & worse will happen. See shadow docket decision today on WI (state) redistricting map.
The ‘shadow docket’ is being used to hide accountability for hypocrisy on ‘originalism’ and ‘stare decisis’ grounds. Remember that SCOTUS had to parachute in to overrule WI’s courts on a state process of redistricting. There is no question that rulings like this will continue to show why court expansion is needed and needed now. Read the dissents, and Popehat retweeted it as well.
Klobuchar picked it up for national TV today.
That’s exactly right. As soon as I read what he said, my brain lept from Loving immediately to Brown v Board of Education. He is directly attacking equal protection.
Just curious – does the title of these posts reference Sublime’s “Summertime (Doin’ Time)“?:
Blackburn and Braun referencing Griswold v. CT is simply a signal of where the GOP is headed next. Birth control will be equated with abortion in no time. Perhaps the morning-after pill will be the intermediary target.
It already is an article of faith with the Dominionists and forced-birthers that life begins at conception, and even at the threat of the mother (like the recent ectopic pregnancy bills) abortion must be stopped even the natural ones (IIRC about a third of pregnancies spontaneously abort). Science means nothing to these people. They show this as well by frothing opposition to ‘morning after’ options even though implantation hasn’t likely occurred.
I would like to know what they intend to do with all of the fertilized eggs being held for IVF by couples hedging their bets, or the fetuses culled in IVF pregnancies because multiple implantations are tried to ensure at least one works. I’d be more impressed if these forced birthers also put their money where their mouths are. Make them pay for raising the kids.
They’ll criminalize miscarriages, too, because they think it’s the fault of the person carrying it.
I saw a statistic, back in the late 70s or the early 80s, that at least 20% of all first pregnancies end in a miscarriage. (“At least”, because the parent may not even know they’re pregnant.)
Risk of miscarriage increases with many behaviors including excessive exercise.
I can I imagine a dystopea where women’s pee is monitored by their toilet to ensure they’re hanging on to that blastula. With fines or other punishment if they fail.
I have a friend who had a stillbirth many years ago but because of the War on Drugs she had to endure an investigation into whether she had intentionally caused her child to die in utero. This added insult to her grief.
When the forced-birthers get their way that agony she had will be multiplied, because I have no doubt the TX example of deputizing panty-sniffers will be followed in every one of the forced-birth states. Missouri is trying to restrict travel across state lines, exactly how is that legal?
If they thought wall-building was difficult along the Rio Grande, they’ll love building one along the Missouri and Mississippi.
The statistics for spontaneous abortions (miscarriage) don’t include the embryos that die prior to implantation. I’ve read research estimating that ~half of human embryos die prior to implantation, so in the total absence of elective abortions, the % of zygotes that fail to develop to birth is more like 70%. The anti-abortionists push embryonic personhood, ignoring that this could mean that a frozen embryo bank could be its own Congressional district and that the Founders clearly didn’t believe embryos were persons, or they’d have assessed pregnancies starting with the first census. Anti-abortionists are only originalists when it serves them.
I detest the pseudo-scientific claims of those who are anti-abortion. I also object to the double-standards about bodilty autonomy: in no other situation do we demand that one person donate anything to save someone else’s life (not even something minor like giving blood, and to be clear: I’m not saying that an embryo is a “someone”), but people insist that women have to donate the use of their bodies for 9 months to a developing embryo/fetus.
Last night, Oklahoma’s House voted 78-19 to pass a near-total ban on abortions, sole exceptions for life or health of the pregnant woman. Women in TX have been going to OK for abortions due to SB 8, so OK decides they’ll be even more extreme.
Sorry, this topic pushes my buttons.
Been pushing my buttons for a LONG time.
https://bgladd.blogspot.com/2008/04/diploid-dave-zelinda-zygote.html
So “God” is the biggest abortionist, apparently!
I strongly suspect that Mark Meadows’ wife has already registered IVF eggs to vote. Once you start committing election registration fraud, why wouldn’t you register any “people”* to vote?
* Yeah, I know, but she thinks IVF eggs are people, too, my friend 😳
But only if they’ve been in storage for 18 years.
