Brunswick Beacon, 03.31.22
Senate Republicans last week charged up the flux capacitor to 1.21 gigawatts, eyed their stainless-steel two-seater and thought, “We’re going to need a bigger DeLorean.” That’s because they want to take us all back to yesteryear.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to be the first African-American woman on the Supreme Court made them seriously nostalgic for the good old days.
Texas Republican John Cornyn wanted to go back to 2015 and reverse the decision recognizing same-sex couples’ right to marry. Cornyn asked if the ruling didn’t “create a conflict” with some people’s “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
“That is the nature of a right,” replied Jackson.
Indiana Republican Mike Braun yearned to go back in time and reconsider “a whole host of issues” he thought should not be “federalized.” He specified the 1973 ruling recognizing a woman’s right to choose, the 1967 decision barring states from outlawing interracial marriage and the 1965 opinion guaranteeing married couples’ right to contraceptives.
Speaking for no other woman, Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn agreed, allowing married couples birth control was “constitutionally unsound”!
At least Cornyn, Braun and Blackburn confined their time travel to post-revolutionary America. When his turn came, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham punched “1692” into the Wayback machine and floored it.
Emerging through a cloud of fog from beneath the DeLorean’s gullwing door, Graham gaveled the Salem Witch Trials to order and asked, “What faith are you?” And, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are?”
Judge Jackson patiently introduced him to the 18th century. “As you know, senator, there’s no religious test in the Constitution.”
Unclear on the concept of a national constitution, Braun complained that Democrats want to “homogenize” constitutional rights “across the country.” He didn’t need to add that Republicans want to drag America back to a time when states denied their citizens’ constitutional rights with impunity.
Joanne Levitan
Leland