A very good example of the double standard inherent in our lives is the very fresh in our minds hearing of soon to be new Justice Kentaji Brown-Jackson. Certainly, she is qualified. She seemed to know constitutional law (I expect they all bone up - I cannot say Sotomayor knew constitutional law well during her hearing). She has led an interesting and hard-working life as a student, lawyer and judge. I am not sure when having a great family became a qualification for a Justice, but the Democrats and even a few Republicans acted like it was with her. It is normal to introduce a family, some gratuitous comments to be made, but this was over the top hero-worship.
The double standard racing through our society came with dramatic swiftness in the opening statements by the Senators. More than a few of the Republicans pointedly told the judge about the outrages of the Kavanaugh hearing (who - I speculate - no doubt heard and approved when it happened), but promised her that they would not behave like that. Well, bully for those fair-minded Republicans, not that it does them any good.
They kept their word. In fact, even Cruz, Hawley and Blackburn, the three toughest questioners of Brown-Jackson, were unfailingly polite too her. It certainly did not do them any good, as Democrats and even a few Republican Senators found even intellectual challenges of her outrageous. I'm not surprised at the Democrats as they have shown themselves utterly shamelessly in the past few years and seek to win even at the demise of all values. Hence, AOC's demand that Justice Thomas resign this week because his wife turns out to have (gasp) opinions.
The Democrats do not have such scruples and have had the better of the battle in terms of harassing the nominees, over time. The Democrats reflexively attackeded every important Trump nominee, judicial or otherwise. The Republicans have not done the same, objecting in mass to a few of the worst, but, as with Obama, letting him have his cabinet. If you don't believe me, count yourself - the vote for every nominee is online for all three of them. The Democrats are driven to "take" the Supreme Court. Why aren't the Republicans?
Of course, it did not start with Kavanaugh, though he was the most egregious example, one that still makes me see read and look dimly on the future of our country. The most famous previous example is probably Bork, from which the term "borking" derives. Personally, I would not have voted for Bork either, but, that doesn't mean I approve of the attacks on him from the left. It wasn't just because he was a critic of the court or that he had fired the special prosecutor against Nixon, Archibald Cox (as Bork explained, his two superiors quit rather than do it, but, since someone had to stay and run the DOJ, asked that he stay and do it). Let me give you an example of the attacks on Bork, this from Ted Kennedy, a Sen. whose own personal behavior could have started the MeToo movement way before Weinberg:
"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is--and is often the only--protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy. . . The damage that President Reagan will do through this nomination, if it is not rejected by the Senate, could live on far beyond the end of his presidential term. President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of IranGate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice."
Robert Bork's America | C-SPAN.org. Kennedy's speech starts at 51:42, the quoted portion at 27:36.
To say Kennedy's attack was merely dramatic or oration is not to understand demagoguery. To hear it from the mouth of Kennedy and not to retch from the hypocrisy, is only a partisan reaction. I admit that I was barely coming out of my own political coma induced by being raised liberal at the time and did not let myself find it as unfair and offensive as I knew in my heart it was. I was stil partisan. It was during a fairly long period of time when I was coming to grips with the fact that a lot of things I believed, was raised believing, were wrong.
Since Bork, the major attacks have come from the left against Republican nominees. The Republicans did filibuster Abe Fortas for Chief Justice (he was already an associate, before that LBJ's personal attorney and friend), but the issues concerning him were real conflict of interests. E.g., he received, for the time, extraordinary payment for speeches by a group of friends and businessmen it was feared might create a conflict. In fact, today Justices are limited in their earnings and cannot earn money from speeches. Later he resigned his associate position because of a scandal.
The next major attack on a Republican Supreme Court candidate by the Democrats came in 1992 when Justice Clarence Thomas was nominated. His hearing seemed to be going fine. His opening statement, which I have written about before about 5 years ago (David's blog: What's a pluffer? (deisenberg.blogspot.com)), was touching. But, it would turn quite ugly. In light of Kavanaugh, it seems almost quaint now, laughable. But it wasn't at the time. Accused by a former employee, Anita Hill, who even remained friends with Thomas after she was no longer worked for him, the details seem incredibly mundane (no unwanted touching, insults, threats, anything like that - there was a joke about a porno star and another about a pubic hair, and the like; some women thought he might want to date them - When did that become harassment?).
