by Rajan Laad
The GOP may not have the numbers to stop Judge Jackson's appointment, but they certainly have a real occasion to give it back to the Democrats who claim to be the protectors of African-Americans and the adjudicators of what is and is not racist.
Back in 2003, President George W. Bush nominated Judge Janice Rogers Brown to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Brown not only was highly qualified, but also had the right kind of experience. She studied at UCLA law school. She had served as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court for seven years.
She also happened to be a non-white woman who came from a family of sharecroppers. She grew up in rural Alabama during the segregation era. She completed her college and law school education while supporting herself as a working single mother.
Making her a D.C. Circuit judge would have been a great message that education and hard work are the only way to elevate yourself. The message probably would have resonated most with African-Americans.
How did the Democrats, who are the dogmatic advocates of diversity, inclusion, and BLM, react?
They filibustered Brown's nomination, along with other Bush circuit court nominees.
Two years later, Bush re-nominated Brown.
This time, Brown was confirmed by a vote of 56 to 43 in exchange for Republican agreement to retain the filibuster for judicial nominations.
Voting against Brown on both occasions was a certain Senator Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
In November 2013, the then-Democratic Senate majority eliminated the filibuster for Executive Branch nominees and judicial nominees except for Supreme Court nominees, invoking the so-called nuclear option.
In 2006, when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement from the Supreme Court, according to the Washington Post, Brown was on President Bush's shortlist to replace her.
Once again, it would have been a historic and uplifting message across the nation. She would have been the first Black woman ever nominated to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
But Brown had a nemesis in Senator Joe Biden...
...who swiftly swung into action. During an interview on CBS's Face the Nation, Biden said that if Bush nominated Brown, "I can assure you that would be a very, very, very difficult fight and she probably would be filibustered." Biden added that the Supreme Court is a "totally different ballgame" because "a circuit court judge is bound by stare decisis. They don't get to make new law."
By stare decisis, Biden meant that a circuit court judge has to adjudicate cases, uphold precedents, or maintain former adjudications on issues, but a Supreme Court Judge eventually makes new law.
Strictly speaking, judges do not make laws; that is the function of Congress. However, written opinions and judgments by Supreme Court justices often serve as a source of law for future cases.
Bush eventually nominated Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
How would the current crop of race-hustling Democrats on MSNBC interpret Biden's actions and words?
They would have branded him a racist, with a claim that he thought an educated and experienced individual was unfit for both the circuit and supreme courts merely because of the color of her skin and her sex. They would have denounced him with all the pejorative epithets known to mankind.
If you ask the Democrats today why Biden opposed her, they will claim that it was because of her ideology. Brown opposed affirmative action and also supported limited abortion laws.
In other words, Democrats support only those Black people who think exactly as they do and support all their issues. A non-white person who had developed ideas of her own based on her life experiences has no place in the party.
The diversity in the modern Democrat playbook is the superficial sort — i.e., of skin pigment, sex, sexual orientation. But real kind of diversity — i.e., the diversity of ideas — is not welcomed, probably because the Democrats know that their core ideas are deficient.
A truly open-minded individual respects everyone, irrespective of demographic group and ideas. Only narrow-minded bigots restrict their approval to those who fully agree with them.
If a non-white woman thinks affirmative action is not the best way to uplift her community, she deserves to be listened to because she has firsthand experience. No such luck for Brown with the Democrats.
These days, Biden sings a different tune.
He claims that the filibuster is a "relic of the Jim Crow era," and hence, it should be done away with.
Last month, Joe Biden pledged to nominate "the first Black woman to the Supreme Court." A fortnight ago, Joe Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the federal appeals court to replace Justice Breyer.
The irony is not lost that it was Biden who once used the filibuster that he now calls anachronistic and bigoted to block the first Black woman to the Supreme Court that he now claims is long overdue.
Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin; Pennsylvania state rep. Malcolm Kenyatta; Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.); and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus, have already begun playing the race card hoping to scare and compel the GOP to vote for Jackson.
Judge Jackson's confirmation presents the GOP with a sterling opportunity to highlight the systemic racism within the Democrat party. The GOP can corner Jackson into calling the Democrats racist for what they did to Judge Janice Rogers Brown.
They can remind everybody that from the day it was founded in 1829, the Democrat party has fought every major civil rights initiative and has a long history of discrimination. They can highlight the fact that the Democrats defended slavery that caused the Civil War. They founded the Ku Klux Klan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynching, and fought the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s.
The GOP may not have the numbers to stop Judge Jackson's appointment, but they certainly have a real occasion to give it back to the Democrats, who claim to be the protectors of African-Americans and the adjudicators of what is and is not racist.
If they do so, they will be standing up not only for themselves, but also for their voters, who have gratuitously and baselessly been branded racist.
Let's hope the fighting spirit prevails.
Photo credit: YouTube screen grab.
Rajan Laad
Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/bidens_prior_filibuster_of_black_female_judicial_nominee_is_an_opportunity_for_the_gop_during_scotus_confirmation_hearing.html
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