"... the implication that she has a soft spot for 'sex offenders' who 'prey on children' because she argued against a severe mandatory-minimum prison sentence for the receipt and distribution of pornographic images is a smear."
Writes Andrew McCarthy in "Senator Hawley’s Disingenuous Attack against Judge Jackson’s Record on Child Pornography" (National Review).
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64 comments:
Progressives love their Pedophiles. They do whatever they can to protect them.....even make them the victims.
Simply put, McCarthy is utterly, stupendous incorrect here. Judge Brown's solicitousness towards sex offenders guilty of child-related crimes is reprehensible, and it is not a smear to point out the nonsensibility of her writings on the subject.
If I was a black person, any black person, or a woman, any woman, I would consider her nomination to be an insult.
The fact that so many don't is more indicative of blacks and women than Jackson.
Andy McCarthy, with all due respect, is a pussy.
One of the things I despise about left and right ism in today's culture is reflexive opposition. Supreme Court nominees are one of the best examples, but far from the only.
She's a solid choice for a democrat president in the early part of his term. Period. She's going to get confirmed. We shouldn't operate down a justice, and there are far worse choices out there.
The right should be using this as an opportunity to build long term relationships, collegiality, and be grown ups.
Instead they are looking for opportunities to score minor points that make them look petty and won't change the outcome.
Well, Hawley knows his audience.
The next thing you know, they'll be dredging up her high school yearbook pictures and tales of wild carousing back when she hung with the Boyz in the Hood. I'm sure a witness will come forward to document her atrocious behavior. And those hateful Republicans will be banging on the doors of the Supreme Court to get their voices heard.
What' that you say? She is a Democrat sponsored nominee? Well then, never mind.
Oh brother. NR strikes again. Hawley is using actual facts and her own words to condemn. The Dems make up rape and sexual harassment, but NR trots out both sideism. So dumb.
Possibly, and possibly not, there was an African-American female judge that would not allow a boy that violently shot a girl multiple times to be tried as an adult, the girl was White, the boy was Black and killed her and brandished the gun to another girl for no reason.
The story is here:
https://www.nbc12.com/2021/12/16/circuit-court-rules-suspect-lucia-bremer-murder-be-tried-adult/
Needless to say, families were outraged at the Juvenile Court, and the Circuit Court did the correct thing.
We all know that being placed on a sex-offender list has serious consequences. Anyone who pays even nominal attention knows that, as a society, we are very careless about who gets put on them such that the lists include large numbers of people who are not dangerous sex criminals by any sane standard. And those people have their lives ruined for no good reason.
So what is more likely? That Judge Brown wants us to use a more sane and humane standard for labelling people sex offenders or she has built a long successful legal and judicial career around having a soft spot for pedophiles? (There is a correct answer.)
Yeah, well, McCarthy thought AGOTUS nominee Eric Holder was peachy-keen and to be trusted and Scooter Libby prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was aces. What does HE know.
McCarthy also thought the FBI/DOJ were squeaky clean and deserved the “benefit of the doubt” even after it was clear Comey used the PDB to try and entrap Trump instead of, you know, actually briefing the POTUS. So I don’t take anything he writes defending the Swamp at face value any longer. Hawley’s explanations were crisp and clear, to coin a phrase, and I’ll need to hear KJB offer an equally clear response before I can agree with McCarthy.
Maybe it’s KBJ not KJB.
Was the argument that she found compelling the selfie one? The teenagers who send sexy pics to one another? Paywall (or at least subscription wall), you know.
If so, I get it. But that's a solvable problem, legislatively, it seems to me, so I suppose I would next need to be know how she wrote her opinion. If that's something she did.
Needless to say, IANAL.
Hawley from the Pro Putin wing of the Republican Party.
Now do actual false allegations of rape and sexual harassment.....
"a smear"
Spare me.
"Senator Hawley’s Disingenuous Attack against Judge Jackson’s Record on Child Pornography"
Why disingenuous? It's completely clear and above board, based on her actual record, judged by conservative standards. Of course, RINOs may disagree, but to call the criticism disingenuous is itself a smear.
