Should It Matter That Judge Jackson Gives Light Sentences to Child Pornographers?
There’s another Supreme Court confirmation hearing circus on Capitol Hill this week as Joe Biden’s nominee to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, Ketanji Brown Jackson, enters the Thunderdome and girds her loins for combat.
It’s a helluva way to confirm a judge to sit on the nation’s highest court. It’s so — unserious. Democrats are claiming that Jackson is the second coming of Solomon, and besides, she’s gonna make history — history, I say. It really, really, really matters that Jackson is a black woman, and did you hear? There’s never been a black woman nominated to sit on the Supreme Court!
Biden’s “first black nominated” or “first Hispanic chosen,” or “first Martian picked” for one posting or another is getting tiresome. Who the hell cares what color they are? Black, brown, yellow, or green, the only relevant attribute is competency. All the rest is politics.
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont believes if Jackson is confirmed, it “will bring us one step closer to having a Supreme Court that is more reflective of our nation.”
“One where diversity, race, gender, background, education, and experience allow all Americans to look to their court and see in its justices a reflection of the American people,” he added.
Is that a realistic view of how Americans see the Supreme Court? Or is the radical left trying to tell Americans what they should be seeing when they look at the high court?
Leahy is advancing an old racist argument: that only a black judge, a female judge, or a black female judge (or any other minority judge) can legitimately understand and rule on cases being brought before the court by blacks, females, black females, and other minorities.
Related: Cory Booker Embarrasses Himself by Gushing Over Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Race and Gender
It’s supposed to have something to do with “perspective.” But any way you look at Ketanji Brown Jackson and her colleagues on the high court, they are not now and never will be middle-class Americans; hence, they will never have a “middle-class perspective.” So how can they rule on cases that dramatically impact middle-class Americans?
Few, if any, Supreme Court justices have ever had to sweat a payroll or keep a business going. And how many justices today are worried about making the food budget last until the end of the month? Why is that perspective not important enough to warrant the choice of a middle-class judge familiar with those problems?
Apparently, only some perspectives are legitimized as the criteria a president uses to appoint his very own Supreme Court justice. And sadly, it’s based on the skin color of the individual holding that perspective — and nothing else.
Should this alone qualify Brown for a seat on the Supreme Court, or should more troubling aspects of her record be considered?
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) offered the most blistering attack against Jackson during the first day of the hearing.
“You also have a consistent pattern of giving child porn offenders lighter sentences. On average, you sentenced child porn defendants to over five years below the minimum sentence recommended by the sentencing guidelines,” Blackburn said.
Blackburn also hit on a laundry list of talking points that light up the GOP base including transgender athletes and coronavirus restrictions in school.
What are Republicans trying to say about Jackson by hitting her record on child porn cases? That she takes it easy on criminals, even the worst of them? Just what is it we’re supposed to expect from a former public defender?
Jackson has spent her career being a reliable left-wing voice in court. Should she have locked away child pornographers and thrown away the key? It may have been “justice” if a trap door opened up beneath the feet of child pornographers to rid us of their presence. But that’s not what the law allowed.
Indeed, Jackson was swayed in at least one case by “expert testimony” that tried to make the argument that not all child pornographers are pedophiles.
But several behavioral science researchers testified at that hearing that there may be nonsexual motivations among a portion of child-sex criminals. It is not a radical view. And many judges do see a distinction between those who produce child pornography and those who receive it.
In 2020, in denying compassionate release on medical grounds to a convicted sex offender serving almost six years in prison, Judge Jackson asserted: “The possession and distribution of child pornography is an extremely serious crime because it involves trading depictions of the actual sexual assault of children, and the abuse that these child victims endure will remain available on the internet forever.”
The AP says it’s “not a radical view” that child pornographers are different from perverts who receive the filth, so I guess it’s true — at least, in the world inhabited by the AP.
There are other reasons Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson should be disqualified besides listening to crackpot theories about the difference between child molesters and child pornographers. But really, is this the best that Biden could get? Don’t the American people deserve better?
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