From NBC News: Biden Picks Jackson for Supreme Court, Putting Her on a Path to History
President Joe Biden will nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, according to a person familiar with his selection.
The historic selection is expected to be announced Friday, according to the person. Jackson’s selection would add a fresh liberal voice with new life experiences without changing its conservative tilt.
Jackson, 51, is a federal appeals court judge who once served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission and as a public defender, jobs that no justice has ever held. She worked as a law clerk to the man she would replace, the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, 83.
What surprised me is that we’ve never had a public defender on the court.Report
They’re the bad guys, keeping criminals out of jail. Why would we want them on the Supreme Court?Report
Well, if you’re looking for a decent attack surface to keep her off the court, you could always point out that she’s related to Paul Ryan through marriage.Report
I think the fetish for public defenders can be kind of misplaced. There are definitely some activists (and excellent attorneys) in the ranks but a lot of them just do it for the trial experience. There is also probably not a group of people other than the victims of crimes themselves who have endured more personal frustration with the accused than public defenders. Some of them become the harshest judges of all.
However I do think actual trial/court room experience or really any experience outside of white shoe law and upper echelons of government is criminally (excuse the pun) underrated. The ivy league set tends to experience practice in a much more academic way than pretty much anyone else.Report
Yeah, but we haven’t had even *ONE*. I would have expected *ONE*.
And then maybe have everybody say “oh, yeah… *THAT* is why we don’t want them on the Supreme Court.”Report
Interesting, wondering how much of this is a relatively recent phase/mood?
150 yrs ago SCOTUS judges probably had xyz profiles… 75 yrs ago the phase seemed to be ‘Constitutional Scholars’ which carried into the Obama era – who himself was classified as a ‘Constitutional Scholar’. But in this transitory phase of the past 25 yrs it seems we’ve moved into a mood where we’re talking about ‘life experiences’ the apotheosis or maybe Ur moment being the famous Sotomayor statement.
Thing is, we only have 9 seats and that’s not nearly enough to cover the requisite number of relevant life experiences. So… pack the court?
Thank you for attending my dissertation defense, today I will attempt to…Report
Well, public defenders have only existed for a little more than 100 years (in this country, anyway).
So I suppose that there isn’t really a grand tradition of them.
But, on the other hand, 100 years is a long time! (In this country, anyway.)Report
I don’t think we’re even using life experience so much as identity and/or religious affiliation as a (pretty gross when you think about it) proxy for politics. The reality is that, while some may have grown up poorer than others, by the time they are up for a vote all of them are coming from the same class and mileu of the people nominating and approving them.Report
I wouldn’t say religion. More broadly, mainline Protestantism is dead, so any conversation in the US is going to take place between atheists, Catholics, Evangelicals, and Jews, and atheists and Evangelicals are bad at debate, so it’s down to Catholics and Jews on the Court.Report
As much as I would love to believe there are so many Catholics on the court due to the great brilliance of our culture I just don’t think it’s why a bunch of Protestants keep putting us there.Report
Obviously Catholics are winning the Cocktail Circuit.Report
Seeing as how we start drinking when we’re 7 it would be pathetic if we weren’t.Report
The mainstream Protestants of any legal ability are too civilized and the non-mainstream Protestants of any legal ability are too rare. Jews are too Democratic. That leaves Catholics.Report
Her role as a public defender goes to her professional experience and background. I suppose you could put that under the umbrella of “life experience” but that term is usually used to refer to their personal experiences.Report
Speaking of professional experience, I haven’t seen her attacked for her qualifications yet. I’ve seen one note in National Review that she hasn’t spent much time on the DC Court of Appeals, but it went on to discuss her record on the District Court of DC. Have you seen any criticism of her qualifications?Report
Nope.Report
I haven’t seen direct attacks on her qualifications, probably because no such attack would be credible. What I have seen is plenty of attacks along the lines of she can’t be the “best” candidate because Biden artificially limited his pool of candidates, and, worse, to a pool unlikely to include lots of high-quality candidates. Math, don’t you know?Report
I would have expected *ONE*.
Why? They aren’t well-represented in the so-called upper reaches of the bar. How many patent or admiralty lawyers have been on the Supreme Court? There have been more big-time patent or admiralty lawyers than there have been public defenders of any note.Report
Why? They aren’t well-represented in the so-called upper reaches of the bar.
