Sessions Tips Hand on Supreme Court Fight
July 6th, 2009Jeff Sessions on Fox News
Alabama’s junior Senator Jeff Sessions, who has emerged as the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be getting his 15-minutes of fame as the lead attack dog on President Barack Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court when confirmation hearings begin July 13, tipped his hand on one of the issues that will come up this morning on Fox News.
It will be quite fascinating to see how Sessions tries to make race an issue on the very committee that shot down his own confirmation as a federal judge a number of years ago for his own racist comments.
The world is full of contradictions and ironies, surely, but none more profound than the lies that pass for politics on the part of Southern pols like Sessions. What we are watching here is the last gasp of a Republican Party that is now marginalized to supporters largely made up of white males from the Deep South.
I guess Lincoln was right. You can fool some of the people some of the time…
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July 6th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Has Sessions ever done anything…that is any good?
July 6th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Or is he just a rubber stamp for the Right Wing machine, who never has an original thought?
July 6th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I can’t think of anything…
July 6th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I had never heard of Jeff Sessions until the last few years, having left Alabama in 1990 and not returning till 2008, so I still know very little about him.
At this juncture, with their leadership in disarray or disgrace, the GOP seems unable to do much except try to monkeywrench something – anything – Obama has put forward. Their “best” hope in that regard is attempting to derail Sotomayor, who is easily one of the most qualified nominees to the court offered over the last twenty or thirty years.
Petty? You bet, especially at a time when the GOP could be putting forward principled policy ideas and acting like a civilized loyal opposition. But “principled” is something they’re really having trouble with nowadays.
July 6th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
You got it. Same with the conservative media…
July 6th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Whether classified as contradictions, cognitive dissonance. or just “good ol boy,” “red-neck” racism, in Sessions I smell the same the same evil and hate that possessed another person, short in both stature and moral character–”the fightin’ little judge.”
Recall and recoil at the sorry, shameful words:
“In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
– George Corley Wallace
July 6th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Indeed…
July 6th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
The South’s New Racial Politics: Inside the Race Game of Southern History–
Glen Browder’s new book
See:
http://www.archives.state.al.us/whatsnew/Bonus_AT_PR_7_9_09.pdf
July 6th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Every time the scoundrel Sessions opens his foul mouth, he shames Alabama, and I am further ashamed to be a native Alabamian.
July 7th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
This says more about The Alabama Republican Party than it does Jeff Sessions. After being denied confirmation as a federal judge, how in the world can The State Republican Party continue to offer this man on the ballot as a candidate for US Senate and place him in a position to decide who is qualified to be a federal judge? The AL GOP has never been shy about denying ballot access to or removing people who won’t sign their latest and greatest oath of party loyalty. The Alabama GOP always brings up the lack of credibility issue with non-incumbent and Democratic challengers. Does Jeff Sessions not lack credibility on this issue? I’m willing to bet that if an Alabama Lawyer who happened to be a Progressive Democrat had been denied confirmation as a judge over anything, the State Bar would suspend his license and bring disbarment proceedings. Then the corporate press would make sure he never ran for anything again.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
ron florence wrote:
Sessions Getting Nastier over Sotomayor Nomination
Sunday, July 5, 2009, 4:13 PM
Ron:
GOP seems in a rush to hurl itself to oblivion or at least permanent irrelevance. Democrats would do well to step aside, get out of the way and let them do it.
Sessions experience in the late 80′s…. being nominated for a seat on the district US Appeals Court, and subsequent failure to gain senate approval has clouded and radicalized his objectivity. After that experience he decided to become a partisan politician which is what he always was.
One of his missions is to ‘borke’ democratic US court nominees whenever possible. As the Lord says, ‘Vengeance is mine.’
Maureen Dowd’s column in today’s NY Time is really good, titled ‘Now Sarah’s Folly- Northern exposure- Mark won’t go, Sarah won’t stay.’ The column will run early this week in papers everywhere. It’s a good read.
Larry
Sessions Getting Nastier over Sotomayor Nomination
Included some reader comments. Old red nose, alcoholic Sessions is not getting any sympathy here.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/4/749623/-Sessions-Getting-Nastier-over-Sotomayor-Nomination
Sessions Getting Nastier over Sotomayor Nomination
by mcjoan
That’s a real man bites dog headline, I know, but Sessions has decided to get particularly nasty over an utterly irrelevant issue in the Sotomayor nomination. He’s demanded decades worth of paperwork from a Puerto Rican civil rights organization. Sotomayor once served on the board for the group, Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Sessions has demanded reams of documents from the organization that weren’t written, edited, reviewed, or approved by Sotomayor, acting in her capacity as a board member. Which White House Counsel Greg Craig pointed out in a letter sent to Sessions.
