Apologies for inundating your inboxes yesterday. The post was sent by accident–it was scheduled for January 1st and will repeat then. Mea culpa. (When I’m in a hurry…)
Speaking of the courts, as I did yesterday, an Indiana lawyer named Justin Olsen has been nominated for a judgeship by Donald Trump. He is apparently as qualified as the members of Trump’s cabinet…which is to say, not.
The first clue was his rapturous introduction by Indiana’s White Christian nationalist Senator, Jim Banks. And while Bank’s endorsement should really have told us all we needed to know, a google search turned up a lot more.
Trump has nominated Olsen to fill a vacancy in Indiana’s Southern District federal court. A brief review of Olsen’s confirmation hearing certainly confirmed one thing–he is manifestly unfit to join that respected and respectable bench.
The Indiana Lawyer has reported on the “highlights” of that hearing.
Not only did Olsen refuse to say that Joe Biden had won the 2020 election, he refused to respond to questions about the insurrection of Jan. 6th, saying only that those events were a ‘matter of public controversy.” He even declined to offer an opinion on whether those events–videos of which were widely publicized– constituted an assault on the U.S. Capitol.
His responses to other questions–even friendly questions from Republican members of the committee–elicited beliefs that only Samuel Alito could love.
Olsen was asked about a sermon he had delivered as a Reformed Presbyterian elder, in which he opined that people with disabilities should not marry, that having sex outside of marriage was a “form of sexual perversion,” and that wives should be subservient to their husbands. He responded that it was the doctrine of the church he was attending that fornication is a sin, and in response to a question about wives being subservient to their husbands, his response was that he believed “every word of the Bible.” (Presumably, if he is confirmed, that “biblical belief” would supercede any pesky, contrary constitutional precedents.)
Excuse me, but belief in “every word” of the bible requires ignoring that good book’s multiple contradictions.
Respected theologians have pointed to numerous passages in the bible that contradict each other. For example, Samuel 17:50 says David killed Goliath, but in Samuel 21:19, it says Elhanan kills Goliath the Gittite. Matthew 27:5 says Judas hanged himself, but Acts 1:18 has Judas falling headlong, bursting open with his intestines spilling out. Malachi 3:6 says God doesn’t change his mind, but Genesis 6:6 says God regrets creating humanity, and Jonah 3:10 tells us that God changed His mind about destroying Nineveh. There are numerous other examples–typically ignored by the so-called “biblical literalists” who use their “piety” as an excuse to impose their favored beliefs on others and who cherry pick their bibles for the passages that can be used to support their biases.
His selective “biblical” beliefs have evidently animated Olsen’s previous legal work. As the Indiana Lawyer reported,
When Trump nominated Olson, he prominently touted that that Indiana attorney has been representing three former University of Pennsylvania women swimmers that sued Penn, Harvard University, the Ivy League and the Indianapolis-based NCAA for alleged Title IX violations by allowing transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete on Penn’s women’s swim team in 2021-2022.
An article from Balls and Strikes on the confirmation hearing reported Olsen’s reply to a question about a 2022 sermon in which he said that “transgenderism, homosexuality, fornication, and all sorts of sexual perversions” were forms of hypocrisy that come from “shame on the inside.” In his response, Olson said that he didn’t “recall the precise wording” of his remarks, but conceded that the language sounded familiar.
As the linked report concluded,
Olsen said that he meant his words “for the edification of the people that I was preaching to,” and assured Kennedy and the rest of the committee that if confirmed, he would set aside his personal beliefs, apply the rule of law, and so on and so forth. I am sure that normal people in Indiana who do not want their federal judges to be alarmingly anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-disabled, anti-sex weirdos therefore have nothing to worry about.
No wonder Indiana’s Christian nationalist Senator Jim Banks was quoted as saying that he was “blown away by Olsen’s credentials” and asserting “that the nominee has a record of doing the right thing.”
When people like Jim Banks are deciding what “the right thing” is, Indiana’s litigants are in a lot of trouble.
Professor-I have no words worthy of a response. How do things like this happen?
Presuming he gets appointed, we are alll in horrible trouble. As always, Professor, thank you for dharing this to us.
Trying to parse these idiots has got to be a serious waste of time. Since the people don’t have any say about who our psychopathic president names to federal benches, we should expect the worst of the worst. There is no way in the world Trump is going to pick someone who is even with the slightest glimmer of being competent. That would ruin the Trump ethos.
Every state that is saddled with these Christian Nationalist morons will just have to endure them. They also elected the orange idiot, so they are reaping what they’ve sown.
BTW, the Bible is on its approximately 435th iteration and edit since somebody started putting together the un-translated musings of ancient, barely literate goat herders and Constantine decided that Christianity would be his philosophical cudgel to control the Roman Empire. History can sometimes be a real problem for blind ideologues.