Yeah.
Like, why aren’t they well-represented in the so-called upper reaches of the bar?
There have been more big-time patent or admiralty lawyers than there have been public defenders of any note.
Of *ANY* note? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying “Wait, What?” about.
Why in the hell are the people who actually read the various Amendments of the Bill of Rights not considered “of note”?Report
Like, why aren’t they well-represented in the so-called upper reaches of the bar?
It’s a low-paying, low-prestige job (these facts are, sadly related) involving high-volume processing of the crimes of the poor and obscure with damn few opportunities for actual, interesting trials where they can strut their stuff and come to larger notice. Many PDs are excellent, often better than the better-known private lawyers who serve paying clients, but “Full many a gem of purest ray serene,The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”Report
I think PD being a low-prestige job depends. From what I heard being a federal public defender is considered a desirable job because it is often a career stepping stone to white-collar criminal defense at big firms. Federal public defenders are not defending drunk drivers and low level violence offenders usually. The San Francisco Public Defender’s office is highly competitive and viable and many applicants need to spend times in the boonies before being offered a job.
In redstates though, the position seems to go to the dregs of the law schools often and people running for the elected role are likely to try and turn the screws on defendants as well by advocating to demoralize and budget cut their own staff.Report
DC public defender is also pretty competitive. Maryland…. eh they do what they can. A friend of mine’s ex was a public defender and she was quite good at it though I think she has since become a stay at home mom.
My experience is that the ranks are mainly filled with two types of people: the ones who are there because they love it and the ones that want to accumulate as much court room experience as fast as possible. Very trial by fire kind of mentality.
To some degree I’m not sure that the mindset that takes people through the public defenders office overlaps very neatly with that of those interested in being judges. You also have to want to do it. Then there’s also the pedigree issues especially for the federal judiciary. No matter what kind of law you practice you also have to also be in some pretty hoity toity circles to be on the list.Report
Well, I wouldn’t expect a Justice’s immediate last job to be a PD. It’s odd that we never had a Justice who was a PD before he taught Constitutional Law or worked on a Court of Appeals. The first track (PD – Con Law class – Justice), I can understand no one doing, because the PD likely is a rubber-meets-the-road profession, and becoming a prominent instructor in law is the opposite of that. But PD to Judge to Appeals Judge to Justice, that sounds doable.
I think a deeper question is whether the SCOTUS is supposed to have mastery of all types of law, or supposed to specialize in applying the Constitution and precedent to top-level appeals. I’m sure all of the Justices have read the Amendments; I’m sure half of them understand them. I’d guess a PD spends most of his time maneuvering through the accumulated decisions which interpret the law and the Constitution, and probably has strong opinions about which decisions should be overturned. That would be a useful thing to have on the Court, in some cases, but I don’t see it as sufficient.Report
I would have expected *ONE*.
Why? The number of public defenders that have any significant visibility are extremely rare. How many patent or admiralty lawyers have been named to the Court? There have been far more big-time patent and admiralty lawyers than there have been big-time PDs.Report
Allow me to clarify: I did not expect someone to jump from “Public Defender” to “Supreme Court Justice”.
I am somewhat surprised that we haven’t had anybody who, on their way to a judgeship, has passed through the role of Public Defender for a year or two on their way up the ladder.Report
We’ve politely ignored the elephant in the room, that criminal defense work is often a political liability, especially if you’re any good at it and, therefore, get heinous clients.
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1497292909816729605
Some prominent Republican Senators had a problem with KBJ’s having done criminal defense work when she was nominated for her current seat.Report
I’m fairly certain that a sufficiently deft counter-argument could include appeals to stuff like “rights” that could, at least, muffle these particular attacks to the point where someone might spend time as a public defender before getting a taste for the political and switching to the DA’s office before becoming a hanging judge.
“I KNOW THE BULLSHIT THAT DEFENSE LAWYERS PULL! I WAS ONE OF THEM! THAT’S HOW I KNOW THESE DEFENDANTS ARE ALL GUILTY!”Report
Criminal defense lawyers appeal to rights — real ones, not rights in scare quotes — all the time when confronted with charges that they endanger public safety by letting vicious criminals loose. (The public greatly overestimates their efficacy in that regard.) They generally fall on deaf ears. Apparently including the ears of Senators.Report
Seems like a perfectly fine pick.Report
And the Press Secretary has already screwed up her name.