McCarthy once again takes the position of the all-knowing expert whose opinions are the truth. Well, America’s representatives of the people passed a law with a minimum sentence. Since when did Americans grant guys like him the right to put his views and values above those of the people? If McCarthy didn’t like the law so much, why haven’t we seen him do the right thing and campaign for a change in the law? The plain fact is that child sexual abuse DESTROYS the lives of its victims. Much of the abuse is profit-making so penalizing those who pay for the pictures and videos is critical to saving the poor children whose lives are DESTROYED by this business. I doubt McCarthy would feel so lenient if the pervert possessed pictures or video of his little son or daughter being abused. This leniency has to end. It is not porn, it is sexual abuse of the most vulnerable among us. McCarthy should be ashamed of himself.
The other canard McCarthy uses is that prisons make people into criminals. Another excuse to be lenient. Meanwhile the abused child is in a mental anguish prison every day of their life. If prisons should be organized and run in another way, then where is McCarthy leading the cause for reform?
Narratives exist to make a point. When something can feed that narrative, it will be appropriated. The area of vulnerability has been identified.
Whether or not the tactical goal of stopping a nomination is achieved, the overall strategic goal of creating as unattractive a meme as can be imagined to brand your opposition will not be foregone in this day and age. Politics ain't beanbag, and these are not ladies and gentlemen, no matter how well they dress, what credential they carry or what their honeyed arguments may say.
Is it true, or not? It's not as if there's no data to either support or contest the argument - she's in a cohort of professionals that make similar judgments, on the record. It's not something that is properly cast as a subjective issue. Why does McCarthy, Inside-the-Beltway animal that he is, decide to place it in the subjective philosophical frame like this, where it cannot be decisively contested and resolved? It's coming down to crunch time now, the fatal flaws in the Woke tendentious arguments have become more obvious and unsupportable, and in their desperation all the phonies are stepping on their....neckties.
......but it's her turn!!
McCarthy is a certified member of the Deep State. Remember that and anything else is easy to understand.
Social progress, and don't spare the child.
Andy McCarthy has bad judgement. For the longest time, he couldn’t see how corrupt the FBI was.
Even regular criminals hate sex criminals in the Big House.
Uh Oh. Republicans are pouncing!
The horror ... the horror!
Andrew McCarthy here is engaging in the "tsk tsk, he's not our sort of people" that grows so tiresome among the leading Republican ignorati.
Senator Hawley is making a legitimate point, it's just that it is not Andrew McCarthy's point. And then McCarthy says that he (McCarthy) has good reasons to oppose the nomination.
And so McCarthy goes "tsk tsk". It's a bad habit and there are a lot of Republicans who should break it.
Andrew McCarthy should join the Lincoln Project. He's fit right in with those pedophiles and Confederate States of American wannabes.
"...the implication that she has a soft spot for 'sex offenders' who 'prey on children' because she argued against a severe mandatory-minimum prison sentence for the receipt and distribution of pornographic images is a smear."
Why, that's impossible! Look at what happened to Judge (now Justice) Thomas and Judge (now Justice) Kavanaugh. There are no smears in the Supreme Court Derby. There are just inquiries. What has McCarthy got against inquiries into Judge Jackson Brown's pleas for pedos? Julie Swetnick and Michael Avenatti want to know. So do the viewers of CNN and MSBNBC, who heard from Avenatti--now in jail--more than 100 times each.
Andrew McCarthy is wrong. Her record of soft pedaling pedophiles is public and detailed. It is not a smear to speak the truth. She should be asked pointed and direct questions concerning her record and her judicial philosophy concerning pedophiles.
Sen. Hawley has made this specific claim about Judge Jackson: "In every single child porn case for which we can find records, Judge Jackson deviated from the federal sentencing guidelines in favor of child porn offenders."
Mr. McCarthy does not address this statement. I'm curious whether it is true, and if it makes any difference to Mr. McCarthy's argument. I understand his argument against overly-strict mandatory minimum sentences; it is the "every single case" that catches my eye.
McCarthy is spot on.
