Mimes in Robes

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/why-it-matters-that-trumps-judicial-nominees-refuse-to-answer-questions-about-brown-v-board.html

Mimes in Robes
Trump’s judicial nominees are now refusing to answer any questions about what it is they actually believe.

By Perry Grossman and Dahlia Lithwick
April 26, 20185:46 PM

snip//

If nominees refuse to give their views about whether Brown was correctly decided, will they also refuse to give their views on Dred Scott, which refuted the very humanity of black Americans? What about the internment of Japanese Americans, which the court held lawful in Korematsu but has since been recognized as one of the most shameful moments in American political or legal history?

Judges, especially district court judges, also have to deal with stubborn things called facts. A nominee who accepts conspiracy theories and rejects science is not qualified to do the basic job of weighing evidence. Senators can and should inquire whether a nominee believes the overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is manmade and rejects the completely baseless assertion that there is widespread voter fraud in our elections. Does the nominee believe in evolution or does she believe The Flintstones was a documentary? Is the nominee precluded from commenting on science because it might come up in a case before them?

The answers to these questions should not be controversial. But in the Trump era, facts are met with “alternative facts,” Islamophobia and xenophobia become the basis for public policy, and white supremacy continues its creep into the mainstream. Since the first orders blocking the travel ban on Jan. 28, 2017, the federal judiciary has been a bulwark against these pernicious forces. But Trump and the ultraconservative ideologues to whom he has outsourced his nominations threaten to undermine those protections as they confirm judges at record rates. Democrats can’t filibuster Trump’s nominees, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley’s decision to selectively ignore the long-standing “blue slip” tradition—whereby senators from a nominee’s home state can block a hearing by withholding their endorsements—Democrats have lost all but one tool for stopping the worst of the worst from receiving lifetime appointments. All Democrats can do at this point is subject nominees’ records to close scrutiny and aggressively question them at hearings to expose their most radical views and/or lack of qualifications. But this strategy—which has forced the withdrawal of three of Trump’s most controversial nominees—only works when the public takes notice and puts pressure on the few Republicans willing to defy the administration.

The egregious, the unbelievable, and the heartbreaking continue to occur at unprecedented and accelerating rates. With each new outrage, a little more fatigue sets in and a little more awfulness gets normalized. Some of these outrages may die with the midterms, others with the 2020 election. But long after Trump has ceased to be president, his confirmed judges will affect the course of American law for generations, dragging off-the-wall views out of anonymous blogs and closed-door speeches and into the nation’s courtrooms.

It’s frightening and destabilizing to watch ridiculous notions about pregnant migrants and transgender service members make their way into the legal discourse. But let’s remember to pay careful attention as well to what’s fallen out of the legal discourse under the pretextual guise of neutrality and sobriety. Basic ideas about equality and race are slipping out of the canon of universally accepted legal truths. That shouldn’t be met with silence.

[TheSmarterDog]

1. Willful ignorance & arrogant stupidity are now official Republican policy positions.