Ketanji Brown Jackson Hearings, Day Three: It's Afternoon, Time For Dumbest GOP Senators!
Almost there. We can see the end of the tunnel. We think.
New afternoon, new thread!
(It gets hard to type in our platform when there are a lot of words in a liveblog.)
Dick Durbin said at the rate they're going they should be done in time for never.
Here we go!
2: 52:Oh crap it is back, we did not realize!
Ted Cruz is saying something to his Harvard classmate Ketanji Brown Jackson about whether he is allowed to sue because his white man feelings are hurt, I think? Something about how if a white man sees something that makes them whimper they're not allowed to sue "just because"?
We dunno.
2: 54:Oh apparently they are all mad because last night KBJ wouldn't give in to Marsha Blackburn's bullshit about how nobody on the left even knows what a woman is. Now Ted Cruz is saying that according to the leftists, he can declare he's a woman right now.
2: 56:Ted Cruz wants to know if, since he OBVIOUSLY is allowed to change genders once per hour, he can also decide to be Asian.
KBJ ignores him.
But this was just a prelude to Ted Cruz's main feast, which is CHILD PORN CHAT!
2: 59:CRUZ: I am going to ask you about every child porn case in detail, because that's how I'd like to spend this afternoon.
KBJ: I've said what I'm going to say about this.
CRUZ: That's OK, I'll talk a lot about child porn.
3: 03:CRUZ: Here's another thing about child porn!
KBJ: Every time I sentenced somebody I took a number of factors into consideration.
CRUZ: I only want to talk about the child porn ones. White male Republican senators really only want to talk about child porn.
KBJ: ...
She is getting visibly sick of this. "I've said what I'm going to say about these cases. No one case can stand in for a judge's entire record."
3: 06:Ted Cruz doesn't like her answer, after Dick Durbin makes him shut his insolent mouth so she can answer. Now he's yapping again.
3: 10:IF TED CRUZ WANTS TO TALK ABOUT CHILD PORN SO MUCH ...
3: 13:Ted Cruz is still screaming even though his time is expired, after Dick Durbin helpfully told Jackson she doesn't have to answer these badgering questions since Ted Cruz doesn't want real answers and is just filibustering and yelling anyway. His time is expired.
In case anybody doesn't know, that pic above is well known convicted child porn guy Josh Duggar with Ted Cruz.
Ketanji Brown Jackson sentences guys like that. Ted Cruz takes pictures with them, we guess.
Now it is time for Chris Coons, and it has been time for Chris Coons for about one-thousand worthless screaming Ted Cruz words.
3: 18:Hey, in case Tom Cotton decides he wants to talk a whole bunch more about child porn:
3: 23:Chris Coons giving Republicans far more credit than they deserve and suggesting that they are asking KBJ to wade into a "policy dispute" about sentencing guidelines, when the truth is that they're just never going to forgive Democrats for wanting to see a credibly accused sexual predator held accountable, so they searched for the grossest thing they could find to smear KBJ with, and made up a narrative about it.
3: 35:Wow, a very inspiring speech from Chris Coons.
Now it's Ben Sasse's turn, and he can pretend to be intellectual for a little bit, because nobody ever told him he wasn't that interesting.
3: 38:Oh good lord, Ben Sasse wants to talk about cancel culture on college campuses. So this should be productive.
3: 41:KBJ agrees that it's important to have a diversity of viewpoints in education, but isn't playing the "let's whine about cancel culture" game Ben Sasse wants to play.
SASSE: You don't want to cancel people, though, right? Right? RIGHT?
KBJ: No really, there are things related to this working their ways through the courts.
Ben Sasse just wants Jackson to condemn cancel culture because she's going to be a hero and heroes have to condemn cancel culture.
3: 43:Remember where we said Ben Sasse isn't near as interesting as people in his life apparently have told him during formative years? Yeah.
3: 46:SASSE: Is the Supreme Court legitimate?
KBJ: Yes.
Of course, she can't really say the conservative majority is nothing but partisan hacks. Best to let everyone else say that.
