Let’s just get this out of the way. 

U.S. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court.

It doesn’t matter how troubling the questions raised by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary committee, nor how warm and sloppy the tongue baths from Democrats, nor anything I nor anyone else write about her.

She’s on the court.

Democrats have the numbers. They’ll vote to confirm. A number of Republicans will join them, explaining that the president has a right to make appointments to the highest court.

(And please don’t say the GOP senators were too tough on Jackson yesterday. Anyone else remember the parade of pathological liars the Democrats dug up in an ugly attempt to block the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation? By comparison, Jackson is being treated with gentility and respect.)

But watching yesterday’s testimony I have to wonder if lawyers and judges have any idea how detached, inhuman and frankly amoral they sound when they rationalize lenient sentences for abominable criminal behavior?

Take Jackson, for instance.

Republicans on the committee grilled her about a number of extraordinarily light sentences she handed down to those caught with kiddie porn. They claim that in every single child pornography case she’s heard she deviated down from the federal minimum sentence guidelines.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley led the line of questioning, opening with a litany of seven cases where defendants were convicted and the guidelines called for years in prison yet Jackson handed down much shorter sentences. In U.S. v Hawkins, for instance, an 18-year-old was convicted of distributing kiddie porn and the guidelines called for eight years in prison. Jackson gave the defendant three months.

Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn joined Hawley in voicing concerns about Jackson.

“On average, you sentence child-porn defendants to over five years below the minimum sentence recommended by the Sentencing Guidelines. And you have stated publicly that it is a ‘mistake’ to ‘assume that child pornography offenders are pedophiles.’ Your philosophy, it appears, is backward on these issues. Restrictions for children and families and freedom for criminals,” Blackburn said in her opening remarks.

It’s a mistake to assume that those who look at kiddie porn are pedophiles? What else can we assume about these freaks? Sounds a lot like the sick “minor attracted persons” twaddle that got an Old Dominion University professor sacked a few months ago.

Jackson, who defended her sentences, said she believed the guidelines were outdated. They were created before easy access to kiddie porn on the internet, so sentences shouldn’t be connected to the volume of pornography a degenerate had on his computer. 

"As you said, the guideline was based originally on a statutory scheme and directives, specific directives by Congress, at a time in which more serious child pornography offenders were based on the volume, on the number of photographs that they received in the mail. And that made total sense before, when we didn't have the internet, when we didn't have distribution," Jackson said.

"But the way that the guideline is now structured is leading to extreme disparities in the system because it's so easy for people to get volumes of this material now, by computers. So it's not doing the work of differentiating who is more a serious offender in the way that it used to. “

Seriously? The fact that it’s easy for criminals to get their clammy hands on piles of kiddie porn makes their crimes less heinous?

Looks like some deviant who obtained hundreds of images of children being abused and who got them with the click of a mouse apparently pulled on Jackson’s heartstrings.

In response to a question from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz about her soft sentencing in kiddie porn cases, Jackson replied: "Judges have to take into account the personal circumstances of the defendant."

I’d like to remind Jackson and everyone watching these hearings that every piece of child pornography represents an innocent kid somewhere who was violated and abused. These victims had their childhoods wrenched away, their innocence destroyed, their bodies defiled for the pleasure of perverts.

Every time some freak sitting in his mother’s basement views these images, that child is abused all over again.

In many ways, child pornography is worse than murder.

Someone who panted over even one image is a repulsive criminal who ought to go away for years. Anyone who creates these abominations should be executed.

No, this isn’t hyperbole. The federal government still has the death penalty and photographing the rape or molestation of a child ought to be a capital offense.

Why would we even consider putting someone on the U.S. Supreme Court who believes that criminals participating  in this vile enterprise should get out of prison early?

I’ll tell you why: The Democrats are determined to turn the Supreme Court into a far-left bench. Part of the left’s core beliefs is that crime must always be seen through the prism of the misunderstood criminal, not their victims.

Even when those victims are kids.

Frankly, if Jackson wants to change the federal sentencing guidelines, she should consider a run for Congress instead of seeking a seat on the highest court.