Today is Tuesday, March 22, 2022. Today is the second day of confirmation hearings for the first Black woman nominee to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who displayed poise and forbearance when pressed unintelligently by the Republican senators in the room who grilled her over children’s books, courtesy of disgraced Texas Senator Ted “Ooze,” and his stupid posters showing scenes from a book that he was opposed to, for teaching critical race theory (CRT), supposedly, to young children in grades one through third grade at a private school in which Jackson serves as a board member, Georgetown Day School, to one Josh Hawley who should have been summarily expelled from Congress after participating in the January 6th insurrection, who thundered that the nominee was soft on child pornographers. The insinuations tossed at this most qualified nominee for the high court were low brow and just plain dumb, and Americans should not fall for this clown act on the part of ugly repugnicans to smear the sterling record of a federal district judge. No one bothered to check that Jackson’s sentencing of these offenders did fall within the standards of most federal judges.

Jackson repeatedly defended her record against these repugnican attacks and denounced the child pornography crimes. She talked about her role as a judge and as a mom and how she has reviewed the evidence in such cases where the evidence is “heinous and egregious.”

Another repugnican accuser, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), pelted Jackson with questions about whether she believed that prison sentences should be lengthened or shortened for an array of crimes. This questioning by Cotton and Jackson’s measured response is covered in an online article for RawStory on my smartphone by Brad Reed entitled “Judge Jackson turns the tables on Tom Cotton when he asks if sentences are too lenient: ‘I’m not Congress.'”

Answering in a clear, firm tone, Jackson reminded the dumb senator that such questions about sentencing had nothing to do with her work as a judge. But this firm answer still didn’t mollify the insistent senator who tried to position the federal district judge as soft on criminals. He said, “I say, judge, whether we should strengthen or weaken sentences for child pornographers is a simple question.” After this, Jackson delivered the death blow to the ignorant senator by reversing what he termed as “difficult questions.” She parried, “It’s not that they are difficult questions, it is that they are not questions for me. I’m not the Congress, I’m not making policy around sentencing. My job is to look at a particular case and decide what the penalty should be within the range Congress prescribed.” This is where she turns the tables on the senator’s ridiculous inappropriate line of questioning during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

The whole business on the part of repugnicans focusing on child pornography and sexual predators during Day 2 of Judge Jackson’s nomination hearings just shows how these disgraceful senators were playing to their QAnon-driven base whose followers cast elite liberals and Democrats as a cabal of Satanist child-sexual predators. None of the questioning was directed toward the eminent qualifications of this Supreme Court pick. Winning over new fans in the audience and at home, Jackson said that she has developed a methodology that “allows her to rule impartially.” Jackson wisely told Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the committee’s chairman, “I’m acutely aware that as a judge in our system, I have limited power and I try to stay in my lane,” a phrase that was repeated several times by the formidable candidate for a Supreme Court position.

The antics of South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham were quite abominable. I’m happy to report I missed them and am just reading about it now. This grandstanding boor actually stormed out of the hearing room after airing his grievances over his perceived unfair treatment of his preferred pick for the next justice, J. Michelle Childs. He attacked progressives for opposing the nomination of Childs to the Supreme Court. He showed his obnoxiousness when he asked Jackson, point blank, “What faith are you?” This is when the committee chairman, Dick Durbin, should have gaveled him down into muteness. But he didn’t. He made the wrong equivalence of the last nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, whose faith was made into a big deal during her Supreme Court hearings. What was actually concerning about Barrett’s faith was her membership in a fringe Catholic group called People of Praise that teaches extremely hardline conservative notions such as the husband’s natural-born right to have authority over his wife. Barrett has also written about being antiabortion before being placed into her present role on the Supreme Court and has also written about her belief that a Catholic judge’s religious beliefs should inform that judge’s decisions. Despite this apparent red flag, Barrett was still appointed and she is now poised to rule on cases related to abortion, marriage equality, and LGBTQ+ rights. This is a most troubling sign, I believe.

Then Graham ranted about Guantanamo Bay and how he hopes all of the detainees would die there in jail. He callously thundered, “It won’t bother me one bit if 39 of them die in prison.” This is when he stormed out of the room like the true drama queen he is. What a pathetic show! This showboating on his part had no relevance to the proceedings being conducted in the room at all.

It’s getting late here. I started writing this blog very late tonight because of my being on the phone with my Cherry Hill friend, “Harold.” We might have talked over ninety minutes or so.

Tomorrow is another day of hearings for Ketanji Jackson Brown. I’m afraid the circus clown act will continue without fail.

Stay safe and be well.