Report
JFC. Jaybird, it is a typo. Typo’s happens all the time.Report
Report
I did not know that Jennifer Rubin and Jen Psaki were the same person and shared the same viewpoints and tweeted the same things.Report
Would you say that there are just some ethnicities that just have easier names to make typos about?Report
I can attest to that from personal experience.Report
I hope I can call on you when, in the future, some hapless commenter makes an honest mistake about the misspelling of someone’s particularly ethnic name.
I mean, since you can attest to that from personal experience.Report
Why would you, or the hapless commenter, need to “call on” me? There’s always self-help: admit your mistake, if it is one, and apologize.Report
Psaki’s tweet is still up even though it’s the next day.
Maybe it wasn’t a mistake?Report
If you have any plausible theory at all about why it wouldn’t be a mistake, enlighten us.Report
The fact that it’s still up hours later.
If someone posted it then deleted it 2 minutes later? Heck yeah, that’s a mistake.
If someone posted it and then left it up? That’s a choice.Report
I asked for a plausible theory of why it would be something other than a mistake. If you’ve got nothing, it’s OK to say so.
As for timing, maybe you haven’t noticed, but there’s a war on. People are really busy.Report
Oh, I’m pretty sure that she didn’t go out of her way to deliberately misspell the name of the first African-American woman nominated to the Supreme Court.
It’s that she sure as hell hasn’t gone out of her way to correct the error.Report
Do you know the meaning of the word “Why?”Report
I’m kind of surprised that no one in her circle has brought this up to her by now. She’s tweeted a couple of times since…
Ah well, she’s on Team Good.
We know that there’s a good explanation.Report
If you don’t want to, or can’t, answer the question, just say so. You’re the one who raised the possibility that this wasn’t a mistake. If you don’t have a theory of why — repeat, why — Psaki would have done this other than by mistake, we don’t have to waste time on yet another Jaybird JAQ-off.Report
I’m not saying that she did it as anything but a mistake.
I *AM* saying that it’s an illuminating mistake and we should be able to speculate about her inner self because of it and her failure to address it allows us to speculate even more.Report
Oops. Hit “report” by mistake.
You know the not-so-old saying: It would be irresponsible not to speculate.Report
I would say that you are pathologically unable to stop trolling. If you were forced to choose between your life and stopping to troll for a week, you would be like the meme with the guy sweating over which red button to push.Report
For what it’s worth, if *I* were the Press Secretary of the President who nominated the first female African-American Justice of the Supreme Court, I’d spell her name correctly and, if I couldn’t be bothered to do that, I’d at least correct it within eight hours or so.
Anyway. Here we are at Hour 10.
You know what? Maybe misspelling “exotic” names shouldn’t be considered a “microaggression” anymore.
Do you think so?Report
I think it’s incredibly heartening to know that with the historic nomination of the first black woman to the Supreme Court, this is the A game, the best angle of attack conservatives can muster.
Carry on.Report
Chip, you might not have noticed, but I am one of the folks who said something to the effect of “holy cow, it’s an event that this is the first public defender that is on the SCotUS!”
It’s other folks, so-called “liberal folks”, who have been saying stuff like “It doesn’t matter that even the press secretary is committing microaggressions.”Report
I’m curious- who among our local liberal crowd here has been pushing microaggressions as being anything beyond an indulgent twitterverse distraction?Report
Like I said before, the reason conservatives sneer at “microaggressions” and hur-hur over misspelling names is because in their eyes, claims of racism are all just a big scam anyway, a big game that anyone can play.Report
Also as a distraction from their own calls for violence: https://twitter.com/BenLorber8/status/1497434562237980672?s=20&t=Ai451Dai6k75pYN53zjltgReport
Related:
GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Speaks At White Nationalist Conference
ORLANDO, Fla. — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) spoke at a white nationalist conference in Florida on Friday evening.