Free speech law is screwed up, and it's been screwed up since Hugo Black passed away. Hugo Black is, by far, the best jurist we've had on the Supreme Court, and the guy who really understood the First Amendment.
What Black would tell you is that there's a speech/conduct distinction. That's of primary importance. You can punish people for conduct. You can't punish them for speech.
How does this play out?
You can't make it a crime to read a book, or watch a movie. A movie -- which encompasses both "speech" and "press" -- is absolutely protected under the First Amendment.
I'll give you some examples.
It's illegal to kill a baby. Kermit Gosnell was prosecuted and convicted for murder for killing newborns in his abortion clinic. But it's not a crime to look at photographs of his victims. Nor is it a crime to look at a movie of Gosnell stabbing a baby. Obviously the cops, the prosecutors, and the jury had to see these photographs. Should we arrest them now? The photograph is not a crime. And a movie is not a crime, either.
Killing a baby, raping a baby, these are horrific crimes. Maybe there are some sick people who would enjoy watching this violence. But we don't punish people for their mindset, or their emotions. We don't punish people for having bad souls.
The crime in a pedophile case is the crime of rape. The movie or photograph is evidence of the crime. The movie is not the crime. It's evidence of the crime. Basic Free Speech 101.
Can you punish a film director or producer for hiring people to rape a baby? Of course. The crime is sexual assault and conspiracy to commit sexual assault. The film or photograph is proof that a crime happened. But the movie is not the crime. Watching the movie might be an awful experience. But it's not illegal to watch a movie or look at a photograph.
I'll go further. Is it illegal to pay people to have sex? Yes. It's called prostitution. It's a misdemeanor. Might be a stupid misdemeanor, but I think most states still outlaw it. What that means is that if you are shooting a porno, and you pay your actors to have sex with each other, you are guilty of prostitution and can be charged for that crime. It's just a misdemeanor, nowhere near as serious as rape or murder. But it's still an action, it's conduct, and there is no right to prostitution in the U.S. Constitution.
But there is a First Amendment right to watch a movie, read a book, and think the thoughts you want to think. So you can't punish somebody for watching a porno. They're not engaged in prostitution, that's way too sloppy and ridiculous. So our judges should protect speech -- absolutely -- and let states outlaw the bad acts they want to outlaw.
What do the pedos have on Andy, anyway?
"The old-school liberals, those who have been around for three or four decades, say that none of this was supposed to happen." Uh. Huh. *eye roll*
This is one of the more depressing things I've read lately. What's even more depressing is how many people will be incapable of understanding the implications if confronted with information like this. When you evaluate Judge Jackson based on this, then McCarthy's verbal vomit is understandable. Stances like this should not be a surprise.
Is McCarthy saying Jackson is incapable of explaining her position on the federal penalties for child porn?
Ah, I see a conservative is in policing-the-right mode.
National Review, checks out.
Andy McCarthy, last seen passionately vouching for every single democrat and corrupt deep stater, but only every single time (go back and see his incrediblely over the top endorsement of Garland as AG) leaps into action to defend a far left democratical judicial nominee.
Gee, who could have seen that coming?
National Review = The Weekly Standard
I don't see anyone giving any counter-example, where Brown was guilty as charged by Hawley.
"There are strong philosophical arguments for opposing Judge Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court. And she may in fact be too solicitous of criminals. But the implication that she has a soft spot for 'sex offenders' who 'prey on children' because she argued against a severe mandatory-minimum prison sentence for the receipt and distribution of pornographic images is a smear."
No, it's a factual statement about the reality of her actions and decisions.
She had a guy who was planning on traveling to get to see a naked 9 year old doing a pron shoot (if I understand the details correctly), and she STILL sentenced below the "mandatory minimum".
She had a father who sent out porn of his 10 year old daughter. S till below the "mandatory minimum"
Those laws were put on the books because left wing "judges" like KJB were being too sfoft on criminals.
She ignored them because she WANTS to be too soft on criminals.
Her choice, she owns it
Andy McCarthy is a worthless pile of garbage, and I'm shamed that I ever believed him about anything
TreeJoe said...
One of the things I despise about left and right ism in today's culture is reflexive opposition. Supreme Court nominees are one of the best examples, but far from the only.
