How much do we want to bet Joe F-ing Manchin and Kirsten F-ing Sinema all the sudden pop out of nowhere and start hemming and hawing about being "unsure" about where they are with KBJ???
Stupid question from marsha marsha marsha that was accurately answered by Judge Jackson... but I wonder how jenna ellis thought about how previous USSC nominees handle so-called hot button questions? Did she complain then?
Wut? I think that's a bit of a stretch, am I missing something about how these hearings are going? What would they gain by doing so? Have they hinted at not wanting this candidate or any other candidate?
From the talking heads at MSNBC are saying the Democrats are very united on this and that her confirmation is a done deal. There still is a decent chance that one or two Republicans might vote for her. Republican Rob Portman was on Morning Joe and while he said it was fair to question her on her record he agreed that some of the questions from other Republicans were going too far. Schumer hasn't been happy with Manchin and Sinema but it's for votes like this why he's done all he can to keep them in the Democratic caucus.
I guess two reasons: -PTSD from Kavanaugh’s tirade where I saw that and thought, no way that doesn’t tank his nomination and low and behold it actually made Republicans rally around him oddly enough. Their belligerence the past two days might work better than we think. I dunno but I hope not. -second… lack of trust if Collins/Murk/Romney are a no. If that’s the case then both those two know they have leverage and the spotlight and I just don’t trust them not to at least make Dems sweat. I also don’t trust those both with the flood of money I’m sure is promised to them if they tank the nom. I’ll be most interested to hear what Romney and Murk say in the next 48 hours. Im sure it’s mostly ptsd from Kavanaugh and BBB, but one things for sure they both sure as hell have earned that lack of trust with the party, and Republican voters are definitely an anomaly seeing as they are a base of 40% of the country that looked at 300 million people and said… ohh… that Trump guy looks like someone I want with the nuclear codes.
Republicans are trying to hard to get sound bites for the midterms. Really sad and pathetic. Jackson isn't giving them anything. "Can you define woman?" "Secret agenda on CRT?" "Anti-racist baby?" WTF is this crap? Like what does that have to do with being a judge??? I love how when Cruz asked her about Critical Race Theory being taught in public schools, she pointed out how CRT isn't thought in schools but in law school.
Lindsey Graham just shows again how much of a joke he is. He's attacking KBJ for her record even though he voted for her about a year ago. Anytime you see Graham get all huffy and thunder from his seat in the Senate no one no matter what side of the issue should take him seriously.
deviating radically from sentencing guidelines in her role as a judge could not be a more relevant line of questioning also an indicator that she would be willing to deviate from the law and Constitution as well I can't believe the Republicans haven't delved into her high school yearbook. That's something we know is important.
That's a strange statement. Sentencing guidelines aren't the law or Constitution. It's almost like suggesting that a student who copies answers from another student on a test in middle school is more likely to commit murder.
Oh **** my school failed me. I never knew sentencing guidelines outside of no "cruel or unusual punishment" existed in the Constitution. Damn today I learned.
