During a confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), thought he’d try and prove his misogynist credentials by essentially blaming a female nominee to the federal bench for all of the crime committed in the United States.
As Kylie Cheung of Jezebel notes, Cruz worked himself into a frothy frenzy as he attacked Nina Morrison, who has been nominated by President Joe Biden to be U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of New York:
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a confirmation hearing for three Biden judicial nominees, although Republican Senators were pretty singularly obsessed with Morrison, a senior litigation counsel at the Innocence Project whom Biden has nominated for a lifetime seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Morrison point-blank that she and the policies for which she’s advocated — “letting violent criminals go,” as he described it —are directly responsible for “skyrocketing crime rates, homicide rates, burglary rates” and “carjacking rates” in America.
Hard to believe one lawyer could be responsible for so much crime, isn’t it, especially since she was merely doing her job when she represented people at the Innocence Project who have been sentenced to death for crimes they didn’t even commit.
When Cruz finally got to a question, the one he asked was so patently asinine and arrogant that he probably thought he was scoring big points with the extreme right-wingers who have taken control of the Republican Party and are a growing threat to liberty and justice in the United States:
“Why do you keep advising radical district attorneys to let violent criminals go that send homicide rates skyrocketing? Do you care about the innocent people being killed because of the policies you’re implementing?”
But Ms. Morrison was more than equal to the challenge of the man who was turned into a slavish political eunuch by failed former President Donald Trump on multiple occasions:
“Absolutely, Senator, and to clarify my role in those transition committees were only issue of what is called conviction integrity, not the front end prosecution policies, but on the review of old cases. That is the limited capacity on which I worked. I played no role in formulating front-end policies, but it is because when the wrong person is convicted of murder, the person who actually committed the crime isn’t brought to justice.”
That’s how you shut down a neutered bully like Ted Cruz: You use facts, logic, and calm resistance in response to his overheated rhetoric.
