Lawrence helps us know what to think and say!

TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2022

These legal experts today: Last night, Lawrence O'Donnell began and ended his Last Word program with segments about the impending confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the Supreme Court.

In his final segment, he spoke with two MSNBC legal contributors. The first Q-and-A went like this:

O'DONNELL (4/5/22): Professor Murray, first of all your reaction to what we saw this morning in the Judiciary Committee's meeting...

MURRAY: Well again, I think we saw a reprise of what we saw last week, which is the Republicans manufacturing objections to a jurist that many of them voted to confirm just a year earlier...

These legal experts today! 

Within that Senate committee, were Republicans voicing objections to someone they had voted for only last year?

Actually, no. Last June, Judge Jackson was confirmed to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Of the eleven Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, only one—Lindsey Graham—voted to confirm her to that post. 

The other ten all voted no last year, even before they manufactured their new objections in the past few weeks.

At this point, Lawrence threw to his second contributor. Her response was intriguing too. She seemed to say that black women have to be three times as good—not merely twice as good—to get where Judge Jackson has gotten.

Judge Jackson has had a very impressive career. In line with current operations of our Potemkin national discourse, Lawrence and his legal experts were telling us what sorts of things we tribals should think, and what sorts of things we should say.

To watch the fuller exchange: To watch the fuller exchange, you can just click here. No transcript of Lawrence's show is available. The Channel is too smart for that.

7 comments:

  1. Yeah, dembots and their dembot "experts".

    ...not to mention their dembot "fact-checkers".

    Thank God they're all rotting in the same compost bin, known as the establishment media...

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  2. "Judge Jackson has had a very impressive career. In line with current operations of our Potemkin national discourse, Lawrence and his legal experts were telling us what sorts of things we tribals should think, and what sorts of things we should say."

    How is this not true of any cable news celebrity on every channel, including Fox News?

    And how is it that Lawrence was telling is this stuff and not the people he interviewed?

    Where is Somerby's evidence that Jackson did not have to be three times better than any other nominee? She is clearly much better than Kavanaugh and yet these Republicans won't vote for her. Neither will Somerby, who voiced a whole lot of complaints about her, including that her responses to questions were mediocre. Seems to me her failure to measure up to Somerby's standards confirms the remark about her needing to be three times better than other nominees, to overcome the belief that she just doesn't measure up, illustrated by Somerby himself!

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  3. "Actually, no. Last June, Judge Jackson was confirmed to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Of the eleven Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, only one—Lindsey Graham—voted to confirm her to that post.

    The other ten all voted no last year, even before they manufactured their new objections in the past few weeks."

    But did they all vote no on her when the wider senate voted on her nomination? There are two votes involved -- the committee vote to recommend the candidate to the entire body, and the vote by all of the senators. How bipartisan was that second vote? It was 53-44.

    Somerby says: "The other ten all voted no last year, even before they manufactured their new objections in the past few weeks."

    This is not true. Ben Sasse did not vote during the senate-wide vote.

    When Somerby gets to nit-picking, he too makes mistakes. Like this one. You always must verify whatever he says. Does this mistake make any more difference than the one he complains about? No that I can see.

    The Judiciary Committee did recommend Jackson to the wider Senate as a committee, even if the vote was split. Graham did vote with the Democrats to move her nomination forward. He did change his vote and decide not to recommend her when she was nominated to the Supreme Court. Sasse was on the committee too. He voted against her during committee but changed his vote to "not voting" for the Senate vote. Lindsay Graham voted Yes, as did Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski. Mitt Romney did not support Jackson last time but says he will for Supreme Court, thus he too is changing his vote.

    So, it is Sasse, Romney and Graham who are changing their votes, not Graham alone (Sasse was on the Judiciary Committee too).

    This is highly partisan political maneuvering, not any kind of measure of Jackson's suitability for the high court. Somerby knows that. He is pretending that Jackson is being over-hyped, pretending that he doesn't know how to evaluate her performance, while expressing the same complaints as the Republicans who grandstanded at her hearing. No other liberals are behaving that way, which makes Somerby's claim to be liberal sound ridiculous.

    We have to view Somerby's performance this week in the context of his ongoing vendetta against women, black women, and especially black women with expertise, such as professors, lawyers and authors of books. He just doesn't like women much and being black makes it worse. And while that may be a pecularity of Somerby's life experiences, most liberals are supportive of women's accomplishments and recognize the need to achieve greater balance in positions of power. When a man opposes both women and black people's aspirations, it is hard to say he has much in common with liberals, progressives, or the Democratic party. Put that together with Somerby's attitudes on a variety of other issues, and he just doesn't meet any criteria for calling himself liberal. In fact, he sounds like a charlatan who is trying to dupe the unsuspecting reader into accepting his criticisms of Jackson, who is a nominee widely supported by most liberals. So I have to ask -- who does Somerby think he is fooling?

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  4. Lindsay Graham flipped from supporting Jackson to opposing her nomination for supreme court. But Mitt Romey flipped from opposing Jackson to support her for the supreme court. I wonder what he saw in her during this hearing that he missed before? Or maybe he didn't like the stunts his fellow Republicans were pulling?

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  5. Or we could scroll down and see all the work Bob has
    done in the last few weeks to assist Marjorie Taylor
    Greene ("Any Senator voting to confirm KJB is pro-pedophile just like She is") and all the work She has done.

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  6. Here is what Tom Cotton said about Ketanji Brown Jackson today:

    "You know the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the Nazis. This Judge Jackson may have gone there to defend them."

    Based on his track record, Somerby might think that is a reasonable "question" too. Maybe he thinks Jackson should be asked to define what a Nazi is?

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  7. "Romney, who voted against confirming Jackson to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last year, said he grew more comfortable with the idea of her sitting on the Supreme Court after meeting her in person and reviewing her record.

    “I had concerns in the past that she was not part of the mainstream. During our conversation together and during the hearing, I concluded that she was. That plus her qualifications got me where I was,” he explained.

    Romney, who was elected to the Senate in 2018, said he’s not exactly sure how future confirmation debates should play out but expressed concern about the intense partisanship surrounding recent nominees.

    “The real question for me will be when you have a party in power in the Senate that’s different from the president, how are we going to get the judiciary filled?” he said. “That’s why I think Sen. Collins raised the issues she did.”

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