This non-issue has been fact-checked over and over, even by republicans. It’s indefensible. LG and Cruz and Hawley and others are either absolute morons or they are the most dishonest people on the planet or both. Really, the answer is to quickly summarize and then ask if they genuinely don’t understand why a person who has spent a year distributing child pornography should get a longer sentence than somebody who spent 15 minutes distributing child pornography, then we can discuss it more in private. This makes me so angry because it’s hard to believe that anybody is that stupid which means that they know better. Knowing that the argument that you are presenting is absolute garbage but doing it anyway to help yourself politically is strong evidence that the presenter is garbage. Such a person has zero character. It’s far worse when this is being done to the first African American woman, a judge with sterling credentials, being considered for the Supreme Court.
I strongly recommend looking at this link as it gives damning quotes from republicans praising her including a current senator and some great information.
Jackson would be the most experienced trial court judge to join the Supreme Court in almost a century.
- Jackson served on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for nearly 8 years, giving her more trial court experience than any sitting Supreme Court justice and more than any justice since Edward Sanford, who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1923.
Jackson would bring more years of experience as a judge than four of the sitting justices combined.
- Jackson has more than eight years of experience as a judge; that’s more than Justices Thomas, Roberts, Kagan, and Barrett had combined when they were confirmed.
Jackson would be the first public defender to become a Supreme Court justice in the history of the Court.
- She would be the first justice with substantial criminal defense experience since Thurgood Marshall retired in 1991.
The motive of Cruz who is so bereft of principles that he wouldn’t even defend his wife because he judged it would hurt him politically was fairly evident, but he failed. LG simply added more to his record demonstrating him to be an absolute hypocrite since he voted to confirm Judge Brown Jackson only eight months prior. Where were these concerns eight months ago? This seems to perfectly fit the definition of demagoguery.
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political activity or practices that seek support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument.
"the demagoguery of political opportunists"
Judge Brown Jackson made clear that the sentencing guide is given to distinguish between different defendants so that the defendant who has committed the worse crime receives the longer sentence. The defendant who distributed the same number of images prior to the internet almost certainly spent far more time than the defendant who committed the crime in a world with the internet. Nobody is giving the defendant, all other things being equal, who distributed more images using the internet less time than a defendant who distributed fewer images using the internet. Prior to the internet, it took far longer to distribute almost everything including images. This means that the person involved in that crime who distributed the same number of images not using the internet took much longer to do that than the person involved in that crime who distributed the same number of images using the internet. Therefore, all other things being equal, in general, it makes sense to give the former person a longer sentence.
When an issue that seemingly flummoxes relatively well-educated US Senators can be easily and clearly explained in a short paragraph and it was clearly explained to these same people in person previously, then it is almost certainly demagoguery in which the senators only pretended to not understand the issue. There is no shame in a lack of information or a disability. There is shame in trying to portray a woman who would be the very first African American woman to serve on the Supreme Court as going easy on and being tolerant of those engaged in child pornography when the accuser knows this is not at all the case.
From the Sac Bee :
There is no apparent basis for these attacks. They are merely an effort by the right to use the confirmation to rally their base. Absent from their vituperative comments is any acknowledgment of Jackson’s sterling credentials. In the world of law, resumes don’t get better than hers. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, she clerked for federal district and circuit judges as well as for Breyer. She had extensive practice experience in a variety of settings and has been a federal judge for almost nine years. By all accounts, she is a terrific judge.
Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article258924383.html#storylink=cpy
ABC News points out that Hawley has voted to confirm other judges with similar records.
The National Review admits that the attacks are baseless and that they would oppose the first African American woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court despite the fact that she was unopposed by any republicans eight months ago and has better credentials than any nominee in a generation.
Senator Hawley’s Disingenuous Attack against Judge Jackson’s Record on Child Pornography
I would oppose Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson because of her judicial philosophy, for the reasons outlined by Ed Whelan last week. I address that in a separate post. For now, I want to discuss the claim by Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) that Judge Jackson is appallingly soft on child-pornography offenders. The allegation appears meritless to the point of demagoguery.
Senator Hawley is a bright guy, but if he ever handled a child-pornography case in the brief time he spent as a practicing lawyer before he sought public office, that is not apparent. Nor does it appear, from the admittedly sparse research that I’ve done, that child pornography was a priority of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office during Hawley’s two-year stint as AG.
I was a federal prosecutor for nearly 20 years and ran a satellite U.S. attorney’s office for the last four of those years, in the Southern District of New York. Child pornography increasingly became a priority for the SDNY in the 1990s, with the ascendancy of the Internet, social media, and digital markets — which not only dramatically increased the volume of images but made interstate facilities, over which the federal government has jurisdiction, the dominant means of commerce in pornography and of soliciting minors for sexual purposes. The FBI worked the cases and combined with state and municipal police (including the NYPD) in sex-crimes task-force arrangements. Needless to say, we had lots of investigations.
Judge Jackson’s views on this matter are not only mainstream; they are correct in my view. Undoubtedly, Jackson — a progressive who worked as a criminal-defense lawyer — is more sympathetic to criminals than I am. If I were a judge, I’m sure I’d impose at least marginally more severe sentences than she has. (Contrary to Hawley’s suggestion, however, she appears to have followed the guidelines, at the low end of the sentencing range, as most judges do.) But other than the fact that Congress wanted to look as though it was being tough on porn, there’s no good reason for the mandatory minimum in question — and it’s unjust in many instances.