Greene, a QAnon conspiracist and rabidly anti-trans Republican, was the surprise speaker at the third annual America First Political Action Conference in Orlando, organized by white nationalist figurehead Nick Fuentes.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-speaks-white-031631678.html
“Reasonable” Republicans- You can get off this bus anytime you want.Report
I saw many people who referred to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had been on the Supreme Court for decades, by the more obviously Jewish spelling “Ginsberg.” I’m sure some of these mis-spellings were just mistakes, but there were people who, off past form, were probably doing it deliberately.Report
I googled our site and “microaggression” and, believe it or not, we had several essays about them.
Here’s what is probably the most representative one.Report
Ooh, could it be that we don’t care about race and sex, and want to dig into her judicial philosophy?Report
Oh, look-
Here’s another Republican Congressman, totally not caring about race:
Gosar defends white nationalist Nick Fuentes on social media site Gab
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2022/02/01/gosar-defends-familiar-ally-white-nationalist-nick-fuentes-gab/9205303002/Report
Fuentes is the worst. If he’s being attacked unfairly I’d hope Gosar defends him.Report
Millions of Republicans will continue to voice support for, and vote for Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Are you one of them?
Or are you not that kind of Republican?Report
Millions? That’s not how the House of Representatives works. This is another way your thinking parallels conspiracy theorists. You fail to pick up on differences. “They” are all the same, they are all in it together. Greene seems like an AOC clone, someone else who gets votes for the same reason that Governor Ducey cited in describing that other person: better than the other party’s candidate. Greene doesn’t get the mainstream airtime though. “Millions”, which is to say dozens, of Republicans only care that she’s making your side angry.Report
I am happy to have AOC held up as representative of Democrats, and our values.
Are you ok with me saying MTG represents Republicans, and your values?Report
You see the problem there, right? You have a fool and you espouse her, we have one and I don’t.Report
So, you’re not espousing MTG or the fact the she pals around with white supremacists.
That’s good. a first step in getting off the bus.Report
She was elected once.
She has a serious primary challenger coming.
She’s got some fund raising weirdness that might give her legal problems.
I can’t tell if she has support outside of the tin hat crowd.Report
So it should be easy for all the conservatives here to say forthrightly “MTG and Paul Gosar are a couple of lunatics who should be expelled from Republican politics”.
It’s so easy, you can just cut and paste it. Go ahead, let’s get a head count.Report
“MTG and Paul Gosar are a couple of lunatics who should be expelled from Republican politics”.
Absolutely.
To be perfectly honest, this idea that people have to defend people on their own side even when they do bad things is toxic.Report
That’s funny.
Well not really.
Especially since its been a tactic among Republicans for – checks notes – most of my lifetime.Report
Yep. Their ideas are seriously toxic and shouldn’t be considered by serious people.
If I’m going to be making a list of those sorts of things…
White Nationalism.
Various conspiracy theories.
Various ideas to promote God and/or merge God and State.
Various types of Communism.
Ideologies that claim Group Rights trump Individual Rights.
That last is why I oppose efforts to insist on equality of outcome.Report
I’m not cutting and pasting anything that you give me without researching it, because you don’t distinguish between “white supremacist” and “accused of being a white supremacist”. But Fuentes is a racist, and if someone actually thinks like him, he shouldn’t be treated as within the mainstream thought (although if he does so and gets elected, he should shut up and vote right and stay shut up).
Now, “AOC and Ilhan Omar are a couple of lunatics who should be expelled from Democratic politics”, or at least be treated with the same shut-uppedness as I want from someone like Fuentes.Report
By all means, research Fuentes, Greene, and Gosar.
We can revisit this in a few days.Report
Again, “AOC and Ilhan Omar are a couple of lunatics who should be expelled from Democratic politics”, or at least be treated with the same shut-uppedness as I want from someone like Fuentes.Report
I’m a very proud supporter of AOC and Ilhan Omar. They represent my values and, I believe, the values of the Democratic party.
I’ll let you get back to your research.Report
You asked me an easy question and I gave you an answer that should satisfy you. I asked you an easy one too: they’re both complete idiots who take positions outside the mainstream of their parties. You should have breathed a sigh of relief. They’re both on CNN non-stop, so you wouldn’t have had to research them.
