Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) is one of the biggest blowhards in Congress, and he proved that again this week during a confirmation hearing for one of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, suggesting she was a Marxist simply because she happens to be a Democrat.
HuffPost reports Kennedy asked Melissa DuBose, Biden’s nominee for the U.S. district court in Rhode Island, “Are you still a Marxist?”
“I am not nor have I ever been a Marxist,” DuBose responded.
Kennedy continued to press his specious allegation of DuBose being a Marxist, even suggesting that she was lying under oath, quoting an interview DuBose gave in 2000 when she worked at a coffee shop and said she was “in my Marxist phase.”
Even though DuBose explained that comment, Kennedy acted as if he hadn’t heard a word she’d said, again asking, “My question is real simple,” he said. “Are you still a Marxist?”
DuBose reiterated that she was not a Marxist.
“I am not a Marxist. I do not espouse Marxist theory or ideology. I never have, I never will. I’m a very proud Democrat.”
Committee member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) then joined the debate.
“This was many, many, many, many, many years ago,” Whitehouse said of DuBose’s. Perhaps during the time when my colleague Sen. Kennedy was a Democrat, showing that people can change their views, even if it were true that you were in a Marxist phase.”
Whitehouse’s jibe enraged Kennedy, who began shouting.
“I’ve never been a Marxist!” he shouted. “I’ve never been a Marxist! And I’ve never admitted I was a Marxist and then not turned a document over to this committee!”
Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy made a complete fool of his himself today during a Senate hearing on the causes of gun-related crime when he attempted to suggest that the city of Chicago had become a “shooting gallery.
Kennedy was questioning Dr. Megan Ranney of the Yale School of Public Health when he suggested that crime isn’t rising in Chicago as a result of law-abiding residents carrying guns, but rather is because liberal prosecutors are letting dangerous felons run free.
That led Ranney to remind the senator that his home state of Louisiana could also be called a “shooting gallery.”
“Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri actually have higher firearm death rates.”
Ranney is absolutely right. Louisiana has one of the highest murder rates in the United States, with 21.3 homicides per 100,000 people in 2021, according to figures from the National Center for Health Statistics. The only state with a higher rate is next door in Mississippi, which has 23.7 homicides per 100,000 people.
Despite Ranney’s facts, Kennedy asked, “What about Chicago?”
Ranney: “I don’t live in Chicago,” she replied. “It’s not my primary area of research.”
She added that crime in cities such as Chicago is likely caused by “easy access to firearms” and “lack of great education.”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA): “Why do you think that Chicago has become America's largest outdoor shooting range?”
Dr. Megan Ranney of the Yale School of Public Health: “Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri actually have higher firearm death rates.” pic.twitter.com/K70KPNZ7As
Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy is one of the most annoying and arrogant people in Congress, and he made a complete ass of himself on Tuesday during a hearing with Attorney General Merrick Garland, proving just how completely clueless many in the GOP are when it comes to the issue of law enforcement.
Kennedy began his remarks by attacking Garland:
“I think the Justice Department is losing. I think you’re losing on crime. I think you’re losing on drugs. I think you’re losing on immigration. I think you’re losing on Chirenese espionage.”
From there, Kennedy asked about dirty cops:
“Let me start with crime. What percentage of cops in America do you think are bad cops?”
Garland:
“A very small percentage.”
Rather than let the attorney general continue his remarks, Kennedy interrupted to ask:
“How small? Is it less than 10%?”
AG Garland responded:
“Yes, let me be clear. We believe that most police officers follow the Constitution. Most police departments do. All police officers, I believe, want to work in police departments that follow constitutional policing requirements.”
Next, Kennedy asked about stop and frisk, though he was hardly able to call it by its proper name:
“Why doesn’t the Justice Department support stop question, and frisk?”
Garland replied:
“I don’t know that the Justice Department has a position. This is a state and local role normally”
Rather than accept that response, Kennedy asked:
“Why doesn’t the Justice Department aggressively encourage law enforcement officials to use that technique? It’s been declared constitutional as you know?”
The AG again noted that stop and frisk is left to local law enforcement, which led to an extended rant from Sen. Cornpone:
“Here’s what I’m asking. Let’s take Chicago, where you have, we haven’t made any inroads and stopping the killing. Chicago is now the world’s largest outdoor shooting range. We know that a lot of the shootings come from gangs. Why wouldn’t you want to call the police chief, the mayor in Chicago, and say, ‘look, you know who these gang members are. When you have reasonable suspicion, and objective standard, more than just a hunch, why don’t you aggressively stop, question, and frisk these gang members?’ You get guns off the street. You’ll get drugs off the street and you get at a lot of gang members off the street. You’ll stop people killing each other. Why won’t you do that?”
Garland patiently tried to explain:
“The best way for the federal government to stop violent crime is to work at each local level and determine and let the state and locals determine what the best use of their –“
Kennedy rudely interrupted the attorney general yet again:
“I’m sorry to interrupt. I’m trying to get some answers. Why won’t you do that?”