Miguel Estrada was nominated in 2001. Twenty-eight months later, he withdrew his nomination, having been successfully filibustered by the Democrats. Their reasoning - and I will give them the benefit of the doubt it wasn't because they were prejudiced against Hispanics - they were fearful he'd eventually be nominated to the Supreme Court and because he was Hispanic, too difficult to defeat then. Their excuse was he didn't have any judicial experience. But, he had clerked for a Court of Appeals and a Supreme Court Justice, and had been an Assistant Solicitor General and Assistant U.S. Attorney General. Besides, you know how Supreme Court justices out of 115 so far have not been judges before? 42 of them, or 36% - that is, for those of you who do not do decimals, more than 1 in 3. Even if the Democrats had wanted to argue that no one had been without judicial experience since 1972 - the proof of the hypocrisy and double standard came when the Democrats heartily praised and voted for Elena Kagan, who also had no judicial experience. It was really about his having been conservative.
In Brown-Jackson's hearing the saga of Janice Rogers Brown ("JRB"), another black judge, this one from California, was brought up. Democrats didn't care at all that she was black when George W. Bush nominated her in 2003. Somehow confirming a black woman wasn't seen by Ds as historical then, as they now say about Brown-Jackson. Joe Biden, before he became politically beholden to blacks in order to win the 2020 nomination, had said when JRB was being considered for the Supreme Court that she would probably be filibustered. Leaving out the procedural complication, her nomination languished for nearly two years, twice sent by the Judiciary Committee to get a vote, before she finally got on, rescued by the "Gang of 14," 7 Democrats and 7 Republicans who wanted to stop the craziness. Of course, they couldn't stop anything.
I will leave aside Harriet Miers, who Supreme Court nomination was torpedoed by conservatives as well. Actually, she has quite an impressive career, if you want to bother to take a look. In my opinion, her problem wasn't being unqualified. You could make that argument about more than one Supreme Court Justice when they took the bench, even celebrated ones like Chief Justice Warren and Hugo Black. And it is true that she had never been a judge, but, as shown above, neither had a good many of them, including very celebrated ones. I felt at the time of Miers nomination, and haven't changed my mind, is that it was very unclear how she felt about abortion, and that is often the subtext for every Supreme Court nomination since Roe v. Wade (1973). It made both sides uncomfortable.
Samuel Alito was next considered after Miers withdrew. This was only 2006, long before the craziness of the Democrat attacks on Trump. Yet the same extreme partisanship was already showing. Alito, a highly qualified candidate, was only sent out of the judiciary committee with a party-line vote. It was the first time since 1916. Alito was confirmed 58-42, only 4 Democrats voting for him, and only one Republican against (Lincoln Chafee, who, was in all but name a Democrat; he later switched and actually became a D). The attacks on Alito, trying to make him out as a bigot, were so severe that when Senator Graham pointed out that the Democrats were trying to make him look like a bigot and apologized to him, Alito's wife finally broke down in tears.
Why is it that Sam Alito's wife was reduced to tears during the hearing, Kavanaugh's family got death threats and Kenaji Brown-Jackson gets told how wonderful her mommy, daddy and big brother are. They do seem impressive (it's not like they have been vetted, of course, but assume they are). But so were the families of other Supreme Court Justices and no Justice was infantilized like this before. Why? We know why. The narrative. Nothing else matters. It's all about identity and the end of merit, all about power politics. Black support won South Carolina for Biden in the primaries, well, then a black women must be VP, even if she appears to be completely incompetent (though, if the president can be, why not the VP?) And a black women must be on the Supreme Court. At least, I would say, this one is technically qualified.
The Republicans did not verbally assault KBJ the way the Democrats did Bork, Thomas, Alito and now Kavanaugh. They are proud of that, as you can tell from their opening statement. But, to hear Republican Senators Ben Sasse and Tom Tillis join the chorus of those criticizing the Republicans who just asked her respectful questions and to explain herself as "jackassery"* or the like is just dumb. Aren't they concerned that a grade school kid is taught the difference between men and women and that she can't? Aren't they concerned that she sits on a private school board where the kids are taught some version of CRT and that she says she is not even aware of it - claims she believed that it was only taught in law school? Aren't they concerned when Ted Cruz shows how she always lightly sentenced those convicted of possessing and down-loading child porn (and don't say all federal judges do that, because they all don't and she, apparently, always did)?
*It was my impression and it seems the general impression based on commentary I've read since the hearing that Sen. Sasse was talking about Cruz when he made that comment. He could have been talking about the Democrats or everyone who has misbehaved, but he certainly hasn't come forward to say he was misunderstood. I am suddenly reminded that during Jeff Sessions confirmation hearing for Attorney General, Sasse dumped a Dr. Pepper on Cruz. Accidental, he said. Or was it?
Want to see Democrats get excited or angry about a nominee who goes easy on distributers and collectors of child porn? Just let a Republican nominee have the same record. For crying out loud, when Democrats couldn't find anything in the record of Justice Gorsuch during his nomination hearing, they feigned outrage about his interpretation of one statute in a personal injury case. A personal injury case!!! How does that even begin to compare? But, somehow, all the Democrats thought it didn't matter when it is just necessary to have a black female on the court.
