Ted Cruz Stole Josh Hawley's Thunder So Not Sure Why We're Still Liveblogging KBJ HEARINGS DAY TWO!
But yet we are!
You been keepin' up with our liveblog of day two of Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearings? Well Dick Durbin started the proceedings by just tearing Josh Hawley's child porn smears apart piece by piece and letting Jackson respond.
Then Ted Cruz, because he has literally no shame, WENT AHEAD AND DID JOSH HAWLEY'S SEGMENT. He had charts and everything! He was doing child porn math and telling absolute lies about KBJ's record and you guys what is Josh Hawley going to even say? How is he going to be more disgusting than Ted Cruz?
We have a feeling this is not the first day he's taken that challenge.
Anyway, Hawley will happen soon, so we decided to start a new thread.
4: 15:OK, we are back! It is Ben Sasse's turn, and he just referred to how KBJ doesn't have a judicial philosophy "yet." As if she just hasn't had time to think it through. Also he referred to confirmation hearings as being like a "proctology exam."
4: 16:SASSE: Which justice are you exactly like?
KBJ: I have written over 570 opinions. I am exactly like myself.
4: 17:This is so fucking silly. Ascribing to "originalism" is what's ridiculous. Instead of just trying to be a good judge, originalists have to sit there and go "OK, now how did the white men who founded America feel about Planned Parenthood? Oh wait, they didn't even have Planned Parenthoods back then? Then Planned Parenthood does not exist HASHTAG ORIGINALIST!"
4: 21:SASSE: I gave you an assignment to study every word Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor ever wrote and compare and contrast them. It was due today. Did you do that assignment?
KBJ: I absolutely did not.
4: 23:SASSE: What was it like backstage when Breyer and Scalia would go on tour together? Was it like so awesome?
KBJ: ...
Ben Sasse is so weird. He's so convinced he is just the most thoughtful guy. Who told him that as a child?
4: 27:This is all such theater. No, a Supreme Court nominee of a Democratic president who's not a bigot isn't going to be some idiot originalist. Nobody thinks they are. Nobody needs to spend valuable minutes of their life exploring the question.
4: 33:SASSE: Now I am going to try to cleverly get you to say what parts of the Constitution you think are crap.
KBJ: Nope.
4: 38:Sasse is referencing all the bigotry John Cornyn spit at the judge when he was attacking gay people's marriage rights earlier. Here's some of that exchange if you missed it.
Sen. John Cornyn claimed he wasn’t 'arguing the merits or lack of merits of same-sex marriage' while questioning Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson over her views of the Supreme Court’s role in policymaking…but it sounds like he is. Watch the exchange pic.twitter.com/oTPJjKcl7k
— NowThis (@NowThis) 1647966502
Anyway, Ben Sasse ends by saying he just feels bad that KBJ won't say she has a judicial philosophy, but he seems real glad Scalia and Robert Bork infected America with their originalist bullshit because it gave everybody something to talk about today.
Now we have another adult, Richard Blumenthal, and then Josh Hawley is going to do something really gross on your TV screen after that.
4: 52:Blumenthal like "yeah now let's talk about the shadow docket, where conservative justices make rulings they're embarrassed to actually write out in public in the dead of night without even hearing arguments." No question, he was just saying.
5: 03:They are having this whole discussion about how to judge based on laws written for ancient technology from the 1980s and 1990s, when the cases in front of you are about the literal Jetsons future we live in now. It's interesting. Does not lend itself to dick jokes. Democrats are just having really nice intellectual discussions with the nominee.
Josh Hawley is off in the wings, getting ready to do such gross things on camera.
5: 08:Blumenthal just brought up child porn, we guess to go ahead and take more wind out of Hawley's sails. Just gonna say some more correct facts about her record.
5: 12:Blumenthal making a moving point about the split-screen nature of today's hearings, happening as they are while Ukrainians are dying for their democracy while Russia is murdering them, and saying watching the two next to each other is just kinda wow.
OH HERE'S HAWLEY. HE SAYS HE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT CHILD PORN.
5: 17:HAWLEY: Blah blah blah words. Is my understanding of this thing that's integral to my smear campaign correct?
KBJ: Not remotely.
HAWLEY: I rest my case!
5: 20:Hawley literally just reading descriptions of kiddie porn videos now.
5: 23:HAWLEY: Here is a cherrypicked quote of something you wrote where you said some child porn wasn't "heinous." IF IT WASN'T HEINOUS WHAT WAS IT?
KBJ: Of course it's heinous. But this is yet again one of those times where I have to explain to you what a judge is, so I'll do that again now.
5: 30:Hawley reads something that's intended to sound AWFUL, to make it sound like Jackson is just fine with it when 18-year-olds watch child porn with eight-year-olds in it. She says she doesn't have the case in front of her, but says she does remember there are some other details in there that Hawley left out.
But really, we don't have the case in front of us either, and this is so weird and prurient and gross. When every other person who HAS looked at the cases in question says Hawley is full of shit, then WTF is this even about?
Josh Hawley says let's keep talking about this, because he wants to talk about child porn all day we guess.
5: 35:Now Hawley is accusing Jackson of saying that sex offenders are the real victims.
The more Hawley selectively reads from this case, the more we are pretty sure it is unique and nuanced and that taken in its entirety, Hawley would come out looking like the fool he is. She says she remembers it was "unusual."
