When Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson sits down for her Senate confirmation hearing later this month, get ready for some laughably bad if not offensive attacks by Republicans on Jacksons record as a public defender.

Republicans in the Judiciary Committee have spent months accusing President Joe Bidens judicial nominees of being soft on crime. Theyve settled on this line of attack on Democrats heading into the 2022 midterm elections, and theyre so eager to cement this message in the minds of voters that theyve been accusing virtually everyone who comes before the Judiciary Committee of being soft on crime, even when it makes no sense.

Look at how they treated Nina Morrison. Shes a nominee to a U.S. district court seat in New York. For the last 20 years, shes been an attorney with the Innocence Project, where she has helped to get dozens of innocent people out of prison and off of death row.

During her confirmation hearing last month, Republicans accused her of driving up violence all over America.

The whole of your record is deeply disturbing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) scolded Morrison.

Across this country, Americans are horrified at skyrocketing crime rates, at skyrocketing homicide rates, at skyrocketing burglary rates, at skyrocketing carjacking rates, Cruz told her. All of those are the direct result of the policies youve spent your entire lifetime advancing.

Cruz is talking about someone who has spent her career exonerating wrongly convicted people through DNA testing, in fact clearing the way for the real perpetrators of violent crimes to be held accountable. But Cruz and others argued, somehow, that Morrison was flouting the law.

I will oppose you and anyone else the administration sends to us who do not understand the necessity of the rule of law, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) vowed in Morrisons hearing, specifically calling her soft on crime.