The fawning over Brown-Jackson set new heights. I have watched the hearings of every single nominated Supreme Court Justice since they began televising them on C-Span and have never seen the likes of this. Why is Sam Alito's wife reduced to tears and Kenaji Brown-Jackson gets told how wonderful her mommy and daddy and big brother's just keen too. They are interesting. We don't know of any bad sides of course, but what we heard was impressive, even inspiring. But so were the families of other Supreme Court Justices and no one was infantilized like this before. Why? We know why. The narrative. Nothing else matters. It's all about identity and the end of merit, all about power politics.
Black support won South Carolina for Biden in the primaries, well, then a black women must be VP, even if she appears to be completely incompetent (though, if the president can be, why not the VP?) And a black women must be on the Supreme Court. At least, I would say, this one is qualified. I don't want anyone who sits on the board of a school that promotes teaching children "social justice" (meaning, of course, no actual justice) on the Court, but qualified, yes. Certainly both sides are nicer to judges on their own side, but the obsequious glorification by Corey Booker and others did over this judge was sickeningly sweet. We can only be happy that in his sanctimonious obsequiousness, he came out with this beaut:
“I cannot tell you how happy I am. Today, we should rejoice because President Biden nominated someone that we’ve heard to be the 116th associate judge of the supreme court who is extraordinarily talented and who also happens to be a black woman — something we’ve never seen before.”
I know what he meant, but it is funny the way he put it and unintentionally insulting if you read it a different way. And, no, whatever Brown-Jackson may be, Biden could care if she was extraordinarily talented. He said what his criteria was - Black and female (although, ironically, how could he know for sure). That's part of the problem. It's the same thing as the AMA and ABA saying that merit no longer is the goal, but the left's version of "equity" (meaning equal outcomes - which is about as Marxist as you can get). It is the same as the NFL demanding the teams put a minority or a woman on their coaching staff, regardless of qualifications. It's really the same thing as Seattle telling its minority school kids they don't have to learn math and English to graduate. Only identity matters, the country, the minorities themselves, be damned, if necessary.
At the end of the day, Republicans should not vote for Democrat nominees, period, but in particular, for the Supreme Court.
This is why. Because the Democrats demonstrated during the Trump years (and before) that they will take no prisoners, consider no values or traditions, or qualities of any nominee. They will use any excuse that gets the media excited to destroy their adversaries. Though the Kavanaugh hearing alone, which any number of people still describe to me as the most vile thing they have ever seen in politics, is enough to know this, they should also consider the non-stop virulent attacks on Trump - the Russia hoax, the dark state in the FBI and other agencies, the two phony impeachments (one after he was no longer in office) which are a stain on our government and make me wonder if we are forever lost, and even now the January 6th commission and prosecutions, which seek to use the one right wing temper tantrum as a bludgeon against Trump and is nothing more than a kangaroo committee of which Pelosi refused to allow the most gifted Republican arguers, but only Trump haters, if they were Republicans.
It's not that I want that the Republicans should become more like the Democrats. They shouldn't pretend that things that aren't true are true, try to go outside or ridiculously bend the rules to bury opponents (and I call them out on it when they do), etc., but they should call it out relentlessly and remind them that if this is the D's policy, they will do everything in their power to thwart them, to have the American people punish them.
Believe me, I used to think treating Garland as they did was perfectly legal but a mistake. Now seeing Garland, who tries to turn parents of school kids into terrorists while keeping a blind eye far away from Antifa, is goose-stepping his way through his job, I couldn't be happier he was kept off the bench. When I see the tactics the Ds took against Kavanaugh - having screaming protesters in the room while they relentlessly interrupted the chairman in concert, and sought to turn an only lightly right leaning judge (as was said and he has proved since the hearing), or the fascist majority leader threatening justices in front of the courthouse, I have no doubt that that their nomination must be attacked on every rational front and repeatedly. The Rs should block them at every turn. But, they should say what they are doing and why, so the American people know:
"Judge, you are qualified. But, the Democrats don't let Republican nominees on the bench if they can help it and we have to do the same. We would ignore it if you were pro-life or didn't seem to have social justice sympathies, but, that is not the case. Blame them."
Sad, all so sad. As I have said before, I do realize that anyone reading this would see me as a conservative or Republican. I am still that sweet little moderate hoping Ds come to their senses and realize the progressive path of destruction is not the true one and many of the real insurrectionists were the ones hiding and fleeing the building on January 6th. Wake up, Dr. Jones. Wake up! (1) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 4K - Wake up Dr. Jones. No he's mine - Harrison Ford - Bing video.
Good luck to me. My wishes are rarely fulfilled politically.
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