Garland answered:
“Because there is no one solution fits all that the federal government can suggest to state and local law enforcement.”
Someone needs to explain some basic facts to Sen. Kennedy. Then again, as stupid as he seems to be, all the explanations in the world would probably leave him nonplussed.
Thought you’d heard all of the disgustingly bigoted and downright racist things that Republicans could possibly say about the next Supreme Court nominee being a black woman? Well, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) just took the grand prize with remarks he made.
“No. 1, I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J.Crew catalog,” Kennedy told Politico Tuesday after meeting with the GOP leaders. “No. 2, I want a nominee who’s not going to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to try to advance a ‘woke agenda.'”
What exactly is a “woke agenda?”? Does Sen. Kennedy mean he cannot stomach the thought of a woman of color daring to interpret the Constitution due to her race and sex? Probably, though he’d never admit that for the record.
Oddly enough, Kennedy has a very scholarly background, though he prefers to come across as a hick:
Kennedy, an Oxford-educated lawyer and career politician, rebranded himself as a folksy Republican after a long stint as a Democrat. Louisiana publications have likened his one-liners to Foghorn Leghorn but people who knew him before he became a prominent Republican told BuzzFeed News last year that it’s all an act (which he denies).
Perhaps the best response to Kennedy’s disgusting remarks came from MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan:
Kennedy, however, isn’t the only member of the GOP suggesting that a black woman shouldn’t be appointed to the court. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) also made sure to flash his bigot credentials:
“The fact that he’s willing to make a promise at the outset, that it must be a Black woman, I got to say that’s offensive. You know, Black women are what, 6 percent of the U.S. population? He’s saying to 94 percent of Americans, ‘I don’t give a damn about you, you are ineligible.’”
All of this hue and cry coming from the right is about race, plain and simple, not being “woke” or any other bullshit excuse. You see, the GOP right wing thinks black women aren’t fit for service on the highest court in the land. They’d rather see all people of color remain silent and subservient.
During a confirmation hearing in the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) proved that though he may not be as well known as his equally obnoxious GOP colleagues, Sens. Ted Cruz (TX) and Josh Hawley (MO), he’s just as narrow-minded and bigoted as his two colleagues.
The Banking Committee was considering the nomination of Saule Omarova to be comptroller of currency, and Kennedy used his allotted time to suggest that since Dr. Omarova was born in Kazakhstan when it was still part of the Soviet Union. As a child in that Soviet satellite, Omarova was forced to join the Young Communists because if she hadn’t she would have been persecuted by Soviet authorities and perhaps even sent to a gulag where she would more than likely have died.
Specifically, according to CNBC, Kennedy went out of his way to suggest that Omarova might still be a communist:
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., asked Omarova about her membership in a youth communist group during her childhood in Kazakhstan.
Omarova replied that membership in the Communist Party was required under the totalitarian government and noted that members of her family were murdered by the Communist Party led by Joseph Stalin.
That’s the very same Joseph Stalin who killed an estimated 6 million people he considered to be “disloyal” to him. The Omarova family could either claim to be communists or they could have been wiped off the face of the planet.
And yet, Kennedy felt it necessary to then add:
“I’m struggling with what to call her. I don’t know whether to call her ‘Professor’ or ‘Comrade.’”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA): “I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade.”
Someone off-camera: “Oh my goodness.”
Dr. Saule Omarova, Biden’s comptroller currency pick: “I’m not a communist. I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born.” pic.twitter.com/CEiCWNwx2N
Fortunately, Democrats on the committee called out Kennedy for his comments, with Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown of Ohio noting that his colleague was asking “irrelevant” questions. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called Kennedy’s remarks “vicious.”
The real reason Kennedy and other Republicans are opposed to Dr. Omarova is because she’s promised to keep a close eye on the reckless fiscal policies of big banks, tellingNY Magazine in a recent interview:
“They [the banks] know that I won’t let them do whatever they want. I’m not the one to easily go along with whatever big banks would tell me is ‘good for them, therefore good for the country.’ I want to make sure that what is good for them is also good for the country. I’m also very reasonable, and I will have an open door, and I will work with any bank that wants to do good for the country. Any bank that wants to channel credit into the real communities, real economy, I’ll be their best friend. If wealthy banks genuinely commit to doing good for the United States, then they have nothing to be afraid of from me. Nothing.”
That’s not what big banks like Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo want to hear, so their paid puppets in the Senate GOP are attacking Dr. Omarova as some sort of a danger to capitalism, which is total bullshit.
Banks need to be regulated. If you doubt that, remember how the foolish policies of banks nearly crashed the U.S. economy back in 2007 and led to what became known as the Great Recession.
Sen. Kennedy and his ilk are nothing but bigoted assholes who would gladly crash the American economy again if it would benefit their corporate sugar daddies.