This is where the I think the Supremes screwed up in Roe v. Wade, in particular. They shouldn’t have ruled it a right to privacy, they should have ruled it was a violation of the 1st Amendment freedom of religion. They are codifying their religious beliefs into laws and imposing them on everyone else.
Note their hypocrisy is so strong that they have no compunction of abiding by these laws themselves if it impinges on them in any way.
Thank you Rayne.
“I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.”
Al Franken from his book Giant of the Senate.
In 2016 at Stanford University, John Boehner said about Cruz, “Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
I don’t know : Josh Hawley is working very hard to unseat Ted Cruz from this pedestal. But I must admit, Ted Cruz is special : mixing two pedophile cases for his argument, and then by one sentence admit fleetingly that he conveniently used one case description with another case sentence, leaving the impression of what he had said before, that’s special.
Since Calgary still won’t shut up, perhaps Ossoff can bomb him about that, Hirono might do it as well but she seems to be looking at other things that are also important. Or, in the post-interview debates.
I donated to Jon Ossoff’s campaign, although I have never and will never live in Georgia. That was the only race outside of my home state I contributed to. There was something about the way he campaigned that spoke to me. And when he and Rafael Warnock began to campaign together, that told me he wasn’t the place holder that some pundits described him as. His conduct in the Senate has continued to confirm my feeling that he needed to be there.
https://twitter.com/marianne_levine/status/1506727181329879041
4:18 PM · Mar 23, 2022
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1506727621027143692
4:20 PM · Mar 23, 2022
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1506728613231710212
4:24 PM · Mar 23, 2022
Watch this statement to be proof that she’s ‘shrill’ and has no judicial temperament. Look for it on Hannity tonight, and the others. I for one wonder why the GQP Senators (incidentally Sasse was the only one that did not sign Calgary/Cancun’s letter) didn’t just save time and hire Jesse Watters.
Durbin’s review was too kind, though, since I think he should also have pointed out just how leaky the GQP Congressional staffs are.
I keep thinking about her composure and Kavanaugh’s angry contorted spittle-flecked face, and I know that his behavior would never be accepted from a woman. It also brings up for me again the evidence of Kavanaugh having lied under oath. I’d written my Rep. about my belief that it was important to investigate this (and at the time my Rep. was Raskin, who is on the HJC). My guess is that the Democrats decided it would consume too much political capital.
As an aside, I’m listening to Cory Booker right now, and I so appreciate him, and his choice to say what he’s saying, calling out colleagues and supporting KBJ. If you’re not listening right now, I encourage you to check it out later.
I have listened or watched the entire hearing. I’m broken and my heart hurts for judge Jackson.
Hawley, cruz and others are shameful. I’m pretty old now and so ashamed that these monsters have somehow secured a seat in the Senate. It’s unbelievable. These men are sick.
Yes. But KBJ will come through. The unnecessariness of it all is appalling though.
Yes. Thanks. You’re right. But why oh why would someone try to damage such a beautiful person. It is the evil I can’t come to grips with.
It’s not just that these senators are racist monsters. It’s that people voted for them. People refused to demand better than them.
And on that theme, the people of Tennessee voted for Masha Blackburn, who is now rivalling MTG for the stupidest woman in Congress.
What’s most infuriating to me is that these “racist monsters” have so MUCH more power while ALSO having so MANY fewer voters than the Democrats.
THE SENATE IS A BROKEN INSTITUTION.
The GOP is attacking her on this BS public defender/child criminal line because they know the DC press is going to amplify it with no meaningful pushback.
The same DC press will push the line that the GOP only nominates impartial umpires who call balls and strikes.
The GOP has been enabled for years by members of the legal elite on the left who have defended people in the press like Bret Kavanaugh on the cynical calculation that there was a gentleman’s agreement in place that will help them move their people through the pipeline of post law school clerkships and job offers.
And now we’re seeing Laurence Silberman say loudly what had always been quiet — there never was a gentleman’s agreement. It always was overwhelmingly a one way deal that benefitted the right while hurting the left.
The gentleman’s agreement was always an affirmative action plan for right wing hacks, backed by supposedly left wing hacks like Amy Chua, that has turned the supposed elite into a swamp. And the DC press has gone along because so many of them are mediocrities as well.
