As soon as Associate Justice Stephen Breyer announced his intent to retire, the Biden-Harris regime reported their plan to fill his seat with a black female replacement.

Why announce the sex and skin color of the nominee, weeks in advance of naming the name?  Biden's strategy here is not just an effort to protect a party that's bleeding from a loss of conservative blacks, but also an attempt to insulate the nomination from the normal process.  Touted first and foremost as a black female, the nominee's "groundbreaking" sex and color are the costume that disguises the actual content of this nomination.

Ketanji Brown Jackson was raised in the orbit of government: her father was chief attorney for a school district; her mother was a school principal.  She attended Harvard for undergrad and law school, clerked at the Supreme Court, did pro bono work at major law firms helping criminals beat the rap, and received plum appointments to federal judgeships from Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

And she served on the United States Sentencing Commission, first as a counsel, then as a commissioner.

Throughout her career, there is one common thread: a personal crusade to reduce the ability of the criminal justice system to impose real sentences on people convicted of crimes.

Our system requires both defense attorneys and prosecuting attorneys; it is fundamental to our system that the defendant is assumed innocent until proven guilty. 

But once that guilt is proven, the American people need to be able to count on our system to remove the criminal from society, to keep him off the streets until he is no longer a threat.  In a nation in which the vast majority of crimes are committed by recidivists, there is no other issue more central to criminal justice than the ability to impose long sentences on those who are finally proven to be a threat to their communities.

Ketanji Brown Jackson is intended to be the pro-criminal, anti-LEO lobby's camel under the tent, to infect the Supreme Court itself with this malevolent attitude.

She has all the public relations positives — Ivy League degrees, an impressive curriculum vitae, several years on the federal bench.  She would be the Supreme Court's first black female, as if the color and sex of the judge should have anything to do with the votes she casts or the opinions she writes.

But in a world crafted by P.R., the Biden-Harris regime is hoping this is the way to sell its destructive, dangerous policies to the American people.  Her welcome skin color and sex, her cheerful smile, and impressive résumé are just deceptive coverings over the pro-criminal policies that have scared shoppers out of the malls, turned our inner cities into war zones, and forced those who could afford it into gated communities.

America cannot afford the left's euphemisms anymore.  We need to cast off the disguises and start seeing Democrat bills, policies, and appointees for what they really are. 

The American voter needs to remember one of the oldest of proverbs whenever political appointees bury their policy positions under colorful emphasis on their demographics: "You can't judge a book by its cover."

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation professional.  A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column in Illinois Review since 2009.  His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his brand new political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available on Amazon.

Image: H2rty via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped).