As I watched and listened to President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, African-American Federal Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson, testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, I was struck by the stark contrast between how Republican senators treated Jackson, and how Democratic senators treated ex-President Trump’s nominees, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, who now serve on the high court.
The same Democratic senators who depicted Kavanaugh as a beer-swilling serial rapist and questioned Barrett’s devout Catholicism are hailing Jackson as the greatest Supreme Court nominee ever. That looks like an obvious double standard to me even though I think Jackson testified honestly and is well qualified to replace retiring liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, one of her judicial mentors; she clerked for him earlier in her career.
Although Republican senators posed tough, even harsh, questions to Jackson about her judicial record and philosophy, they never smeared her as a horrible person, as Democrats did to Kavanaugh. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) and Josh Hawley (R- Mo.) asked legitimate questions about why she consistently meted out short sentences to child pornographers – shorter than federal sentencing guidelines she helped draft.
Hawley asked about a case in which Jackson sentenced a child pornographer to three months in prison when sentencing guidelines she helped draft called for a minimum of 10 years behind bars. She replied that the pervert’s transgressions “didn’t signal an especially heinous or egregious child pornography offense.” In my opinion, however, all child pornography is heinous and egregious.
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who was suspended last year for masturbating on a Zoom call, blasted Hawley for “appealing to the QAnon audience.” Toobin is a dubious source and I reject the idea that any criticism of Judge Jackson is due to “racism.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who will run for president in 2024, pointed out Jackson’s sentences for child pornographers were almost 50 percent lower than what prosecutors recommended. Those are the facts; draw your conclusions. My conclusion is that Jackson is a liberal jurist whose sentences reflect the fact that she was a federal public defender for several years, during which time she defended Guantanamo terrorists and other undesirables who deserved a defense under our system of jurisprudence.
I’m not criticizing Jackson for being a public defender because I worked closely with public defenders while serving as an English/Spanish court interpreter after returning to Carson in 1996. I respect the vital work public defenders do in court and admire their willingness to defend the dregs of humanity like illegal Salvadoran immigrant Wilber Martinez Guzman, who murdered four people in Douglas County and Reno in 2019. Even though he was sentenced to multiple life sentences earlier this year, public defenders saved him from the death penalty.
“Barring unforeseen circumstances, little stands in the way of confirmation for Judge Jackson,” the conservative Wall Street Journal observed. “The Senate’s composition is unchanged from last year, when three Republicans joined all 50 Democrats to confirm her to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.”
I think Jackson will be confirmed to the Supreme Court, whose makeup will remain the same for now: six conservatives and three liberals.
Carson school superintendent
Because former Manchester, N.H., School Superintendent John Goldhardt can’t or won’t accept the generous contract offered to him by our local school board, the board should forget about the self-important Goldhardt and offer a contract to the runner-up, on a 4-3 vote, Carson schools CFO Andrew Feuling, who’s already here – thus, no cross-country moving expenses – and knows the local district well. Just do it!
Guy W. Farmer is the Appeal’s senior political columnist.
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