Sounds like the new normal behavior: Almost every popular hearings are for massive politicking. Setup a huge strawman and attack it. Distorted reality Here are a few facts about Ketanji Brown Jackson: She frequently associates herself with a patriotic narrative of American history. “The first of my many blessings,” she told the Senate this week, “is the fact that I was born in this great nation.” She is not an advocate of critical race theory or other progressive ideas about education. She has never taken a public position on hot-button school issues like whether young children should be taught about gender identity. As a federal judge, she has a mainstream record, broadly typical of a Democratic nominee. She has often praised law enforcement, including her proud mention this week that her brother and two of her uncles worked as police officers. You might not know any of this — you might well believe the opposite — if you spent the past few days listening to Republican senators or consuming many conservative media sources. Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing has turned into a case study of how disconnected from reality large parts of the Republican ecosystem have become. I know that description sounds harsh and will bother some conservative readers. But I think the facts warrant it. Birtherism to p*rnography The debate over Jackson’s nomination has often had little to do with her. It has become an argument over a nominee who does not exist — one who does not respect America, is not truly religious, coddles child abusers and terrorists and has highly developed views about the importance of “woke” education. Yesterday, conservative activists used this portrayal to pressure moderate Democratic senators to vote against Jackson. Conspiracy theories and unfair accusations have a long history in American politics, of course. But they have often remained on the margins. Today, distortions and falsehoods have moved to the center of politics. While neither party is entirely innocent, there is a fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats. False claims regularly flow from the leaders of the Republican Party — including its most recent president, several of its likely future presidential candidates and the most influential media figures aligned with the party. Donald Trump began his political career by claiming that Barack Obama was born in Africa and ended his presidency with false accusations of voter fraud. Prominent Republicans regularly cast doubt on the fact that greenhouse gases are warming the planet and contributing to extreme weather. Disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines has been so widespread that almost 40 percent of Republican adults have not received a shot, sometimes with fatal consequences. There is no comparable list of false information coming from senior members of the Democratic Party. The Jackson hearings have become the latest example. Several Republican senators — including Josh Hawley, Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz yesterday — have tried to portray her as soft on child pornographers. Their argument depends on a misleading cherry-picking of facts from cases she has heard. A useful debunking appeared this week in National Review, the conservative magazine, written by Andrew McCarthy, a former prosecutor who noted that he disagreed with Jackson on many legal matters. McCarthy also wrote that Hawley’s accusations were “meritless to the point of demagoguery” and “a smear.” Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, has pointed out that some Trump nominees had a similar record as Jackson in child-p*rnography cases, and that Hawley voted to confirm them. Woke education has become another focus of the hearings, with Republicans like Cruz and Marsha Blackburn trying to portray Jackson as an advocate for it. In truth, she has not taken a position on the issues that fall under that category. Her sole — tenuous — connection to them is serving on the board of Georgetown Day School, an elite private school in Washington. That was apparently enough for the Republican National Committee to tweet an image of her this week, with her initials — KBJ — crossed out and replaced with CRT, an abbreviation for critical race theory. (Much of the Republican criticism of Jackson probably would have applied to any nominee, regardless of race, but it is hard to imagine the same tweet about a white judge.) The only time Jackson appears to have mentioned critical race theory publicly was in a 2015 speech. It was part of a list of disciplines that she said had an intellectual connection to criminal sentencing, including administrative law, philosophy, psychology and statistics. A fairer critique To be fair, Republicans are correct that many of the broader issues are legitimate matters of public debate. And on some of them, Republicans can make a credible case that progressive Democrats are to the left of public opinion (as Thomas Edsall, a Times Opinion columnist, explains). Most Americans oppose cutting police budgets, for instance. Many believe that allowing all transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports can be unfair to other girls. Many voters — and not just white voters — think that liberals focus too much on racial identity. Most Americans feel proud of the country and its symbols, including those that some progressives consider racist, like Thanksgiving, the Constitution, the flag and George Washington. But in trying to make Jackson a stand-in for these views, Republican senators are distorting reality. They are creating a caricature of a liberal Democrat that bears little resemblance to Jackson herself. “One thing that is striking about this hearing,” Lori Ringhand, a legal scholar, told The Times, “is how little effort we are seeing to engage the nominee on her views about actual legal issues.” ..
So... ingraham thinks Biden should not be allowed his constitutional duty to name a USSC justice because his approvals are down... but she didn't think trump should not be allowed to do the same despite having low(er) approvals?
