The Bogus Scotus Hearings are Shambolic Charades

Shôn Ellerton, Mar 30, 2022
My thorough disgust when a troop of baboons sink their teeth into an incoming Supreme Court Justice.

Can someone tell me why appointing a new Supreme Court justice in the United States requires day after day of useless inquisitions from petty, vindictive, and angry politicians? Many of which have not one iota of knowledge on the legal system.

Let me begin with the two most recent. The prolonged day-upon-day of hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson (KBJ) under Biden’s watch and of Amy Coney Barrett (ACB) under Trump’s watch. This illustrates the absurdity of the process of being sworn in as a United States Supreme Court Justice.

I’m not going to discuss how or why they were selected; however, I will point out the nasty and feeble attempts by some of the senators of the opposing party by playing the likes of petulant and misbehaving children in a playground digging up as much dirt as they can to discredit and tarnish a reputation of an incoming new Justice. If this took place in the world of chimpanzees, this would amount to defecating and throwing faeces at each other, animal behaviour at its worst to which David Attenborough would be in his element to create a new wildlife documentary on brainless politicians. I am generalising of course. Some of the questioning was legitimate and reasonable but much of it was a laughable attempt to knock the candidate down.

Let me make it clear as day that any candidate about to be sworn in as a chief judicial officer in the Supreme Court will, no doubt, know more about the legal system than most of us mere mortals. Those who aspire of becoming the best legal mind in the nation will, of course, jump at the chance of becoming a Supreme Court justice. The same applies for any professional field. To become a Justice, or any esteemed position in the Courts as way of being a lawyer, a barrister or a judge requires years of formal training to be qualified. However, this is not true of politicians, and it shows! An idiot could be a politician if he’s liked by the populace and judging from the average intelligence of today’s social media users, it is not particularly hard to understand why. I’m not saying that all politicians are idiots, but it riles me when idiotic questions are asked by politicians during these hearings.

The whole hearings process stinks to high heaven when senators batting for the other team throw probing and irrelevant questions, many of which are personal, demeaning, and downright insulting. It’s basically an arena in which respected, learned, and qualified people of the legal profession are thrown in with a bunch of ignorant and loud-mouthed politicians of behaviour and deportment more akin to a troop of baboons than of civilised society.

Start with ACB under Trump’s administration. The whole affair was treated atrociously by the media of the time pushing the anti-ACB rhetoric to the point of absurdity when many social media users, knowing very little or nothing at all of the legal system, started posting out abusive posts declaring ACB to be some extreme-right religious nutcase.

ACB was probed about her religious upbringing, itself, a very personal issue for anyone to be asked. And worse, she was slated by the social justice warriors behooved to the Democrats about her adopting a black kid, because it was thought that having a black adopted kid, she was, somehow absolved, of being white privileged or some other form of bovine scat. Another asinine question she was asked by an opposing senator, who didn’t waste much time to deliver it, was if she had a gun or not. Seriously, these are not very intelligent or, at all, relevant questions.

The pièce de resistance came when ACB was asked a series of questions by Senator John Cornyn, which surprisingly, was a Republican senator to which she responded in an admirable way. Cornyn further asked if she had her notes written out for her pre-prepared in her notebook which she had in front of her. She said no and held up her notepad, which was blank except for the printed letterhead, presumably from the hotel she was staying at. Senator John Cornyn muttered to say that was impressive and sat down like a scolded child.

Not long after ACB was confirmed, the press focussed onto more pertinent matters like the coronavirus and, of course, digging as much dirt as possible on Trump.

Roll ahead a couple of years under a new shining administration under Biden, the first day being successful, but alas, the remainder of which has made Biden the least popular president ever in modern history. Even more so than Trump according to the polls.

During Biden’s administration, a new candidate, KBJ, is given the same ridiculous treatment as ACB. This time, the Republicans took great delight in turning the tables in retribution by asking the most ridiculous questions and behaving like a bunch of morons. Case in point, I refer to Ted Cruz and his little crusade of a speech to force KBJ to admit that critical race theory is wrong and that she was wrong to lessen the sentences given to paedophiles. For the record, I personally do not agree with the tenets of critical race theory (CRT) nor do I condone the actions of paedophiles but hear me out.

Cruz started off his line of questioning with restraint and courtesy; however, I knew what was to come. And it did. In a nutshell, he questioned her opinion if CRT was a good thing hoping that she would elicit a response and ‘confess to her sins’. ‘Confess!’ ‘Confess, woman!!’ (sorry, I was thinking of a Monty Python sketch).

When she did not, he started to… and it was around this point, this proved more comical than absurd, Cruz miraculously revealed to the audience a number of books written by Kendi from behind the chair he was sitting on such as How to be an Antiracist Baby and Stamped. As if to say, “Hey guys, here’s one I prepared earlier!”  Furthermore, one of his cronies prepared enlargements of some of the pages in the book and displayed it behind him to make his point even more grotesquely clear.

Regarding the reduction in the sentences of the paedophiles, Cruz did the same again by procuring, as if by magic, a chart displaying the lessened sentences versus the standard recommended sentences. KBJ held her ground very well and answered that the chart data was cherry-picked and not showing the complete picture. And sure enough, this is true. Cruz did, in fact, select only the most extreme examples. Again, I make it patently clear that those involved in child pornography should be brought to justice, but how are we, as spectators of this complete sham of a hearing, be of expert opinion to understand the nuances of these cases? Do we start executing everyone who had any involvement with child pornography? Some would say yes, but unless one knows to what extent, this sets up dangerous and disturbing precedents.

It went even further when a senator asked her if she knew what a woman was?

Now, anyone asking such a patently absurd question should have one’s head examined in my opinion. Of course we all know that KBJ knows what a woman is but the point of the bullying exercise is to admit that she does not agree with the tenets of gender fluidity and that, by admitting her personal opinion, she would provide ammunition enough to warrant further pointless questioning. KBJ, no doubt, wanted to remain neutral on this topic and made a best attempt to avoid having to answer such an infantile question. She could have just answered, ‘yes’, which might have been the best course of action, but on the other hand, I have no doubt that she would have been dogged with a plethora of further questions like, ‘OK. How do you define a woman then?’

The circus just would have carried on fruitlessly.

I’m thoroughly fed up with these pointless charades against well-educated and highly qualified men and women of the legal profession by self-serving, needy, ignorant, distasteful, vengeful and, often, thoroughly nasty, and spiteful little politicians.