Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
Kennedy grills lesbian judicial nominee: ‘are you still a Marxist?’
U.S. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) on Thursday grilled Judge Melissa R. DuBose, President Joe Biden’s nominee for the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, asking during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing whether she was “still a Marxist.” If confirmed, DuBose would be the first out judge as well as the first person of color to serve on the bench.
And if attorney Nicole Berner is also confirmed, pursuant to her nomination to serve on the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals, the Biden-Harris administration will have appointed as many openly LGBTQ jurists with lifetime tenure as former President Barack Obama did over the course of two terms in office.
During an interview 24 years ago, DuBose recounted that shortly after graduating from college, she had worked in a coffee shop that was patronized by students from a progressive school who had her “in a Marxist phase.” “I am not, nor have ever been, a Marxist,” she told Kennedy.
DuBose explained that she had read Marx — along with Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and works about Eastern religions. “As a political science major and as a theorist,” she said, “and as someone who was considering teaching a course in political theory, I had immersed myself” in these works.
