On the recordMay 13, 2022
I appreciate my friend from Arizona so much. I miss her on the Judiciary Committee because of the very type of insights that we just heard from her. I am grateful for her service, her intellect, her insights, and especially her pugnacious nature that did not cause her to back down, that caused her to stand up after being a victim herself. I was approached by a lady in a store in Longview, Texas, an adjoining county to where I was a district judge, and she asked if I remembered her. I didn't. She never testified in court, but she said she was there in the courtroom when I sentenced her husband. She said she and her daughter had been abused year after year, and her husband had been arrested different times, but he was such a smooth salesman that he always convinced judges to give him a slap on the wrist and probation and be on his way. She said that I was the first judge in all those years to be able to see through her husband's great salesmanship and send him to prison. There are a lot of things that aren't pleasant about being a judge or a justice, been that, too, but to have somebody say, ``You gave my daughter and me our lives, and we are doing great, and she is doing great, and she is going to go to a great college now,'' but you have got to be able to see through gaslighting. You have got to be able to see through lies and get to the facts. Now, we are being told about what a terrible shortage of baby formula there is in this country; and there is.…