Fuck you
She's a solid choice for a democrat president in the early part of his term. Period. She's going to get confirmed. We shouldn't operate down a justice, and there are far worse choices out there.
1: She's an evil pile of garbage, a lover and defender of terrorists and pedophiles (the Left told us during the Trump Admin that you could be morally stained by defending the wrong client, like Trump. Well, that makes defenders of terrorists, pedophiles, and child pornographers even worse.)
2: No, she isn't necessarily going to get confirmed
3: We're not "down a Justice", Breyer isn't leaving until his replacement is confirmed
4: The far worse choices can be rejected, too
The right should be using this as an opportunity to build long term relationships, collegiality, and be grown ups.
You mean the Right shoudl be pathetic losers who let themselves get screwed over at no cost to the screwers. Fuck that
Instead they are looking for opportunities to score minor points that make them look petty and won't change the outcome.
So, in other words, you're a hard-core lefty whose desperate to get teh GOP to give up
Go away, Troll
The democrats of the Hillary Clinton for President National Review continue to show they are typical wimpy “conservatives” giving cover for their democrat patrons. Who she defended is fair game NOW per the standard the democrats are using. Against trump lawyers and j6 defenders.
Go to **** you spineless losers.
Vote her down and bring up every single child rapist and murderer she defended. And if you want to go out and create some, do that as well.
She is a democrat, defeat her.
Treejoe you sound just like a typical civility bullshit democrat. No thanks, I no longer care about civility because it will be shoved down my throat along with my teeth.
Man the hell up.
Christopher said...
"Ah, I see a conservative is in policing-the-right mode. National Review, checks out."
It harkens back to the early days of National Review, when one of its founding purposes was to rid the right of unsavory elements such as the John Birchers. Nowadays NR engages in policing for a less idealistic purpose. It needs to keep the Google money flowing, without which the magazine might go under.
Well, I believe whatever McCarthy says, because he's a staunch, life-long conservative.
GatorNavy said...
Andrew McCarthy is wrong. Her record of soft pedaling pedophiles is public and detailed.
=========
let me ask the following : if Ketanji J Brown were to be asked about an adult putting pubic hair on can of coke while talking to adult colleague - what is her evaluation of this conduct?
"How does this play out?"
You know that hundred kilos of Columbian snow flake the cops found in my garage? That was just my way of protesting the unjust drug laws of fascist Amerika!
We arrest people for possession of all sorts of prohibited items based on probable use and the fact that the production of the item itself is illegal. Child porn is produced by abusing and exploiting children. That's illegal. The person collecting that shit is helping to contribute to that crime.
Neil Gorsuch said that a judge who likes all his decisions is a bad judge.
He was right.
KJB apparently won't make a decision she won't like.
She's a bad judge, and not fit for the Supreme Court of the United States.
We all know that being placed on a sex-offender list has serious consequences. Anyone who pays even nominal attention knows that, as a society, we are very careless about who gets put on them such that the lists include large numbers of people who are not dangerous sex criminals by any sane standard. And those people have their lives ruined for no good reason
100%
So what is more likely? That Judge Brown wants us to use a more sane and humane standard for labelling people sex offenders or she has built a long successful legal and judicial career around having a soft spot for pedophiles? (There is a correct answer.)
Tim nails it, too.
"Soft on pedophiles" morphs into "pedophile" and after some more discussion you can just label her "Nazi."
I don't mind sharp questions -- I wish the Supreme Court nominees got asked some obvious questions that have dogged Supreme Court jurisprudence. "Do you know what a person is?" That's the sort of question that can lead to "Nazi" and "slave-owner" and "baby-killer" commentary if you answer it incorrectly. So it's a sharp question, but a fair one.
Republicans don't ask questions like that because the Republicans on the Supreme Court also do not know what a person is. So all those Republican politicians who say they believe that life begins at conception? Fuck you, you lying hypocrites. If you did believe that, your questions would be like my questions.
Does she think it's okay to stab a baby in the middle of birth? That's a fair question. And yet watch as no Republican asks that, or anything like that.
tim maguire said...