3: 49:Ben Sasse just said he's not a lawyer. This morning Thom Tillis was all "I ain't no country lawyer but I seen a couple episodes of Law & Order PEW PEW PEW!" (paraphrase)
These yokels.
3: 53:Ben Sasse is just so mad Jackson doesn't subscribe to a paint-by-number "judicial philosophy" that's easy for him to understand.
Anyway, Sasse's pseudo-intellectual wankery puts us to sleep.
Richard Blumenthal says he knows KBJ's birthday and it is September 14. She's told the story of how she shares a birthday with Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman appointed to the federal bench.
We just looked up on the internet and apparently that is also Ron DeSantis's birthday. So that's gross.
4: 03:Blumenthal just saying if we had Jackson's careful and methodical "judicial philosophy" on the Court before, maybe they wouldn't have decimated the Voting Rights Act like a bunch of racists we mean originalists. (That last part may be our own editorializing.)
4: 13:Blumenthal finishes his nice thing, but don't worry, it's time for Josh Hawley, who is we guess the chair of the Child Porn Caucus now.
Jackson gives the same answer she was giving to Cruz when he wouldn't stop screaming earlier. You can't judge a judge's body of work by one case or one sentence, you have to look all factors. Wonkette would add that you have to do that instead of cherrypicking information because you're a whinyass white man who's mad there's one justice on the Court right now who will always have an asterisk next to his name because of the myriad sexual assault accusations against him.
Hawley's new way of asking questions is to ask if she regrets specific child porn sentences she gave. She says she regrets that her entire career is being reduced to whatever dingleberries Josh Hawley is pulling out of his a-hole. (Paraphrase!)
4: 22:Jackson says Hawley is misrepresenting her policy disagreement with how sentencing guidelines work. He says nope, because he's busy lying about her, and when he's doing that, he gets to say whatever he wants to say.
4: 26:This is all so gross. Jackson agrees, and she's just not playing anymore.
4: 30: Period. End of statement.
Don’t get confused: @HawleyMO, @tedcruz, @LindseyGrahamSC and the rest of the Child Porn Caucus are doing this because decent Americans refused to shut up and smile while they put a credibly accused white male sexual predator on SCOTUS. That’s it.
— Evan Hurst (@Evan Hurst) 1648067366
4: 31:Haha, she said "That's my answer. I've answered it many times. Do you have any more questions for me?"
4: 34:He did not have any more questions for her. She is so much smarter than all these Republican men, it's ridiculous.
What Jackson explained so many times, which is really quite simple, is that when many of these guidelines were written, it was back before super-fast inernet, which meant that the nature of the act of disseminating multiple child porn images was much different from, say, downloading a big batch of awfulness. She's saying that due to the internet, everybody is sharing much more, as opposed to having to use the US mail, which means that grading offenses by number of images doesn't make as much sense as it used to.
This is what Hawley and these other men are pretending not to understand and using to paint KBJ as somebody who's soft on child porn.
Anyway, Ted Cruz is bitching about something again, because he doesn't know when to fuck off. And then finally Mazie Hirono all the fucks to shut up and starts her questioning saying she wants to bring som "aloha" to the room.
4: 43:Hirono is having fun, asking questions about how public school affected Jackson's perspective, and about how she's nurturing her creative side. Jackson says her mom is excellent at crocheting, and she's gotten pretty good at it too.
Also Hirono noted that she and Jackson match today.
4: 47:Apparently there is some whining letter from the Republicans now that they might not have access to all the child porn case info they desperately need in order to reassure themselves that Ketanji Brown Jackson doesn't love child porners. So Dick Durbin is having to go through all this rigamarole, starting with the day Josh Hawley debuted the smear he made up last week, going through the timeline of who had what information when.
Durbin notes that they don't have transcripts of these cases, because they never imagined Josh Hawley would invent this smear out of his butt.
4: 53:Dick Durbin is telling the Republicans they need to think long and hard about whether they want to risk getting information on these cases that could endanger the lives of innocent victims, especially when it's not about to change any of their votes.
But they don't care about that. Show us the evidence Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz actually cares about any of the victims in these cases.
Refer to our tweet above. They want to go so hard on this against Jackson in an effort to put an asterisk next to her name, just like Kavanaugh's has, and just like Donald Trump's other nominees have, because of the circumstances and timings of their nominations and from whence they came.