We hope Dick Durbin's staff is pulling all the accurate information out in order to present the American people with correct info, as opposed to Hawley's lies.
5: 38:HAWLEY: "I'm questioning your discretion and judgment."
Because that's how much of a partisan hack he is.
5: 42:KBJ: Senator, the article you're mischaracterizing from when I was in law school is in the record and people can read it for themselves. So is the child porn case you're curiously obsessed with.
5: 49:MAZIE HIRONO: Judge Jackson, my colleague from Missouri is a moron, so I feel the need to clear some things up.
5: 52:Hirono talking about other judges who ruled similarly on child porn cases and who were all supported by Republicans. She asks if Jackson thinks those Republicans are soft on child porn because they voted for those judges. Jackson says she couldn't possibly opine on that.
5: 54:Hahahaha Hirono has 30 minutes worth of people who sentenced child porn cases under the federal guidelines and were voted for by Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. She's just gonna keep reading them.
5: 56:And now Hirono is making fun of originalism and textualism and saying those labels are crap.
6: 18:Hirono going over the whole thing about Jackson repping Gitmo detainees and explaining again for good measure how that's what lawyers do for a living, and quoting her Republican colleagues (Lindsey Graham) who talked about how they defended people accused of awful things.
And now there's gonna be a break. But first Ted Cruz wants to say CHILD PORN CHILD PORN CHILD PORN a whole bunch, just like how Josh Hawley likes to say CHILD PORN CHILD PORN CHILD PORN.
We are just saying, it's weird how they say that a lot.
But anyway, there's going to be a break, and our updates might be slower because this has been going for 1,000 years.
Tom Cotton is coming up, though, so we bet he'll do something real gross, just like Hawley and Cruz did.
6: 48:It's time for Tom Cotton BUT FIRST TED CRUZ HAS SOME THINGS TO WHINE ABOUT, HE NEEDS TO WHINE ABOUT WHETHER KETANJI BROWN JACKSON IS GOING TO TELL EVERY BABY THAT IT IS A RACIST.
No wait, he is whining about something else. Oh well fuck it, not worth typing, Ted Cruz's wants and needs are important to no one.
6: 51:John Kennedy is also very upset that maybe the Democrats got some info about child porns that Republicans didn't get until several hours later but Cory Booker said his office just got the information 10 minutes ago so he says he agrees with Ted Cruz he is very mad.
The point is that Republicans are mad that they didn't get all the stuff about the child porns.
Also Mike Lee is now mad that Dick Durbin is calling Josh Hawley's juvenile shitmouthed lie attack on Jackson an "attack."
6: 56:So that shit was weird.
Now Tom Cotton wants to talk about crime, we think he just asked if murder is bad? No wait, he asked if there should be more cops or fewer cops. You know, because of how the Supreme Court sets the numbers of cops every year.
Also Cotton wants to know if people are more or likely to commit crimes if they think they're going to be "caught, convicted and sentenced." In other words, Cotton's questions are meaningless and he is just prissing around as usual.
7: 00:COTTON: Whyyyyyyyyyyy cain't yew tell meeeeeee if 17 years is enough time to go to jail for murddddderrrrrrr? WHYYYYYYYY ?
7: 01:COTTON: Should we catch MORE murderers? Or not as many?
This is literally his question.
7: 03:You guys, get excited, because we are pretty sure Tom Cotton is pretty sure he is working up to his GOTCHA!
Tom Cotton was raised to believe he was a very smart and clever boy, we bet.
We have GOT to stop doing that to white conservative men. They end up with all these ideas.
Anyway, now Tom Cotton needs to talk about child porn.
COTTON: Should we WEAKEN sentences for child porn?
Jackson says that's not a simple question, and it's also a question for CONGRESS, as she's explained many times today.
7: 10:How many times has Jackson had to explain this? Policy questions are not for her. Questions about if babies are racist are not for her. Questions from limpass country dumplings like Tom Cotton are not for her.
7: 17:You guys, we love the way Tom Cotton looks up at Jackson with that look on his face every time he thinks he's made a point.
We have not been paying attention to the rest of his yapping, it's all so dishonest, and as a fellow Arkansan, when Cotton gets his tailfeathers up in the air all mad like that, we cannot stop laughing. We've seen that guy way too many times, just havin' a fit.
Usually they are asking to see the manager at Banana Republic in the mall or something.
7: 26:By the way, Tom Cotton's tantrum about the First Step Act is a thing he's been doing to, it would seem, make him look tougher than Donald Trump for the 2024 primary.
7: 28:Hahahahahaha, we think Cory Booker just said he learned how not to hate Ted Cruz from Brené Brown. If anybody could teach such grace, it'd be she.
7: 46:We have just been listening, but Cory Booker has been mostly just having really good conversations about Jackson's mom and dad and what she learned from them and the struggles they went through and just all kinds of stuff. It's refreshing after all the filth the Republicans covered the room with, with their obsession with child porn cases.
7: 56:Well, and Cory Booker just ended his questioning by telling Jackson that her ancestors are standing around her, just after she cleaned Tom Cotton's loser clock.
Marsha Blackburn still has to go tonight, but any normal person doesn't need to watch that tonight if they don't want to. We'll know how she embarrassed herself and the state of Tennessee tomorrow.
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