A High-Tech Lynching

 

“Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.”

— Former Georgia election worker Shaye Moss repeats the threats she received while counting votes during the 2020 election. pic.twitter.com/ukjwR8WOJd

— The Recount (@therecount) June 21, 2022

Several people have asked what the Shaye Moss threat about “being glad it’s 2020 and not 1920,” meant. As a life long southerner with family members in the Klan - I promise you it’s a lynching threat. Period.

— Uptown Al 🎸🎹🎬🎺🌈 (@uptown_al_) June 21, 2022

Indeed, the Klan was powerful in 1920s Georgia.

Judicial Nominee Cannot Answer Basic Questions

In confirmation hearings this year, nominees to head CEQ and the Department of Education displayed lack of basic  knowledge.

MUST WATCH: Republican @SenJohnKennedy asks one of @realDonaldTrump’s US District Judge nominees basic questions of law & he can’t answer a single one. Hoo-boy. pic.twitter.com/fphQx2o1rc

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) December 15, 2017

Here comes the would-be judge.Derek Hawkins reports at WP:

Nomination hearings for U.S. district judges tend to be dry affairs that offer little in the way of mass entertainment — in other words, they’re not typically the stuff of viral videos.

But a clip of one of President Trump’s federal judicial nominees struggling to answer rudimentary questions about the law garnered well more than 1 million views in a matter of hours on Thursday night and stoked speculation that another of the president’s nominations might get derailed.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) shared footage of Matthew Petersen, a nominee for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, getting quizzed by Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) on basic aspects of trial procedure during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

For five painfully awkward minutes, Petersen, a member of the Federal Election Commission and a lawyer with no trial experience, fumbled with Kennedy’s questions, visibly uncomfortable as the lawmaker pressed him about how things work in a federal courtroom.

Josh Feldman at Mediaite:

 By now you may have seen the viral video of a Trump judicial nominee awkwardly not being able to answer some pretty basic questions. The senator grilling him was actually a Republican, Sen. John Kennedy, and he appeared on CNN tonight to talk about this viral moment.

Erin Burnett asked him, “What was going through your head during that questioning?”

Kennedy said he just did his job, and while he went out of his way to note his voting record with the President, he added, “I don’t think that the first time you’ve ever stepped foot in a federal courtroom ought to be as a federal judge.”

He said Matthew Petersen seems like a nice and honest man, but “experience matters, and my job under our separation of power doctrine inspired by Madison is to sort of be a check on nominees.”

 Jonah Engel Bromwich and Niraj Chokshi at NYT:

Mr. Petersen is not the first of Mr. Trump’s judicial nominees to face criticism for being poorly prepared for the bench. At least two other nominations stalled this week amid similar concerns.

One of those was the nomination of Brett Talley, a lawyer who was nominated for a lifetime federal district judgeship despite never having tried a case.

Mr. Talley was the fourth of Mr. Trump’s nominees to be rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association and the second to have received the rating unanimously. Since 1989, only two other judicial nominees have been unanimously deemed “not qualified” by the group.

Mr. Talley failed to disclose that his wife is a senior lawyer in the office of the White House Counsel. And according to Slate, he may have written controversial posts on a message board for fans of the University of Alabama, including one that defended an early incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan.

Trump, Reagan, and the Klan

Unlike Donald Trump (whose father apparently was in the Ku Klux Klan), Ronald Reagan (whose father was a Catholic) knew how to criticize the KKK directly:

Letter to the Chairman of the Commission on Civil Rights Concerning the President's Views on the Ku Klux Klan 
April 30, 1984

Dear Morris:

While in China, I have been distressed to learn that some individuals back home have questioned whether my views on the Ku Klux Klan have somehow changed since 1980. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In 1980, I said that I have no tolerance for what the Klan represents, and would have nothing to do with any groups of that type. If anything, my feelings on this subject have only grown stronger. The politics of racial hatred and religious bigotry practiced by the Klan and others have no place in this country, and are destructive of the values for which America has always stood. Those of us in public life can only resent the use of our names by those who seek political recognition for the repugnant doctrines of hate they espouse.

I firmly believe that there is no room for partisanship on this question. Democrats and Republicans alike must be resolute in disassociating ourselves from any group or individual whose political philosophy consists only of racial or religious intolerance, whose arguments are supported only by intimidation or threats of violence.

We must, and will, continue our unified rejection of such elements of hate in our political life, for while there are many issues which divide us, it is fundamental principles such as this which will always draw us together.

Sincerely,
RONALD REAGAN

[The Honorable Morris B. Abram, U.S.. Commission on Civil Rights, 1121 Vermont Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20425]

The Ku Klux Klan v. Irish Catholics

Donald Trump recently hesitated to condemn the Ku Klux Klan. On St. Patrick's Day, it is worth noting that the Klan targeted Irish Catholics as well as African Americans.

Matt Hadro writes at the Catholic News Agency:

In 1922, Oregon passed a law forcing all children between the ages of eight and sixteen in parochial and private schools into public schools. The law, the Compulsory Education Act of 1922, was supported by the Ku Klux Klan as a measure to push for standard American education and to prevent what they saw as a foreign influence – the Catholic Church – from educating immigrant children.

The Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, along with a military private school, fought the law in court. Three years later, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court resoundingly struck down the law in a unanimous decision, ruling that it violated the freedom of parents to send their children to parochial schools.

In 1924, as the Irish Echo reported some years back, the Fighting Irish lived up to their nickname:

Seventy-eight years ago this week, on May 17, 1924, hundreds of Notre Dame students gathered at the train station in South Bend, Ind. They were waiting to greet a train, but the mood was anything but festive. For on the train were members of the Ku Klux Klan, heading for a mass Klan rally in South Bend. Their decision to hold the gathering in South Bend was no accident, for Indiana’s Klansmen looked upon Notre Dame as a symbol of rising Catholic power in America. The Klan event was intended to send a signal of intimidation to the university, its faculty and students that they were unwelcome in the American heartland. Instead, the only message delivered that morning came from Notre Dame’s students, who pummeled the Klansmen as they disembarked from their train.