The DC press lacked the intellectual firepower in the 1970s to distinguish between Brennan and Rehnquist, and they’ve been working overtime since then to cover it up.
In what universe is Amy Chua remotely left-wing? She’s a testimonial to the gross pursuit of social status and capital above all else. Her daughters weren’t subject to arduous musical training regimens because she loves the arts; but because she believes that mastery of the piano is a way to acquire priceless guanxi, social capital of the sort that is necessary if one is to win the rat race.
Perhaps she’s said nice things about LGBT folk before, I don’t know. But she’s entirely the sort who considers the working class to be losers and worse, the whole lot of them, because they weren’t clever enough to claw their way to a perch at Yale Law.
Once, I’ll let it go with a mild tap. But a second time I’m going to tell you to let a Chinese American discuss the attributes of her culture.
You want to take apart her political stance on issues which separate liberals from conservatives — social/civil liberties, federalism/anti-federalism, so on — have at it. But criticizing personal and family values which may reflect cultural heritage and do not harm the public isn’t going to fly here.
Thank you Senator Booker for being so humane and honest.
“What we are witnessing is the re-normalization of overt racism and misogyny. Yet media has failed to punch up, instead punching down, reinforcing the normalization.” This is incorrect, because overt racism and misogyny have already been renormalized. That happened during TFG’s administration. Because of him, it is necessary once again to fight against them. Sadly, it is the DEFAULT position in the Senate and the MSM that the onus is that anyone who is not a heterosexual, white, Christian, affluent (or richer), native-born man must FIRST establish his/her/their standing to speak or opine on any topic. We proceed not from the assumption of equality, but the assumption that some voices and votes are more legitimate than others. The USA has become Animal Farm. Thanks, TFG!
How about you let the fact this discussion is happening over a BIPOC woman’s nomination speak to the degree of re-normalization?
If we were truly back in the 1950s Judge Brown wouldn’t be in front of the committee for a fourth nomination, and this time for SCOTUS jurist.
Don’t declare it a fait accompli when if I have to bet on it I’d say you don’t have as much skin in the game as a BIPOC woman.
Misogyny and racism exist across spectra, not as either/or binaries. I never claimed we were back in the 50’s, but that sadly TFG succeeded in pushing both misogyny and racism into greater prominence and acceptability. As to skin in the game, all humans have skin in the game and stand to lose when any group of humans is targeted for abuse. Remember Niemoeller’s poem. Peace.
I’d really like it if you spent just a minute of your day to think about how fucking aggravating it is to have white men explain racism and misogyny to BIPOC women.
Rayne, you’ve got some anger issues. I will give you a wide birth from here on out, but you are attacking me for agreeing with your basic point. How does that promote your goals? I am willing to learn, so instruct me about why my comment rattled your cage so much. Please note: I am doing EXACTLY as you asked in your last reply.
Just. Stop. It’s that simple. Talk about anything else but race if you’re white male — like sentencing guidelines, or near-term cases which Judge Jackson may hear along with the rest of the court. Talk about the judicial issues the GOP senators failed to discuss because of their obsession with tormenting a Black woman SCOTUS nominee.
Further, do NOT tell BIPOC they have anger issues when we have now all seen exactly how BIPOC are treated in the workplace, especially if they’re female or non-binary. The GOP senators showed us all this week what most white people have ignored. This country is lucky BIPOC don’t actually have anger issues and are willing to bite through their tongues daily; it’s not BIPOC killing Asian women, or Jews in their synagogues, or Black men during routine traffic stops.
And it’s not BIPOC planning to kidnap, torture, and kill a governor, or storming the Capitol to overturn an election because democracy isn’t working the way they believe it should.
Another very good day for Ketanji Brown Jackson. We are fortunate to have her.
