Democrats may have assumed they had insulated Jackson from criticism, since they all but dared white Republicans to criticize an nominee who is expected to be the court’s first black female, but some Republicans ignored the veiled accusations of racism and hammered Judge Jackson with pointed questions.
Dems replacing Breyer with unqualified 'woke warrior'Chris Woodward, AFN Democrats in the U.S. Senate believe they have the votes to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court but an attorney who opposes the nomination says the “woman” answer should disqualify her from the nation’s highest court. Jackson, a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to define a woman when pressed by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) “Can I provide a definition? No,” Brown replied “You can’t?” the senator pressed. “Not in this context,” the federal judge, who would be the first black woman seated on the U.S. Supreme Court, replied. “I’m not a biologist.” May Mailman of the Independent Women's Law Center says Jackson’s confirmation to the Supreme Court would replace Stephen Breyer, the retiring, left-leaning justice. In some sense, she says, Jackson's appointment would replace one liberal justice with another and keep the status quo on the nine-member court. But then the U.S. Senate watched a federal judge and likely future justice refuse to define “woman.” “All the Democrats needed to do was to show that this person was a regular, left-leaning jurist and not a crazy one,” Mailman says. “But when you get into things like, I can't define a woman, it starts raising questions of, Wait, is this an activist? Is this a sort of woke warrior?" |
AFN reported last week that senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz blasted Jackson over her record of being soft on child porn convicts in her courtroom, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn turned the hearings upside down when Jackson, a Harvard Law School graduate, refused to define what a “woman” is.
And that didn’t go over well with the Republican-hating, race-obsessed media.
On CNN, former Republican Sophia Nelson complained Jackson was the victim of “race baiting” and “condescension” from GOP senators.
In a New York Times story, reporters interviewed prominent black women, such as an Emory professor, whose feelings of “pride and hope” over Jackson overlapped with “pain and disgust” at Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Times said.
A second Times story accused Sen. Ted Cruz and his colleagues of exploiting “barely coded appeals to racism” when they questioned Jackson at the hearing.
Curtis Houck of the Media Research Center tells AFN one of the most jaw-dropping media moments came from The Washington Post: An editorial suggested that Brown’s cross-examination by senators was worse than Brett Kavanaugh's experience in 2018. Yes, the current Supreme Court justice who was accused by "Believe All Women" Democrats of participating in a rape gang during high school.
“It's a farce. It's complete lunacy,” Houck says of The Washington Post editorial.
Case of 'amnesia' or awful people
On the Senate committee, Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy complained to reporters last week that questioning from Sen. Lindsey Graham was “beyond the pale” of what he has witnessed at past confirmation hearings.
“As the Dean of the Senate," the Democrat told NBC News, "I'm just distressed to see this kind of a complete breakdown of what's normally the way the Senate's handled."
Back in 2018, however, Sen. Leahy grilled Kavanaugh about an entry in his high school yearbook that joked about beer-drinking and sexual activities.
“Does this yearbook reflect what you are?” Leahy, pointing at the 1983 entry, demanded to know.
Kavanaugh said he and his friends went to weekend parties but the yearbook entries were exaggerated by students and the yearbook staff as part of their fun.
“If we want to sit here and talk about whether a Supreme Court nomination should be based on a high school year book page,” Kavanaugh told the senator, “I think that’s taking us to a new level of absurdity.”
Houck says the crazed defense of Jackson, and the vilification of Republicans senators, makes it sound as if Democrats and the media have a case of amnesia.
“But for many, I think, they're just relying on the supposed stupidity of the rest of us,” he says, “assuming that we won't remember how they behave and fought.”
Some people haven’t forgotten, however.
“Let me tell my Democratic friends: If this is the new norm, you better watch out for your nominees,” Graham warned four years ago.