Not surprising. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/us/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-child-abuse-cases.html Critics of Jackson’s Child Sex Abuse Sentences Backed Judges With Similar Records Republican senators criticized Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for imposing sentences lower than prosecutor recommendations in child sexual abuse cases. Other nominees had done the same thing. WASHINGTON — Several Republican senators repeatedly and misleadingly suggested during this week’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had given uncommonly lenient sentences to felons convicted of child sex abuse crimes. But all of the Republican critics had previously voted to confirm judges who had given out prison terms below prosecutor recommendations, the very bar they accused Judge Jackson of failing to clear. Just 30 percent of offenders who possessed or shared images of child sex abuse received a sentence within the range suggested by nonbinding federal guidelines in the 2019 fiscal year, and 59 percent received a sentence below the guideline range. And in general, it is not uncommon for judges to impose shorter sentences than what prosecutors have recommended. “I listed these seven cases in which you had discretion and you did not follow the prosecutor’s recommendation or the sentencing guidelines,” Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said at Judge Jackson’s hearing on Tuesday. “I’m questioning how you used your discretion in these cases.” Mr. Hawley’s point was echoed by three of his Republican colleagues: Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas. Mr. Cruz said the sentences imposed by Judge Jackson in cases involving images of child sex abuse were 47.2 percent less than the prosecutor’s recommendations on average. “You always were under the recommendation of the prosecutor,” Mr. Graham told the judge on Wednesday. “I think you’re doing it wrong, and every judge who does what you’re doing is making it easier for the children to be exploited.” But Mr. Hawley, Mr. Graham, Mr. Cotton and Mr. Cruz all voted to confirm judges nominated by President Donald J. Trump to appeals courts even though those nominees had given out sentences lighter than prosecutor recommendations in cases involving images of child sex abuse. Mr. Graham had also voted to confirm Judge Jackson to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2021 in spite of the sentencing decisions she had made as a district judge. In 2017, Judge Ralph R. Erickson was confirmed by a 95-to-1 vote to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, with Mr. Cotton, Mr. Cruz and Mr. Graham voting in the affirmative. (Mr. Hawley was not yet a senator.) While serving as a district court judge in North Dakota, Judge Erickson imposed sentences shorter than the prosecutor’s recommendations in nine cases involving child sex abuse imagery from 2009 to 2017, averaging 19 percent lower. In the case with the greatest discrepancy — in which a 68-year-old man pleaded guilty to possessing and transporting such illicit materials — prosecutors asked for 151 months and Judge Erickson imposed a 96-month sentence. Judge Amy J. St. Eve was confirmed by a 91-to-0 vote in 2018 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. While serving as a district court judge in Illinois, Judge St. Eve imposed lighter sentences than prosecutor recommendations in two such cases. In United States v. Conrad, she sentenced a man who transported images of child sexual abuse to 198 months, 45 percent less than the prosecutor’s recommendation of 360 months. All four Republican senators voted to confirm Judge Joseph F. Bianco to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2019. Previously, as a district court judge in New York, Judge Bianco sentenced three defendants to prison terms shorter than what prosecutors had sought. At a 2013 hearing for a 25-year-old defendant who possessed and distributed illicit materials, Judge Bianco stated that the court had “discretion” to impose such sentences and spoke of “mitigating circumstances” — an echo of what Judge Jackson repeatedly told the senators during this week’s hearings. The defendant received a 60-month prison term, while prosecutors had asked for “a sentence above the 60 months.” “The guidelines here are just way disproportionate under the facts of this case, and I don’t view them as particularly helpful in this case,” Judge Bianco said at the time. “I disagree with the government that this case is sort of in the heartland of normal cases. There are a number of mitigating factors in this case that I believe are compelling.” Most recently, Mr. Cotton, Mr. Cruz and Mr. Hawley voted to confirm Judge Andrew L. Brasher to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in 2020. (Mr. Graham was not present for the vote.) As a district court judge in Alabama, Judge Brasher had sentenced a defendant to 84 months in prison, below the prosecutor recommendation of 170 months. In a 2019 hearing before he issued the sentence, Judge Brasher noted that “one of the things that I’m required by law to evaluate and consider with respect to” the defendant “is disparities between offenders who are similarly situated.” That, too, was similar to an explanation that Judge Jackson gave for her sentencing decisions. “Judges all over the country are grappling with how to apply this guideline under these circumstances,” she told Mr. Hawley on Wednesday. “The judge is not just evaluating what the government says in these cases. In every criminal case, a judge has to take into account all sorts of factors.”