Anybody who takes mythological texts as reality has no place in a courtroom, or anyplace else besides a church. They lack discernment. If he’s giving sermons to like-minded people, then he should stick with that career.
The transgender case was pure performative bullshit. The girl who brought the lawsuit against the universities and the NCAA went from being tied for 5th to 5th place alone. LOL Wow, what an impact!!!
These people who preach that crap are almost always caught later in sexual twists of some kind. Usually, pedophilia involves young girls or boys. It’s a facade to appear holier than thou, but they themselves cannot live up to it. It’s a trap that even Shakespeare wrote about.
That’s why I wonder about Micah Beckwith – he doth protest too much. 😉
Btw, the DOJ and FBI are finding that their redactions were faulty. People could cut and paste the redacted words, and they’d appear. Bondi/Patel were breaking the law because those redacted words had nothing to do with the victims’ names. Oops! Some of the redactions had to do with testimony made in a trial about Trump and a 13-year-old girl who got pregnant. The outcome, if true, will crush Trump and his protectors in the DOJ/FBI. Khanna is preparing contempt charges, too. It sounds like obstruction charges aren’t far away.
Set aside his personal beliefs and apply the rule of law. Didn’t trump’s 3 choices for scotus assure they would not overturn previous court decisions right before overturning Roe v Wade?
Todd, nice call on brain-dead Bondi and her stunned-looking caddy. I can’t wait to see those two try to lie their way out of this mess. Maybe it will so bad that even Trump won’t pardon them. LOL.
After Trump’s numerous maniacal postings over Christmas as to the Epstein files, former representative and Trump critic posted over Trump’s screed: “I love the smell of panic in the evening. Smells like…victory.”
Inadvertent Omission: the Trump critic was Adam Kinzinger :(R-IL).
These years of those living in intellectual bondage by “conservative” culture will fail the country, and what’s worthy of discussion is what’s next. Not because we can influence it, but we can prepare for it as clues move from the far horizon into focus.
The earth is telling us it can’t swallow any more organic waste and still be civilization’s friend. We could be preparing by adjusting the many supply chains we each rely on now to live what have become “normal” lives, but the “conservative” mindset has us making things worse. We could be adjusting the intolerable flow of wealth to the few, but we are making that worse, too. We could be spreading collaboration as the seedbed for adaptation to the environment we can build on, but we find competition as our national pastime. We could be rebuilding the beliefs that lead towards a more social structure, but instead, we continue treating it as a business rather than as beliefs.
He says he’ll set aside his personal beliefs, but those were exactly what got him nominated.
doesnt mattter as i see the last 20 years. Honduras falls. doesnt matter..
Hes the sexual deviant. “Shame on the inside” is a total giveaway. Without exception, these American Taliban members project everything they are onto others.
It is a good thing to be informed about such things. I would be very grateful to know what to do about it. Is there any person or office that we could contact to register our opposition to this nomination, or is it a done deal?
Our federal government and all fifty states need laws that specifically apply to judges. The very first law should ensure that a judge immediately lose their judgeship if their decision on a case in direct opposition to statements they made at their confirmation hearing, no matter how long ago that hearing took place. Disbarment should also be considered in addition to the loss of their ‘job’.
Judges must be held to the highest standards of honesty and integrity. If a judge lied during their Confirmation Hearing that should be considered a criminal act and the punishment must be severe.
It’s too bad that the Democrats didn’t understand the importance of the courts until it was too late to stop the radicalization of SCOTUS and a significant portion of District and Circuit Courts. I’m not sure even now that the public understands the full weight of judicial selection, even after two of the most horrible and impactful decisions in history: Dobbs and Presidential Immunity.
In a well-informed public, there would be greater awareness about the recent wins by religious sect law firms like the Becket Law group and the Thomas More Society. Becket reported one of its wins in 2023, “the Indiana High Court upholds…Catholic schools.” The issue that was settled related to employee hiring and firing. (FYI- in 2019, 80+% of the taxpayers’ money spent on vouchers in Indiana went to Catholic schools).
In a SCOTUS employment case, a few years ago, regarding the topic of employment discrimination and disability, St. James school v. Biel, the court’s Catholic majority decided in favor of the religious school against the employee.
Interestingly, the Indianapolis Archdiocese website posted, 9-26-2025, “…wearing their courtroom robes, judges who serve (ed. note- adjudicate) in central Indiana, worship together.” The description is of the Red Mass where, “Catholic legal professionals rededicate themselves to….”
Btw- today Huffpo published, in a post describing a Joe Rogan program, a guest’s speculation about the next American Catholic President. The person named was other than the obvious, JD Vance.
Secondly, if JD Vance becomes president before 2029, it will evidence a meteoric political rise…converted to Catholic and elected to US Senate (no prior elected office) in 2019, VP by 2023 and President by…..