<
https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/the-slime-machine-targeting-dozens-of-biden-nominees>
"During the autos-da-fé that now pass for Supreme Court confirmation hearings
in the U.S. Senate, it’s common for supporters of a nominee to dismiss attacks
from the opposing party as mere partisanship. But, during the recent hearings
for Ketanji Brown Jackson, Andrew C. McCarthy—a Republican former federal
prosecutor and a prominent legal commentator at
National Review—took the
unusual step of denouncing an attack from his own side. When Republican
senators, including Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn, began accusing Jackson of
having been a dangerously lenient judge toward sex offenders, McCarthy wrote a
column calling the charge “meritless to the point of demagoguery.” He didn’t
like Jackson’s judicial philosophy, but “the implication that she has a soft
spot for ‘sex offenders’ who ‘prey on children’ ... is a smear.”
In the end, the attacks failed to diminish public support for Jackson, and her
poised responses to questioning helped secure her nomination, by a vote of
53–47. But the fierce campaign against her was concerning, in part because it
was spearheaded by a new conservative dark-money group that was created in
2020: the American Accountability Foundation. An explicit purpose of the
A.A.F.—a politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity that doesn’t disclose
its backers—is to prevent the approval of all Biden Administration nominees."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
