South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham made a complete jackass out of himself at the second day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tuesday.
What caused Graham to pitch a full-scale hissy fit? The fact that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) dared to fact-check some of the absurd things Graham said about detainees at Guantanamo.
When Durbin began reading facts to refute what Graham had just said, Graham shouted:
“The system failed miserably and advocates to change this system like [the nominee] was advocating would destroy our ability to protect this country!”
His voice getting more shrill as he spoke, Graham then continued:
“We’re at war, we’re not fighting crime! This is not some passage of time event. As long as they’re dangerous, I hope they all die in jail if they’re going to go back to kill Americans. It won’t bother me one bit if 39 of them die in prison. That’s a better outcome than letting them go and if it cost $500 million to keep them in jail, keep them in jail because they’ll go back to the fight. Look at the freaking Afghan government made up of former detainees at Gitmo. This whole thing by the left about this war ain’t working.”
Durbin again began to respond with facts, which led Graham to leave the hearing in a huff like a spoiled child who didn’t get what he wanted at the grocery store.
Here’s what we know about Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO): He’s an apologist for the Capitol insurrection and attempted coup that took place on January 6, 2021.
Hawley is also trying to make a name for himself because he plans to run for president one day and doesn’t care how many people he has to slag or destroy in order to get his name in the headlines and pretend that he’s a decent, moral person.
The perfect example of Hawley’s ambition and cutthroat tactics can be found in his attempt to smear Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has been nominated by President Joe Biden to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
Hawley fired off a series of tweets accusing Jackson of being soft on people caught with child porn:
Judge Jackson has yet to address her alarming record on child porn offenders. But rather than ask her questions, the Washington Post is regurgitating White House talking points. Their “fact check” questions & my answers below. Now go ask the person nominated for the Supreme Court pic.twitter.com/jNLt6CArIT
So other than these juvenile histrionics, the White House has no substantive answers for the judicial record of a person they nominated https://t.co/PEE0eB0XNt
When White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the disgusting insinuation made by Hawley, it quickly became clear that the administration stands behind Judge Jackson and also that Psaki has some questions of her own for the senator:
“What I would say, though — because there are others in the Senate who have made faulty accusations about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record and specifically about her record on child sex crimes, so let me just take the opportunity to clear that up — not that most people have confusion about it.
“But in the vast majority of cases involving child sex crimes, the sentences Judge Jackson imposed were consistent with or above what the government or U.S. probation recommended. For example, there are — there are arguments that have been made out there by Senator Hawley and others that — where he took a snippet of a transcript out of context, when, in fact, Judge Jackson was repeating something a witness said in order to ask a question about their testimony.”
When another reporter asked about Hawley’s tweets, Psaki put the niceties aside and took a verbal tire iron to the Missouri senator, remarking:
“Well, I’m not sure that someone who refused to tell people whether or not he would vote for Roy Moore is an effective and credible messenger on this.”
Remember Roy Moore? He’s the Alabama GOP Senate candidate who was accused of propositioning and having sex with underage girls on several occasions, as the Washington Post reported:
Leigh Corfman says she was 14 years old when an older man approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy Moore.
Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.
Josh Hawley refused to condemn Moore for that behavior, so maybe it’s time the FBI had a long look at the senator’s computer and cell phone, too.
When he nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, President Joe Biden not only picked an eminently qualified jurist to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, he also chose someone who has a prior legal skirmish with former President Donald Trump which didn’t go the way the ex-president was hoping.
Josh Gerstein of Politico notes that a ruling Jackson issued against Trump in 2019 made it clear she doesn’t have a problem speaking her mind, even when she’s doing so in response to the president of the United States:
When the House’s lawsuit seeking to enforce a subpoena against former Trump White House Counsel Donald McGahn was randomly assigned to Jackson in 2019, the consensus among court watchers was that Trump was likely to be fileted. What emerged from Jackson was an 118-page jeremiad that did not mince words in dissecting Trump’s claim that his advisers had an absolute right to ignore Congressional subpoenas at his direction.
“Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote, dismissing the longstanding argument as “a fiction” and “a proposition that cannot be squared with core constitutional values.”
Such a ruling will likely lead some Republicans (i.e. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who claimed the choice had been made by Biden after pressure from the “radical left” ) to brand Jackson as a liberal, activist judge who will try to legislate from the bench, but her record doesn’t support such a ludicrous allegation:
“There’s very little there that can legitimately be characterized as radical. She’s a judge who takes pains to find and apply the law in an evenhanded manner with a balanced tone,” said Tomiko Brown-Nagin a constitutional law scholar and dean of the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute.
Judge Jackson is a former public defender, which gives her a unique perspective on the legal process that most Supreme Court justices (the majority of whom are former prosecutors) don’t possess. That experience alone will make her a welcome addition to the highest court in the land.
Also, knowing how Trump likely feels about Jackson makes her appointment even sweeter. She’s exactly the sort of jurist he would never have given a second look, if only because of the color of her skin.