We all know that being placed on a sex-offender list has serious consequences. Anyone who pays even nominal attention knows that, as a society, we are very careless about who gets put on them such that the lists include large numbers of people who are not dangerous sex criminals by any sane standard. And those people have their lives ruined for no good reason.
So what is more likely? That Judge Brown wants us to use a more sane and humane standard for labelling people sex offenders or she has built a long successful legal and judicial career around having a soft spot for pedophiles? (There is a correct answer.)
In every single case where she had a choice, she went below the "mandatory minimum".
Every single one
So:
1: She hasn't had a long legal career. If she had, she wouldn't be being nominated for SCOTUS, because she's be to old to be nominated
2: She clearly has a soft spot for pedophiles. You know, like the guy who traded child for of his own 10 year old daughter.
Saint Croix said...
"Soft on pedophiles" morphs into "pedophile" and after some more discussion you can just label her "Nazi."
Please name one actual child pron owning pedophile brought before her that she was hard on
Just 1.
I'll wait
Does she think it's okay to stab a baby in the middle of birth? That's a fair question. And yet watch as no Republican asks that, or anything like that.
Roe's getting tossed before she gets on the court
. So your questions are no longer relevant
There are diverse precedents for this inference in judgments and labels that follow from known and imagined progressive processes; from diversity, inequity, and exclusion; handmade tales of rape... rape-rape [culture]; etc. Most, if not all, the advocates and activists for her nomination and liberalizing social standards of sex exploitation, age exploitation, etc., are of the extreme belief that they can abort the baby, cannibalize her profitable parts, sequester her carbon pollutants, and have her, too, for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes. That said, this progression is not unexpected when first you practice to play with double-edged scalpels.
"Does she think it's okay to stab a baby in the middle of birth? That's a fair question. And yet watch as no Republican asks that, or anything like that."
Roe's getting tossed before she gets on the court. So your questions are no longer relevant
Yes, many, perhaps more, prefer to go along to get along, but not all men and women do or will take a knee.
A GOP Senator should ask her opinion on what has been done to the Jan 6th Political prisoners. And her opinion of canceling Trumps lawyers. And the canceling of conservative speakers at law schools.
The entire legal system is at risk as being seen as impartial due to these actions.
Unfortunately I doubt anyone in the Gop will ask them. Much easier to virtue signal instead of upsetting the establishment.
Some of Hawley's data about KJB you all seem to be ignoring:
In United States v. Stewart, the criminal possessed thousands of images of child porn and also hoped to travel across state lines to abuse a 9-year-old girl. The Guidelines called for a sentence of 97-121 months. Judge Jackson sentenced the criminal to just 57 months.
In United States v. Sears, the sex offender distributed more than 102 child porn videos. He also sent lewd pictures of his own 10-year-old daughter. The Guidelines recommended 97-121 months in prison. Judge Jackson gave him 71 months.
In United States v. Savage, the sex offender was convicted of travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, and also admitted to transporting child porn. The Guidelines recommended 46-57 months. Judge Jackson gave him 37.
Please do tell us, which of these are "not really pedophiles"?
Which are just some poor innocent people who are deserving of leniency?
And why?
n.n said...
"Does she think it's okay to stab a baby in the middle of birth? That's a fair question. And yet watch as no Republican asks that, or anything like that."
Roe's getting tossed before she gets on the court. So your questions are no longer relevant
Yes, many, perhaps more, prefer to go along to get along, but not all men and women do or will take a knee.
1: I do find it amusing, the people who don't pull in the name of the person they're "responding to". Almost like they want to get in a cheap shot, and hope not to be noticed by the person they're taking the cheap shot at.
2: I prefer to win. Not to virtue signal. Even when what one's signaling is actually virtuous.
The person to challenge with the "stab a baby in the middle of birth" question is one of the Democrat Senators who voted to filibuster the Born Alive Infant's Protection Act, not a judicial nominee who
A: will simply respond with babbling BS
B: isn't in the job of deciding what's "ok", but deciding what the law and Constitution specify
So, other than that the question is stupidly phrased, irrelevant to the nominee in question, and won't forward the goals of either
A: Beating said nominee
B: Beating any Democrat Senators from swing States who vote for her
It's a great idea.