Here’s the situation as I see it: you’re trying to argue that the Democratic Party has stayed the same, but the Republican Party has gone so far off the rails that they oppose free health care, the abolition of oil, the defunding of police, adolescent hormone blockers, and they aren’t even anti-Israel. If you can’t denounce these two extremist grifters, that’s your problem, and if they really do represent the values of the Democratic Party, November should be hilarious.Report
Do MTG, Paul Gosar, and Nick Fuentes represent your values?
The values of your party?
These are not difficult questions.Report
I gave my answer about Fuentes, and if MTG and Gosar think the same as he does, then no they don’t represent my values. That’s my answer, and it’s not ridiculous or extremist. Your answer about AOC and Omar was.Report
“If” they think the same?
Don’t you have some research to do?Report
Actually, I don’t. I denounced Fuentes and gave a conditional denouncement of the other two based on ideology. You stood by AOC and Omar. It’s like you challenged me to a spelling bee, and in round 1 you misspelled “cat”.Report
For your reading pleasure, National Review:
House GOP Leaders Must Condemn Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/house-gop-leaders-must-condemn-marjorie-taylor-greene-and-paul-gosar/Report
I don’t know everything that happens at those conferences, what the attendees expect or what the speakers say. I’ll denounce bad ideology, whether it be on the fringe of my party or in the center. It happens that the bad ideology is on the fringe of my party, and I denounce it. The bad ideology is in the center of your party (at least by your claim), and you embrace it.
There’s a whole ideas-versus-people thing here, that you want me to denounce particular people, whereas I’m focused on beliefs. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard AOC say something that anyone should agree with. You don’t get to pick my standard-bearer, but you’ve picked yours.Report
You’re exemplifying why the self-described “reasonable Republicans” are the problem.
Even when faced with repugnant behavior from white supremacists and those who give them aid and comfort, you’re unwilling to forthrightly condemn it.Report
This is the motte-and-bailey game. I’ve looked up the people that you’ve mentioned and yeah, you’re right, they look really toxic.
That doesn’t change that more typically the definition of racism is “opposes or is in the way of Team Blue”.
Signing up to condemn racism when the definition is that fluid is a bad idea.Report
Its perfectly easy to say, for example, “Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney represent my values as a Republicans, while MTG and Gosar do not.”
Its imperative that a party define its values, which means setting boundaries beyond which, you are cast out.
If MTG and Gosar are Republicans in good standing, that tells us everything we need to know.Report
The problem with this position is that party affiliation in the US is at the discretion of the individual, not the party. Eg, the Wyoming Republican party and the Arizona Democratic party can censure Cheney and Sinema respectively, but they can’t expel them. They can’t even stop them from seeking nominations.Report
Sorry. I accidently hit the “report” button on you and can’t take it back. I was moving the mouse from screen to screen.Report
Neither party does that. Everyone and everything of any substance is in one side or the other.
The one exception would be people who are actively (or expected to be) in prison.
So Team Blue is the party of communism and anarchy and so on even though the bulk of Team Blue thinks these ideas are insane.
Harvey Weinstein worked very nicely as a Team Blue player, even though HRC and others knew he was a serial rapist, up until it became obvious that he was going to end up in prison.
That doesn’t mean Team Blue supports rapists. Similarly Blacks never supported the KKK even though Team Blue used to have both Blacks and the KKK in the same tent back when the Democrats were the party of racism.Report
Ask me, or most any Dem to condemn Weinstein, or some lunatic tankie or Red Rose Twitter guy, or even Al Franken, and we will do it, have done it, in a heartbeat.
Its not hard!
Bill Buckley very famously condemned the Birtchers, and Barry Goldwater condemned the religious nuts, and Bill Clinton condemned Sistah Souljah.
Its not hard!
Its very easy to speak clearly and honestly and condemn the behavior of people whose behavior we don’t support, who don’t share our values.
And when an individual can’t summon up the ability to condemn obvious lunatics, its completely fair for the rest of us to assume they really don’t have a problem with it.Report
I gave you the easiest pitch you could ask for: AOC and Omar. You say we won’t condemn obvious lunatics, well, we’re not calling them our leaders.Report
I said AOC is a good example of a Democrat, and typical of our values.
And it appears that Marjorie Taylor Green is a good example of a Republican, and typical of your values.Report
Well then, that’s the problem.
