US Senator Marsha Blackburn spent her time at Justice Ketanji Brown’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing speaking out against abortions, but she didn’t even show a basic understanding of US history when she spoke. tweeted later on the matter.
During Ms Jackson’s confirmation hearing, Ms Blackburn attacked the judge’s alleged abortion record, going so far as to call a landmark Supreme Court case Roe vs. Wade “one of the most brazen acts of judicial activism” in US history.
Ms Blackburn then took to Twitter on Wednesday to continue speaking out against abortion, but managed to mix up her seminal US historical documents.
“The Constitution grants us the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – not to abortion,” she wrote. However, Ms Blackburn spoiled her American anecdotes, as ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ are guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence, not the US Constitution.
It is unclear whether Ms Blackburn was merely negligent in her tweet. Thursday afternoon, his tweet was not deleted. Naturally, commentators took Ms Blackburn to task for her confusion.
“Marcha. Marsha. Marsha. This is the Declaration of Independence, NOT the Constitution,” political strategist Ana Navarro-Cardenas wrote. Another Twitter user by the name of Julian Clark wrote that “someone who doesn’t not know the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence should not be involved in the making of laws”.
During the confirmation hearing, Ms Blackburn also railed against ‘progressive education’ in relation to transgender rights issues. She asked Ms. Jackson to define the word “woman,” and when Ms. Jackson replied that she was not a biologist, the senator raged against more inclusive definitions of women that encompass trans people.
Ms Blackburn replied to Ms Jackson that “the fact that you cannot give me a straight answer on something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education we hear about”.
The senator has been criticized for the line of questioning she posed with Ms Jackson and her focus on culture war issues rather than the justice’s qualifications to serve on the US Supreme Court.
Two pastors in his home state of Tennessee expressed embarrassment over his actions. “While most senators on the Judiciary Committee focused on the qualifications and experience of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, our Senator Marsha Blackburn’s line of questioning was inappropriate and irrelevant, and as a Christian, pastor and Tennessean , I was embarrassed by his public behavior,” Reverend Brandon Berg wrote.
The Revered Billy Vaughn, a retired United Methodist minister, said Ms Blackburn “took the candidate’s past statements grossly out of context solely to make political points”, according to Fox17.
“These points had nothing to do with the veracity of the statements or the qualifications of Judge Jackson. Contrary to Senator Blackburn’s suggestion that Judge Jackson had an ‘agenda,’ the opposite was clearly the case,” he said. he said. “The fact that Senator Blackburn rudely and consistently interrupted Judge Jackson when she tried to answer the legal and forensic issues at stake suggests that the Senator’s main purpose was to create sound bites for her political basis.”