/sarc just in case you missed it
You do you
Please do tell us, which of these are "not really pedophiles"?
Those do seem good examples.
Hawley said the U.S. Sentencing Commission has refused to provide the committee with all of Jackson’s records from her time spent there
in a properly run Senate, there would be no hearings until they turned over that information
Roe's getting tossed before she gets on the court. So your questions are no longer relevant.
I hope you're right but I'm only guardedly optimistic. Republicans thought the Court would overturn Roe in Casey. That was in 1992. Now it's 30 years and 30 million abortions later.
As for relevance, nobody on the Supreme Court -- including Scalia or Thomas -- has ever said that an unborn baby is a person with a right to life. Nobody has applied the equal protection clause to the abortion issue. Not even in the partial-birth abortion cases, when the baby was (arguably) a citizen of the United States.
You think pro-lifers just want Roe v. Wade to be overruled? I want the killing to stop!
All overruling Roe v. Wade does is send the issue back to the states. So of course whether the unborn baby is a person with a right to life is still relevant, regardless of what the Supreme Court does in this current case.
I have no idea if the Supreme Court is going to overturn Roe v. Wade, or just overturn part of it (like they did in Casey). They could (easily) ditch the viability standard and affirm Roe's "central holding" that there's a right to abort pregnancies, and any regulatory statute is fine as long as it's not an "undue burden" on the right to abort pregnancies. That would be insane horseshit, but it's entirely possible some of the Republicans would vote for something like that.
You say overruling Roe makes this issue irrelevant. Do you not realize that even if Roe is overruled, plenty of states will attempt to make it legal to kill babies, including babies in the middle of birth? It will continue to be an issue that bedevils our authorities until they fix the fuck-up. The vast majority of the Supreme Court is in cover-our-ass mode and are worried more about their power and authority than whether any innocent baby has been killed.
The person to challenge with the "stab a baby in the middle of birth" question is one of the Democrat Senators who voted to filibuster the Born Alive Infant's Protection Act, not a judicial nominee who
A: will simply respond with babbling BS
B: isn't in the job of deciding what's "ok", but deciding what the law and Constitution specify
You don't ask the nominee about abortion, or Roe v. Wade, at all.
What you do is ask them about the text of the equal protection clause. Specifically, how do they read the "person" word. Can some human beings be placed outside the class? That's the question you ask every judicial nominee (not just Democrats), until the Supreme Court acknowledges that every human being is a person with a right to life.
TreeJoe said...
She's a solid choice for a democrat president in the early part of his term. Period. She's going to get confirmed.
_________________________________________
Oh, I hope so. When I think of all those Democrats and a few squishy Republicans running on a platform of “Child Pornography? It's no big deal!”, I can barely contain my joy.
Andrew McCarthy is an example of why I never go looking at NATIONAL REVIEW anymore. He can drop dead as far as I am concerned.
I read Andrew McCarthy’s article, here, non-paywalled, and a bunch of others that defend Judge Brown-Jackson (WaPo, Times, AP, and CNN.) Their basic theme is identical: almost all federal judges are soft on possession of child porn, and in a majority of cases the sentences are less than the minimum the guidelines call for.
I doubt this will help much with the public. McCarthy wants to make a big distinction between, say, someone who commits a murder, and someone who is an accessory after the fact. The latter is supposedly much less culpable. He does not note that someone who hires an assassin doesn’t get a lighter sentence than the hitman, because the hitman wouldn’t have acted if not hired. But when it comes to child porn, we’re supposed to believe there’s a strong probability that the abusers would have produced the stuff in the first place even without a market for it, and only distributed it as an afterthought. “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”
It almost makes me wish I subscribed to NR, so I could cancel the subscription over this. IMAO, the minimum sentences should be tougher, and the absurd “juvenile/adult” distinctin in prosecuting should be abolished. Meanwhile, I'm happy to let NR be on the record as supporting lighter sentences for possession of child pornography. That stance should please their Democratic patrons.
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