AOC, as a matter of principal, on a national stage, openly and deliberately destroyed tens of thousands of really good jobs in her own area. Then she did a victory lap and claimed the “millions of dollars saved” could go to the poor.
What she meant was Amazon’s HQ was going to not pay about millions in taxes in exchange for locating there.
Your example is a nut I’ve never heard of speaking at a conference I’ve never heard of, in a state I’ve never been to, about someone else I’ve never heard of, to odious people who have little influence.
The things I object to in Team Blue have powerful people trying to make them “typical of your values” on a national stage.Report
I’ll tell you what I did just notice, doing a little research. The America First conference (AFPACIII) is being held this weekend opposite the CPAC convention. CPAC speakers include Trump, DeSantis, Gabbard, Cruz, Glenn Beck, Rick Scott, and Ben Carson. AFPACIII speakers include Nick Fuentes, Joe Arpaio, Jesse Lee Peterson, Wendy Rogers, MTG, and Janice McGeachin. This is the difference between the conservative mainstream and the fringe.
ETA: I wasn’t picking out the cranks at AFPACIII; those were the featured speakers.Report
So…MTG and Paul Gosar are a couple of lunatics who should be expelled from Republican politics?Report
I’ve spent a bit of time the last couple of days looking for an MTG speech. It looks like they’re starting to post things from AFPACIII. If I find something, I’ll let you know. Looks like mostly word salad so far. Do you have a good link to something with more substance than sound bites?Report
She speaks at a conference of white supremacists.
And…you need more substance? More. Substance.
This alone isn’t sufficient for you to distance yourself from her?
Once again, for the umpteenth, time, this is why the “mainstream” Republicans at CPAC are indistinguishable from the freaks and lunatics at the white supremacist conference.
Until you can have your own Sistah Souljah moment, or Buckley/ Birtcher moment, I don’t see any reason to make a distinction.
Credit where credit is due:
‘I’ve got morons on my team’: Sen. Mitt Romney hits Reps. Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2022/02/27/sen-mitt-romney-likens-reps-gosar-greene-morons-cnn/6964219001/.Report
Given your history, there’s nothing less persuasive than you calling someone “white supremacist” without specific evidence. I mean, it might be out there, it might not. It’s hard for me to believe that non-nutbar would appear near Nick Fuentes, but here we are. This being the internet, I guess it’s put up or…you know, repeat the same thing over and over without demonstrating it.Report
At this point, I think its fair and accurate to say there are two main types of Republicans-
Type A consisting of people like Romney, Cheney, Kinzinger, and Flake, and ;
Type B, consisting of people like Trump, Cruz, Greene, and Fuentes.
They don’t even need me to describe them. Their words and deeds do the job pretty well.Report
I can’t find evidence that she’s espoused white supremacy. She seems to be that other thing, a blowhard, like AOC and Trump, a person who lacks seriousness. The type who says dumb things without considering them, because they’ve never seriously considered anything. Again, if you point me to some kind of proof of white supremacy, I’ll gladly change my mind.
I denounce white supremacy and blowhards.
Your turn: you denounce AOC and Omar because they’re blowhards too, right? If not, then you risk the charge of unseriousness by association.Report
If you’re going to narrow people down to two groups you’re obscuring more than revealing.
That’s not even appropriate for gender.Report
I’m looking around, and it looks like she’s espoused every crazy theory over time except white supremacy.Report
I think the charge is “guilt by association”. It’s obviously not entirely fair, but I’m not sure I’m that opposed to it in a case like this — politicians will happily go wherever they can scrabble a few more votes, so it’s probably good to have some disincentive for them to go to the grubbiest corners.Report
Also, it’d help your credibility if you could spell Sister Soujah or Birch correctly.Report
Pinky, we’ve already established that Team Good doesn’t need to spell exotic (to them) names correctly.Report
You could have put three brackets around the word “exotic”.Report
It’s “Souljah.” Muphry’s Law strikes again.Report
Good for Romney. As the old saying goes, if you can’t find the morons on your team, you’re probably one of them.Report
If we have any clue whose MTG and Gosar are, then sure. If the only thing we know about them is you’re screaming racism, then that only tells us is they’re in the way of Team Blue.
I mean take this entire page. There have been accusations that opposition against Judge Jackson is purely racism.
