If you’re still wondering why the Republicans in the Congress continue to go along with the MixMaster of crazy down at the other end of Pennsylvania, consider the case of Louise Vitter, whom the administration has nominated to be a federal judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Ms. Vitter is the general counsel for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, and she’s also married to former Senator David Vitter, about whom the less said, the better. During the hearings into her confirmation on Wednesday, Vitter confronted American history head-on and ended up in a serious pile of roadkill.

Senator Richard Blumenthal fed her a softball. Did Vitter believe that Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional and that signaled the beginning of the end of Jim Crow, was correctly decided? For anyone who went to law school after World War II, this is an easy one. Except that Vitter managed to bungle her way to the wrong side of the case. From CNN:

"I don't mean to be coy, but I think I can get into a difficult, difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions -- which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with."

This is a very cute answer, particularly for a white person from the state that gave us Plessy v. Ferguson. But Brown is not something with which to get cute. It materially fulfilled the basic promises of the Constitution for a good chunk of the country’s citizens. It redeemed the moral failures of Reconstruction. It fulfilled the sacrifices made during the Civil War. It helped make the Civil Rights Movement possible.

As Chief Justice Earl Warren said at the time:

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

This is beyond argument. It is not the occasion for a tap-dance, no matter how deft.

All the best people.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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