“Perhaps there is confusion about Judge Sotomayor’s role with PRLDEF, and that confusion may account for your unusual interest,” Craig wrote. “Let me be clear: On Judge Sotomayor’s behalf, we submitted all documents the committee requested of her, and we did so in record time.”
To which, Session responded:
“During her time there, the organization took extreme positions on legal issues ranging from the death penalty to abortion to racial quotas,” Sessions said in a statement. He said it was “absurd” for the White House to call the documents irrelevant.
Because staff that was not under her control or supervision wrote things that she was not in a position to approve or reject. Gottcha. This is pro forma obstructionism from Sessions, another pathetic attempt to try to drum up some kind of real opposition to Sotomayor and to potentially delay the hearings while they wait for irrelevant documents.
Senator Leahy remains philosophical, saying:
some in the GOP were going to oppose any Obama pick – “even if the president had nominated Moses.”
Republicans “were going to object no matter who it was. And several of them have told me that privately,” Leahy told The Associated Press in an interview at his Vermont farmhouse.
That would be an interesting nomination fight, Sessions versus Moses. As it is, they aren’t going ot be able to stop the Sotomayor nomination. But that won’t stop them from being assholes about it for as long as they can, riding that wave of white male privilege into electoral irrelevance.
Reader Comments:
Read this headline and I thought: Well, isn’t that his job?
He IS from Alabama, right? He IS white, male, bigoted as fuck and a neocon Republican, right? He IS for white affirmative action, right?
Then this story is dog bites man, and nothing more. Yawn.
In the land of the G.O.P. the man with one brain cell is king.
Call it an “unAmerican” concept, and you’ve figured the whole thing out. People like Jeff Sessions are only Americans because they lost in their attempt not to be 150 years ago. So he “governs” like a terrorist.
Like a terrorist with no bomb. He has nothing but mouth. The Democrats should vote to require the Republicans to have rotating latrine duty until 2012.
The collection of Foghorn Leghorn impersonators that is the GOP finds being nonwhite to be an extreme position. Ergo being a member of a group which advocates for anyone other than whites is extreme
wasn’t sessions a racist before ?
repub = a politician with a conservative mind and a liberal penis
fox = fascist obnoxious xenophobic
rnc = rush, newt, cheney
Yes — before birth. It’s genetic with his crowd.
Remember the song from “South Pacific”?
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
I am so embarrassed that this man represents my state. Please believe that not all of us in Alabama are so ignorant.
I sympathize…too bad you have Shelby too. Quite an unpleasant pair. Not as bad as, say, Oklahoma, but Alabama does have quite a cross to bear.
Sessions in particular is a laughable figure. Everytime he speaks he sounds so much like Foghorn Leghorn that I half expect him to be attacked by a cartoon dog.
Sessions is particularly pig-eyed, all pink and shiny and pig-eyed.
MEMO
To: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III
From: The 21st century
Re: Judge Sotomayor and the PRLDEF
Sir: With regard to minority organizations and the nomination of members of minority groups to high office, your credibility is nil. You are a throwback to a dark and shameful period of history that most Americans are eager to leave behind. Please shut up.
July 8th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Ultimately, the dominant cultural ideology must change before the elected political leadership changes.
That fundamental change must go beyond a simple replacement of rightwing politicians with centrist or leftwing politicians, since almostg all of the above buy into the current system of political warfare.
Rather, we need to adopt a more “Iroquoian” model of consensual leadership and policymaking. (See the Constitutiton of Iroquoian Confederacy at http://www.constitution.org/cons/iroquois.htm).
If we do not, we will continue to have political warfare until some truly catastrophic event permits a latter-day Augustus Caesar to ride in on horseback and straighten things out, but at a terribly high price.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
One at time, I guess. How you gonna push an academic solution in an anti-intellectual state?
July 9th, 2009 at 8:00 am
I envision the solution as organic, rather than academic. Under the surface of major events, as historian Arnold Toynee noted many decades ago, are the countless millions of interactions, changes, etc. that actually determine history.
It is a great delusion – nurtured, of course, by the various power elites – that the grand sweeping ballet of those seen to be major players on the world stage is the important determining factor in human society.
Many people already realize that our system of primitive nation states, and the burden it imposes on the vast majority of human beings, is archaic and obsolete. Many people already understand that the false divisions and animosity that have been promoted throughout much of history constitute evil. Many people already know that there are really very few differences among human beings, and certainly none that justify many, if not most, of what passes for good governance.
That change is happening a la Toynee’s observation, beneath the surface of the major events. It will become more and more apparent during the next few years.