However there doesn’t seem to be any opposition against Jackson past people who would oppose any judge Biden picked, and even that seems mild and respectful. What little push back there has been came from the process Biden used, if he’d been quiet about that then we wouldn’t have noticed.
There’s so little push back against her that you’ve needed to move the goal posts to talk about people I’ve never heard of dealing with other people I’ve never heard of.
The country is supposed to be awash with racism, but you need to either lower the goal posts so everything counts or you need very large datasets to find what you need.
Who is it that decides “good standing”?Report
It? I condemned It. I’d condemn It all day. I’ve never said anything in defense of It, and I’ve been clear as a bell against It. You give me specific statements, I’ll condemn those. You accept the repugnant extremists as your standard-bearers.
I’m mostly driven by beliefs. I don’t automatically trust any particular politician, although some have earned votes more than others. I’m a hate the sin, love the sinner kind of guy. If someone appeared at a conference with someone who said something that got paraphrased by Media Matters into something that sounded offensive, it doesn’t seem worth researching to me, certainly not if you’re embracing AOC and Omar.Report
But I don’t think I’ve ever heard AOC say something that anyone should agree with.
I don’t have any examples off the top of my head, but I’m fairly certain I’ve seen her say some things with which I agree. Obviously she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed to begin with, and she has a pretty bad case of Twitter brain on top of that, but it’s hard to be consistently wrong about everything.Report
Well there you go.
I submitted a list of really nasty ideas that have a track record of real problems.
If you nut pick and lower the bar, you can find GOP politicians who espouse the top of the list. The ideas are fringe. The mainstream finds them horrifying. The world tried them and learned from ghastly mistakes.
Somehow we managed to get through the 20 century without learning the same lessons about collectivism and group rights. Put a fig leaf on them and they still seem really attractive.Report
You think you wouldn’t make the mistake and think you’d correct it soon, no matter what else was going on, if you did. But we have only your word for that. If there’s a basis for the rest of us to have any confidence, it eludes many of us.Report
Those of us of a certain age are going to stumble over “Brown Jackson” and reverse the two names.Report
I wonder how many accidental Google searches are going to end up on Lawyers in Love.Report
Oh my gosh, it’s spreading.
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I know the news cycle is overwhelmed by Ukraine, but it’s honestly amazing to me, the inability or unwillingness of the right to mount much of an offense to Judge Jackson.Report
But you still understand them perfectly, huh.Report
The biggest attacks I’ve seen against her are mostly by rote.
“She’s a judicial activist who will legislate from the bench!” and the like. They all felt like they were written as the election returns were coming in and well before anybody on the SCotUS even announced their retirement.
The most venomous attacks I’ve seen against her come from the left. (Her marriage, primarily.)Report
Well, yeah, she probably is. I can’t imagine someone with an acceptable jurisprudence being nominated by a Democratic administration. In that sense, but only that sense, is she unqualified: she lacks the qualities for a member of the Court. But I don’t think anyone will attack her for her qualifications in the conventional sense, or her race or sex.Report
She’s already been repeatedly called unqualified because of race. She’s an affirmative action hire doncha know.
Thanks for the very reasonable , she isnt’ qualified on the basis of being nominated by a D.Report
She was an affirmative action hire by any definition, and that does suggest that she wasn’t the best possible choice, but I don’t think she’s been called unqualified. And I don’t know her decisions, but I can’t think of the last Democrat-nominated justice who had a sound judicial philosophy, so yeah, I’m willing to bet that she doesn’t either. Let me ask you, are there any Republican-nominated Justices whose judicial philosophy you like? When you heard that Trump was going to get another nominee, did you think “maybe she’ll be good”? If so, then you’re one of the few who considers both sides’ nominated Justices of equal caliber, but I’d argue that their differences are so extreme that none of us here holds that position.Report
I would think there are Repub potential justices who while i might not agree with have well thought out and reasonable views. I don’t have any names off the top of my head because i dont’ want to remember all that crap. Would trump nom them? Well that is a different question. Being an R or D doesn’t make you more or less constitutional.
She has been confirmed three times, the last within the last year i believe so she has been vetted.
