[NB: check the byline, thanks. Update(s) at the bottom of this post. /~Rayne]
It’s Day Three of U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s four days of confirmation hearings on the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Today’s hearing is already in progress.
Four. Long. Days.
Hearings which are half right-wing bloviating, achieving nothing to further the public’s interests. This is the fourth time this nominee has been through this tedious crap in her lifetime which should surely qualify as inhumane treatment and torture under UNCAT; it should also earn her a sainthood.
You can watch live feed at these sites (not the same links as yesterday’s as the previous links may lead to recordings previous days’ hearings):
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing feed
PBS Senate Judiciary Committee hearing feed on YouTube
Yahoo News (includes reporting)
You can also catch the hearings through these live Twitter threads:
Imani Gandy at Rewire News Group
Heaven help Judge Jackson get through the day without breaking a molar gritting her teeth.
~ 3 ~
Gallup took a poll ahead of these SCOTUS confirmation hearings as it has for past nominees. Judge Jackson has the highest approval rating apart from Chief Justice Roberts.
Initial support for Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination ties as the highest in Gallup’s trends. https://t.co/K1DYHZVod0
— GallupNews (@GallupNews) March 23, 2022
But do go on and attack her, GOP twits. Make asininely racist remarks about the nominee who has a higher approval rating than your party’s leader ever had as president. Let’s see how that pans out for you over the long run.
~ 2 ~
Meanwhile, outside the GOP’s shit show in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, another GOP senator was doing is share to push the nation back to the 1950s.
REPORTER: “You would be okay with the Supreme Court leaving the issue of interracial marriage to the states?”
SEN. MIKE BRAUN (R-IN): “Yes. If you are not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you are not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too.” pic.twitter.com/jiVTMOpC01
— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) March 22, 2022
I don’t have words strong enough for this crap. He just called into question the legitimacy of a seated SCOTUS jurist’s marriage (Clarence and Ginni Thomas) as well as that of the nominee now being grilled.
This is so intensely personal for me; my parents’ marriage wouldn’t have been legal in some states back in the 1950s and I’d be illegitimate having been born before the unanimous SCOTUS decision in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
Braun’s states’ rights crap doesn’t target interracial marriage (which has broad support across the U.S.); it targets same-sex marriage and any other personal decisions which may require government-regulated services — like reproductive health. He was literally questioned about Griswold v. Connecticut immediately following the question of interracial marriage and he gave an equally unsatisfactory answer about that.
It’s not just Sen. Hairspray-Abuser-from-Tennessee Blackburn attacking the right to privacy necessary for birth control.
Braun has since tried to backpedal on this which means he’s merely taken off the hood he donned.
Mike Braun walks back comments that interracial marriage ruling should have been left to states https://t.co/6vGkb4MceY via @kaitlin_lange / @indystar
— Max Gersh (@pd_cameraman) March 23, 2022
Except he really didn’t fully unwind what he said; he backed up over the body, and then rolled forward over it again by clarifying what he meant about states’ rights, and then claiming he didn’t understand the questions.
… The Times of Northwest Indiana reported that Braun “initially limited” his claim that the Supreme Court had usurped states’ rights over abortion in 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision. But when a reporter questioned him on other cases, including Loving v. Virginia, he reiterated his stance.
Braun later clarified his comments, saying in a statement that he “misunderstood” the questions. …
Sadly, he’s a senator until 2025. Indiana, you had better not forget this racist authoritarian crap come general election 2024. In the mean time Hoosiers should be lighting up his phone and telling Braun where he can stuff his racist states’ rights nonsense. Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121 or use Resist.bot.
~ 1 ~
I wish I could convey how deeply triggering and traumatic these confirmation hearings have been for BIPOC especially women.
I have been traveling, so not closely following #KetanjiBrownJacksonHearings but I’ve seen a succession of white supremacists yelling at her. And she is calm and composed and we must know that that all comes at a cost. A cost that none of these racist and misogynist fucks pay.
— Mona Eltahawy (@monaeltahawy) March 23, 2022
What these hearings tell us is that the white cis-het minority in Congress which retains an illegitimate stranglehold on power demands that any and all competent BIPOC particularly women must submit to belligerence and abuse before they will be allowed to participate in this flawed democracy.
What we are witnessing is the re-normalization of overt racism and misogyny. Yet media has failed to punch up, instead punching down, reinforcing the normalization.
Local news is dumbasses. But even national news:
NBC—”defending her sentencing record”
CBS—”Republicans pointed to her sentencing record in child pornography cases”
ABC—”allegations she let child porn offenders off the hook”
CNN—”child pornography was another contentious issue”— Matt Negrin, HOST OF HARDBALL AT 7PM ON MSNBC (@MattNegrin) March 23, 2022
We’re constantly deluged by the left about the lack of accountability for the January 6 insurrectionists and seditionists, and yet the left fails to hold accountable the wholly integrated abusive racist and misogynist behavior the media augments in these same insurrectionists and seditionists.
The Venn diagram is a single circle and the media continues to treat the persons outside it as the objects to be despised and subjugated and oppressed.
The problem isn’t just the GOP senators or the media when constituents fail to do anything at all to express displeasure let alone organize effectively for change.
~ 0 ~
I may have more to add here as today’s hearing continues.
So long as I can keep my blood pressure under control, that is.
UPDATE-1 — 6:35 PM —
Senator Cory Booker saves this horrible day.
Just watch this video. Just watch. pic.twitter.com/wmERvmniL5
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 23, 2022
Stay strong, Judge Jackson. Like Frederick Douglass in his Fourth of July speech, leave off this process where you began — with hope.