Alabama’s Republican Senators Vote No

POLITICAL ANALYSIS
by Glynn Wilson

While a large bipartisan group of senators handed President Obama a third victory in the lame-duck session of Congress Wednesday when they voted to ratify a nuclear arms treaty with Russia, Alabama’s two Republican senators voted against it, which comes as no real “surprise, surprise,” as Gomer Pyle would have said.

Perhaps reflecting the somewhat racist anti-Obama sentiment of corporate leaders and conservative Republican constituents in their home state, both of Alabama’s Republican senators, Richard Shelby of Tuscaloosa and Jeff Sessions of Mobile, mouthed off about the deal.

“I don’t believe the American people overall would feel that this administration’s number one priority, although despite what they say, is the security of this country,” Shelby told a Newhouse reporter in Washington, D.C. What informed readers might wonder is this: Does he mean the security of the country? Or the financial security of Shelby and his supporters in the military-industrial complex in Alabama?

“They want to negotiate treaties,” Shelby scoffed. “And a lot of people in the negotiating, I believe, might be a little soft on security and defense.”

Right. Or, perhaps they have a different philosophy. Maybe they see that keeping track of and reducing nuclear weapons makes for a safer world, rather than continuing to spend the trillions it takes to keep the escalating arms race economy “growing.”

See the difference?

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by Glynn Wilson

An Alabama Senator with long-standing ties to the US military-industrial complex and an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama is backing down from a direct confrontation with the White House today after taking the unprecedented step of announcing last week that he would filibuster all the president’s appointments to secure earmarks for his home state.

US Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican who switched from the Democratic Party to be part of the Gingrich revolution in 1994, placed a hold on more than 80 presidential nominations before the Senate last week. He relented on Monday, saying he had simply been trying “to get the White House’s attention.”

Read the full story at Truthout.org, a non-profit independent news Website…

Alabama’s senior Republican Senator Richard Shelby is having to backtrack today on comments he made at a town hall meeting Saturday in Cullman, which may have been made in retaliation for recent reports alleging that White House counsel Graig Craig violated Shelby’s attorney-client confidentiality when he talked to North Alabama lawyer Jill Simpson about representing her before her testimony in the Siegleman case before the House Judiciary Committee, as we reported early this morning in this story.

Shelby’s office is calling a Cullman Times report “incomplete” and a “distortion” of his comments on President Obama’s citizenship status during a town hall meeting Saturday.

When asked during the meeting whether there was any truth to the rumor that Obama was not a United States citizen, Shelby said, “Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate. You have to be born in America to be president.”

According to the Politico, a Washington-based publication, Shelby spokesman Jonathan Graffeo issued the following statement:

“The Cullman Times article contains an incomplete account, and therefore a distortion, of Sen. Shelby’s comments regarding President Obama’s citizenship. At the town hall meeting in Cullman, Sen. Shelby laid out the Constitutional qualifications for the Presidency and said that, while he hasn’t personally seen the President’s birth certificate, he is confident that the matter has been thoroughly examined.”

The Times stands by its reporting as complete and accurate, according to a statement on the newspaper’s Web site. The paper is also seeking video or audio recordings from the meeting to verify the report.

According to FactCheck.Org, the birth certificate of birth from Hawaii is authentic.

Some people area asking: Is this a Trent Lott moment?