4: 58:Y'all aren't gonna believe this but Tom Cotton wants to talk about child porn.
4: 59:Cotton thinks he's got a gotcha, asking if KBJ has ever sentenced a sex offender over the guidelines. She's like um, I've sentenced lots of people really big large huge, in all kinds of cases, Jesus Christ.
5: 05:Hey you guys has Tom Cotton finished jacking off? Haha of course not.
Now he wants to do bad-faith attacks about Jackson's representation as a federal defender of Gitmo detainees. Tom Cotton is going to pretend to be so stupid he doesn't understand how federal defenders work.
5: 06:Jesus he looks like shit.
Buy some fucking eye cream, Tom.
5: 09:Jackson has answered Tom Cotton's question so many times these hearings we can answer it before she does!
COTTON: Did you ever rep anybody from Gitmo when you were NOT a federal defender?
JACKSON: There was one who ended up repped by the firm I ended up working at and they asked if I would continue as counsel.
COTTON: There was another one!
JACKSON: No let me explain to you how "lawyer" works, you dumb bastard.
(Paraphrase!)
And Cotton is trying to insinuate some conspiracy, like he's skeptical that it was just a "coincidence" that this one detainee ended up repped by that firm.
5: 15:COTTON: Oh so you did pro bono work for Gitmo detainees, did you ever do it for TERROR VICTIMS?
JACKSON: Uh, there would have had to be an opportunity in my law firm, so ...
Cotton now probably thinks he's being clever asking for the difference between calling somebody a war criminal and accusing them of war crimes. So Jackson is answering his question, in legal terms, hopefully legal terms that are short enough for Cotton to understand.
5: 19:Wonder how long Tom Cotton practiced this line, which he probably thinks is so great but is really stupid. "I dunno, sounds like a debate about how many terrorists can dance on the head of a pin to me!"
Whatever, loser.
Now it is Cory Booker's turn, and we need to stretch our legs, so just enjoy it, because it'll be nice.
After Booker, there will be five more. We will abandon you before then, and before Marsha Blackburn probably, because though we hate her, she's just not important. The news isn't covering this live anymore, so whatever grandstanding horseshit she's got up her sleeve will barely make a ripple.
5: 39:OK OK we're going back and watching Booker because we saw Dahlia Lithwick say he was really killing it, and we trust her for recommendations.
5: 42:Haha, Cory Booker said KBJ should feel proud because she brought together people from the right and left to say how full of shit Josh Hawley is.
5: 47:OK yeah, Booker is great. And he's even getting some tears from KBJ, who has got to be just so exhausted and drained right now. Cory Booker is not going to let his joy be stolen by people even the National Review is calling "demagogic."
5: 55:Booker's message is that God has got Jackson, which by definition would suggest to us that God has not got Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton or John Cornyn, and in fact may have spit them out long ago.
6: 08:Here comes big old hick John Kennedy to jes' ask questions about if somethin' isn't SPECIFICALLY listed in the Constitution, how can yew say Supreme Court ain't makin' policy?
6: 13:KENNEDY: Don't yew thank the valyews of ordinary 'Murkans (he means white, we think) should be good enough to decide if somebody has riiiiiiights?
No, motherfucker. They are decidedly not good enough. That's why we need a judiciary.
6: 18:Every time some Republican garbage talks about how there are different values in Louisiana vs. Maine, it is so enraging. Because guess what? Some rural bigots in Louisiana probably aren't far off from some rural bigots in Maine. And neither of them should be able to damage the lives of progressive people and liberals in New Orleans because they're bigots and they think that's their God-given right.
The divide isn't between states. People in Memphis and Nashville have no functional representation, because hot garbage like the upcoming Marsha Blackburn is our senator in Washington. Good progressives in Oklahoma City have no representation. And you want to talk about "values"? These Republicans aren't imposing their "values," because their "values" are shit. They're imposing their will and they need to get off our dicks.
OK, we are tired, and we are going to leave you alone now. Enjoy the rest and tip your bartender below if you love these liveblogs!
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