I usually leave “observations” about RWNJ sick behavior to others. But watching Lindsey Graham today, I thought he behaved like an alcoholic… something I have seen others say here (Rayne?) but never thought myself. But his utter unwillingness to look at her when she was speaking, instead rolling his eyes into his head, and his never ending “big hurt” over Kavanaugh’s “treatment”. Given a several Repubs on this committee making a big deal they were not given info on Jackson (largely inaccurate), I could not help remembering the committee not given Kavanaugh’s “work” for GWB… almost certainly borne from the same swamp as John Yoo’s tortuous (no pun intended) Orwellian CYA legal briefs. This Kavanaugh record to me should have been an automatic disqualification. I’m wondering if Biden can release those records now? It is needed.
Also thought Sheldon Whitehouse’s opining on “court packing” and how RWNJ shadow groups and $$ has taken over the SCOTUS nomination process was maybe the most poignant comments today: totally accurate, and descriptive of a cancer that has put America in a downward spiral AFAIC. The same for his observations Petro $$ have such a hold on on his Repub colleagues they cannot even discuss climate change. Dems have done next to nothing to pound this reality into the electorate’s consciousness.
I know a lot of otherwise good people who have gotten numb to discussing this, much less getting informed. Almost like an electronic mass lobotomy.
To me, this is chilling. It seems for a long time now Murdoch has more influence of the US electorate that a popularly elected democratic president.
How successful was it? Faux News has already pivoted to a new line of attack until they dream up something better. Ingraham last night was saying KBJ wasn’t qualified because Biden’s approval ratings remain low (but IIRC they’re still better that Individual-1’s ratings when he nominated each of his three hacks). It needs some work, I think.
What it does mean is that even Faux knows that the GQP plans to trip up Judge Jackson failed bigly.
“I would love to know what polling tools they are using to determine the course of questioning day.”
I guess child porn is polling fairly high, at least in GQP fundraising algorithms.
Not since Anita Hill, has a woman of color been subjected to such disrespect.
Any human being would be, should be, appalled and motivated to change this reality.
Telling about these individuals who are misogynistic, racist and disrespectful claiming they are not.
“It would have been more comfortable to remain silent.”
Anita Hill
Those Southern gentlemen sure do like talking about child porn.
Yes, these men are OBSESSED with child porn.
Given how many GQP types have been busted for it, closely associated with purveyors / abusers (lookin’ at you, Dersh, among many others) and enabled abuse by their silence one wonders if Freud had thought about what it means. Oh, yeah… Projection.
Via Zoe Tillman, CHRIS GEIDNER live tweets DAY 4:
https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1506980981265293315
9:07 AM · Mar 24, 2022
“We’re constantly deluged by the left about the lack of accountability for the January 6 insurrectionists and seditionists, and yet the left fails to hold accountable the wholly integrated abusive racist and misogynist behavior the media augments in these same insurrectionists and seditionists.”
Dan Froomkin runs this down in a recent piece about trying to save Tom Edsall from himself
https://presswatchers.org/2022/03/i-tried-to-save-tom-edsall-from-himself-it-didnt-work/
Froomkin did okay but he could have done better. Being a white male can blind one to dog whistles. This bit Froomkin excerpted from Edsall’s piece, for example, was just such a dog whistle:
When we’re supposed to pay more heed to the grievances of those for whom this entire system has been built, for whom power has been illegitimately retained, we’re asked to deny a modern living democracy to a society which isn’t white male (and yes, when Edsall says “white America” he means men because even the white handmaidens like Sen. Blackburn serve the patriarchy’s interests).
The behavior of GOP senators in front of the first Black woman nominee to SCOTUS was nothing but a long dumping of their “white America” grievances instead of governance. We’re literally paying them for their screed while this country’s most vulnerable go underserved in so many ways for lack of adequate representation.
ADDER: I should have added that Froomkin has his own blindspots when he mentions “ascendant minorities” and “waves of immigrants.” My father’s family is half indigenous — they were there when Americans came and stole their nation. The other part of his family has been American since the 1890s. Ascendant minorities? Waves of immigrants? Really? We’ve been here for more than a hundred years, in some cases for hundreds of years, as long as the first whites or longer in the case of indigenous Americans, and we are entitled to and demanding our place at democracy’s table. Froomkin as much as Edsall doesn’t seem to be fully aware that they’re being asked to wake up to historical fact as inconvenient as it is.