The size of the pool biden picked from does not tell you anything about her qualifications. Though if you are willing to admit every single justice before Thurgood Marshall/ Sandra O’Conner was not the best possible choice and were affirmative action hires we might be starting to agree on something.Report
Jackson attended Harvard University for college and law school, where she served as an editor on the Harvard Law Review. She began her legal career with three clerkships, including one with U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. Prior to her elevation to an appellate court and from 2013 to 2021, she served as a district judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Jackson was also vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers.
There’s more but whatever. She hits the radar as being well qualified.
She might have issues from the Left who have figured out that “skin color” doesn’t have to mean “far left”.Report
As recently as the mid 60s, women were consistently fewer than 4% of new law school graduates. Certainly it’s reasonable to argue that if women had been allowed and encouraged to go into law at the same rate men had, there should have been women on the Supreme Court before O’Connor. However, given the actual pool of legal professionals who had the necessary training and record to be credible candidates for the Supreme Court, we don’t really need to postulate “affirmative action” to explain the lack of women and minorities on the Supreme Court prior to the late 20th century. Note that Wilson appointed Brandeis at a time when antisemitism was still fairly mainstream.Report
That aside, affirmative action skeptics are obviously correct to point out that if you arbitrarily restrict your selection to 3-5% of the pool of all remotely qualified candidates, it’s highly unlikely that the candidate you select will be the best by any reasonable set of objective criteria. Disputing this just makes you look dumb.
The correct response to this is that it doesn’t really matter who is objectively the best. The actual goal here is to pick a candidate who will skew rulings in a manner that fairly reliably favors Democratic policy goals and obstructs Republican policy goals. Intelligence and legal knowledge matter, but only insofar as they’re helpful for coming up with novel ways to do this with plausible deniability.Report
They can clean up that argument a little, and say that the Court only needs sufficiently qualified people, and maybe 10% of all lawyers would qualify. Or a version of the “wise Latina” argument. But given how lockstep the Democrat-appointed Justices are, it’s hard to make the case that race or sex or wise background will affect their decisions.Report
Every President of every party limits the pool of qualified candidates, though far from “arbitrarily.” Republicans pick Republicans, and they pick whatever demographic suits their political needs at the time. The pool of qualified black Republicans is tiny, but when it was politic to select a black Republican (small pool there), we got Clarence Thomas, whom no one outside of the Thomas family thought was anywhere close to the best qualified candidate. (Do you doubt that? Name a white Republican with a similarly thin resume that would have gotten within spitting distance of an appointment.) When it was politic to select a woman, we got Sandra Day O’Connor and, when it was politic to name a Republican woman who was reliably anti-Roe (now there’s a shallow pool for you) we got Amy Coney Barrett, neither of whom, “by any reasonable set of objective criteria,” is noticeably better than KBJ.
The “best” candidate is a chimera. The truth is that most demographics include many highly-qualified candidates, and that’s all one can reasonably hope for. When ardent practitioners of the political arts assail other practitioners for violating some iron law of logic or mathematics, it is impossible to take them seriously or to accept their good faith.Report
1974 to 1977, he was an Assistant Attorney General of Missouri
1977 attorney for Monsanto.
2 years legislative assistant for Senate Commerce Committee.
Assistant Secretary of Education for Office for Civil Rights.
8 years chairman of U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
2 years as a US Court of Appeal Judge for DC.
This is not a thin resume.Report
Yes it is. It was literally not much better than mine was when he was named to the D.C. Circuit, and I wouldn’t have appointed me. I personally know dozens of better-qualified people. Look at the white appointees to the Supremes and the D.C. Circuit by way of comparison.Report
I don’t see that in my news feed.
We have Ted Cruz who said (before she was named?) that a focus on black women was [something].
I don’t see a lot of opposition to her, especially on qualifications. I certainly don’t see the hysterical stuff Team Blue comes up with nor what they’d like to imagine is Team Red’s equiv.Report
What they are saying is she probably isn’t the best qualified candidate. Which is probably true since that person probably doesn’t exist.Report
I’m not sure who “they” are supposed to be, but the logic is correct for most values of “they.”Report
Oops. Fat fingers again.Report
I believe the word you’re looking for is “respect”. No hysteria leading to false criminal accusations and so on.Report
It’s going to be a bit of a challenge, but I’m confident that you’ll find a way to conclude that this proves that everyone who disagrees with you is a racist.Report