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Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Is Spared the Kavanaugh Treatment

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Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson listens during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., March 21, 2022. (J. Scott Applewhite/Pool via Reuters)

Judge Jackson’s confirmation should go smoothly because she happens to have the ‘correct’ partisan affiliation.

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Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we remember the vicious attempt to smear Brett Kavanaugh, recall the effort to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, and hit more media misses.

Judge Jackson’s Saving Grace

Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee to replace Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, is on Capitol Hill today for her first day of confirmation hearings. The D.C. Circuit judge is expected — barring any earth-shattering surprises — to be consented to by the Democratic majority and a small number of Republicans as well.

Most Senate Republicans will oppose Jackson, and for good reason. Like Breyer, for whom she clerked, Jackson holds to a jurisprudence that values subjective practicality over the plain text of legislation and original meaning of the Constitution. And despite Senator Josh Hawley’s best efforts, it’s that, rather than misleading claims about her sentencing record, that will dominate Republican talking points at her hearings.

Contrast the substantive criticism of her judicial philosophy with the treatment of Republican nominees, and you have to think Jackson must be particularly grateful for her partisan affiliation at this moment.

Consider the treatment of the three most recently confirmed justices, all of whom were nominated by Donald Trump. 

Tim Kaine, the “moderate” Virginia senator whom Hillary Clinton tapped as her vice-presidential nominee, falsely alleged that Neil Gorsuch had asserted that the use of contraceptives constituted “wrongdoing.” Senator Jeff Merkley called Gorsuch “illegitimate.” Senator Dick Durbin, now the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, professed to be earnestly trying “to understand what Neil Gorsuch’s heart is leading him to,” by implying that Gorsuch ruled against an autistic child in a lawsuit against a school district out of a personal animus toward disabled children.

Trump’s second nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, endured hell when Democrats abandoned any sense of objectivity, taking an uncorroborated allegation of sexual assault from thirty years ago and treated it as the gospel truth. 

Senator Dianne Feinstein, then the Democratic leader on the Judiciary Committee, leaked the letter she had received making the accusation of Kavanaugh at the eleventh hour despite having had it in her possession for months, and having never brought it up during the initial round of hearings. 

Multiple members of the committee, including Kamala Harris, implied that Kavanaugh’s refusal to call for an FBI investigation of himself was a sign of guilt. 

Senators Richard Blumenthal and Sheldon brought up a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s and argued on national television that Kavanaugh had boasted about his sexual conquest of her in a yearbook. Whitehouse tried to ascribe sexual references to other childish slang used in his yearbook, including “boofed,” and “Devil’s Triangle.”

Even before the evidence-free sexual assault allegation, Kavanaugh was forced to evade a Democratic character-assination attempt. Senator Cory Booker, for example, violated Senate rules by releasing classified emails about racial profiling that Kavanaugh had sent as a member of the Bush administration, dubbing himself “Spartacus.”

Zina Bash, a former Kavanaugh clerk of Mexican descent, was accused by CBS News among other outlets, of flashing a “white power” sign during the hearings. 

CNN reported that Kavanaugh had snubbed the father of one of the children who died in the Parkland school shooting when he inappropriately rushed toward Kavanaugh after one of the hearings.

Senator Bob Menendez sent the following tweet, pushing blame for tragic school shootings on to the nominee:

Finally, Amy Coney Barrett, the third of Trump’s nominees, was greeted with still more hysteria. 

Senator Ed Markey accused her of holding to a “sexist,” “racist,” and “homophobic” judicial philosophy. Senator Whitehouse tried to kick dust up in the air about Barrett supporting the imposition of the death penalty for women who have abortions

Senator Mazie Hirono tried to make a mountain out of a mole hill, by accusing Barrett of offending the LGBT community by using the term “sexual preference.” Joe Biden, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and fellow Judiciary Committee Democrats had all previously used the term.

The New York Times, meanwhile, published seven consecutive opinion pieces fretting about Barrett’s nomination. Ibram X. Kendi analyzed Barrett’s adoption of two Hatian children thus:

Ketanji Brown Jackson will no doubt face some tough lines of questioning over the course of her confirmation process, but she should wake up every day this week thanking God she wasn’t nominated by a Republican.

We Have Always Been at War with Hunter Biden

The New York Times’ acknowledgment that emails found on a laptop left at a repair shop in Delaware did belong to Hunter Biden seems to have brought an end to the years-long effort to defame those who originally reported on the emails, including the New York Post. It’s worth remembering those who erroneously treated the Post story as disinformation, including:

– White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who called it Russian disinformation: 

– Senator Chris Coons said he was “glad” that the Post story was suppressed by Facebook and Twitter.

– CNN’s Brian Stelter, who called it a “manufactured scandal:

– NPR, which deemed the story a “waste” of time:

Apologies from Psaki, Coons Stelter, and NPR have not been forthcoming.

Headline Fail of the Week

The Internet seemed to come together this week to unanimously decry a Bloomberg opinion column that suggested, among other things, that Americans should “rethink costly pet medical needs” to cope with rising inflation.

The column, “Inflation Stings Most If You Earn Less Than $300K. Here’s How to Deal,” offered several suggestions, including to take the bus, avoid buying in bulk and try lentils instead of meat.

“If you’re one of the many Americans who became a new pet owner during the pandemic, you might want to rethink those costly pet medical needs. It may sound harsh, but researchers actually don’t recommend pet chemotherapy — which can cost up to $10,000 — for ethical reasons.”

“Nobody said this would be fun,” the column’s author, labor and retirement expert Teresa Ghilarducci writes.

Media Misses

– Jack Posobiec — of Pizzagate fame — is upset with Andy McCarthy’s analysis of the aforementioned Hawley’s questions about Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record: 

Note his failure to engage with Andy’s arguments. One might expect Posobiec to show some humility on this subject, but then again, one would be wrong to expect anything of him.

– President Biden noted the anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings by calling them “a stark reminder that anti-Asian violence and discrimination have deep roots in our nation.” Prosecutors who have secured a sentence of four lifetimes in prison for the perpetrator have acknowledged that there’s nothing to suggest the crimes were racially motivated. 

– After asking White House press secretary Jen Psaki if the Biden administration has a position on the effort in Congress to make Daylight Saving Time permanent, Washington Post reporter Ashley Parker followed up with a softball, asking if the president is “more of a morning person or afternoon person”:

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