You’ll get a fair trial followed by a first class hanging.
– Judge Roy Bean (apocryphal)
Not even Judge Roy Bean’s answer from Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would have satisfied Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. They would have accused the accomplished Black jurist of being soft on crime nevertheless. That was, after all, their prearranged line of attack. That and tickling the lizard brains of their pedophilia-fixated QAnon base.
Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, in particular, was not taking an answer for an answer when he asked Jackson to explain her sentencing in a child porn case Republicans had exhumed from her over 500 judicial opinions. He asked her the same questions again and again. It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his Fox News sound bite and fundraising appeals on depend upon his not understanding it.
Jackson displays empathy. No wonder Republicans have trouble comprehending her.
“Traditionally considered an admirable attribute, the ability to empathize with another’s plight has become a touchstone for GOP opposition to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson,” Lisa Mascaro writes for the Associated Press:
Jackson, Republicans have argued, shows compassion for criminal defendants she represented as a lawyer, and they have questioned whether that compassion extends to victims. They say she sentences criminals — in particular, child pornography defendants — too leniently as a judge, despite fact checks of her record that show she’s largely in line with protocol in most cases. They worry Jackson’s empathy will cloud her judgment on the high court.
“It seems as though you’re a very kind person, and that there’s at least a level of empathy that enters into your treatment of a defendant that some could view as maybe beyond what some of us would be comfortable with,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.
No, really!?
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said he was looking for a justice “who will make decisions based on the law, not based on personal experiences or preferences, not on empathy.”
I kept hoping a Democrat would ask Jackson whether politicians who gave support to Jan. 6 insurrectionists are disqualified from holding office under the 14th Amendment, Section 3. Not that Jackson would answer a question that might (one hopes) come before the court. But it would have been fun for a Democrat to ask with Hawley, Cruz, Cotton, et al. sitting across the room. Alas.
“Chairman Dick Durbin’s inability to control some of the most shocking bullying and abuse from Cruz, Graham, Tom Cotton, and Hawley left observers speechless,” complained Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick. She declared herself not just disappointed but “mystified” by Democrats’ inability or unwillingness to push back against the abuse:
Take my word for this one thing: If you have been subject to abuse, bullying, and intimidation, what you really don’t need to hear from people in power is that they think you are “brave,” or that you’re modeling perseverance and grace. What you really want is for someone to stand beside you and take a punch—or throw one. Yet beyond a handful of such moments, and notably Booker’s final speech, virtually everything Democrats did felt insufficient to the moment. More than that it felt inexplicable.
Not to those in the understanding voters business.
“I subject myself to weekly focus groups — have for a decade — and field constant surveys,” tweeted Anat Shenker-Osorio. “Voters’ chief beef with Dems? That they are slow and weak, not getting stuff done and passing good bills. Excessive ‘wokeness’ barely makes the board.”
I lost faith in Durbin in 2005.
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