PublicCitizen is asking candidates around the country to stand with their constituents and demand that elections be returned to voters.
In January, the Supreme Court tossed out a hundred years of election laws and declared that corporations were free to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. The Court concluded that corporations have the same free speech rights as people, and thus the same freedom to participate in our electoral process.
The only way to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision is to amend the Constitution to put elections back in the hands of voters. We are asking every candidate for Congress to sign the Pledge to Protect America’s Democracy, and promise to work toward a Constitutional Amendment that will protect a government of, by and for the people.
An astounding exchange for the year 2009. Check out the look on Rachel Maddow’s face. Is it about time for Pat Buchanan to retire from the public limelight?
The headline to Jeff Sessions’ op-ed in the July 13 Birmingham News (no link available on their al.com Website) promised a fair hearing for Sonia Sotomayor. But the article itself raises questions about whether Senator Sessions was prepared to provide one.
He initially claims that, if confirmed, Judge Sotomayor “will have the power to define the meaning of our Constitution,” which is certainly an exaggeration. She would be one of nine justices and only a majority can make such a decision. This is not an unimportant distinction, since the collective decision-making of the Court can only be enhanced if the backgrounds of the justices are diverse.
More to the point, he asserts that it is wrong to expect a judge, because of her life experiences, to have empathy, claiming that showing empathy to one party demonstrates prejudice to another. Sessions is simply wrong if he is claiming that the judges he would support would not show either empathy or prejudice.
For Senator Jeff Sessions and the other Republicans to bring race into this is about the most ridiculous and bizarre thing I’ve seen in the history of American political television.
I don’t know what else to say, so I think it’s Yuengling Time, as they say on Facebook…
Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama issued an opening statement this morning in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor that is so misleading it requires serious analysis. Here are a few of the highlights with explanatory remarks.
“This hearing is important because I believe our legal system is at a dangerous crossroads,” Sessions said, a view he must share alone, since I don’t know anyone else who believes that.
“Down one path is the traditional American legal system, so admired around the world, where judges impartially apply the law to the facts without regard to their own personal views. Indeed, our legal system is based on a firm belief in an ordered universe and objective truth. The trial is the process by which the impartial and wise judge guides us to the truth.
“Down the other path lies a ‘Brave New World’ where words have no true meaning and judges are free to decide what facts they choose to see. In this world, a judge is free to push his or her own political and social agenda. I reject this view.”
On the face of it, this is a ridiculous analysis of politics and the law in America’s system of three branches of government. Sessions seems to define objectivity the same way Fox News defines it, as Fair and Balanced — as long as it is conservative and Republicans agree with it. He knows nothing of “objective truth,” only he thinks his views should be the views of mainstream America. In the Bush era, they sort of had that going on, thanks to Karl Rove’s spin. But it’s not true anymore…
On the eve of the big show in Washington, the first Supreme Court nomination hearings of the Obama era, it is interesting to wonder why the New York Times chose to use this photo of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions without identifying him. That’s the back of Attorney General Eric Holder’s head on the left, along with an unknown aide and Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
On Fox News Sunday, Feinstein called it a “big problem.” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, on “This Week” on ABC, agreed that the secrecy “could be illegal” and demanded an inquiry.
Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama, little known to the country, will lead the charge against Obama’s Hispanic nominee, Sonia Sotomayor of New York
Editor’s Note: I would like to thank the Huffington Post investigative fund for partial funding for this story.
by Glynn Wilson
When the Senate Judiciary Committee convenes Monday, July 13 to begin advise and consent hearings on President Barack Obama’s first nominee to the United States Supreme Court, potentially the first Hispanic on the court, the American people will learn all there is to know about Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals court judge from New York who will most likely be confirmed to replace Justice David Souter. But they may not know a thing about the senator who is expected to enter the national limelight for the first time as the lead inquisitor in her confirmation, who faces grave political risks for his party if things are mishandled and go wrong.
Senator Jeff Sessions
Jefferson “Jeff” Beauregard Sessions III, the ranking minority Republican on the committee elevated by his colleagues to take the lead in questioning Ms. Sotomayor, is an Old South senator with an Old South name from the Deep South state of Alabama. He is an arch-conservative with a voting record ranked in the top five most conservative in the Senate by the National Review. He has voted consistently with a majority of his Republican colleagues 93 percent of the time, according to a Washington Post analysis.
Sessions has already indicated he will want to question Ms. Sotomayor on whether her empathy as a Hispanic from her time on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund will translate into favoritism or “activism” for certain groups. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich started that fight when he was quoted from a Twitter Tweet calling her a racist. Sessions will have to tread a fine line on the race issue since he was turned down for a federal judgeship in 1986 for making racist remarks himself — by the very Senate committee he now leads on the minority side. He called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American,” and he said the Ku Klux Klan boys were all right with him — until he found out they were “pot smokers,” according to testimony from his failed confirmation-hearing transcript.
That story will be told time and again over the next few days by the nation’s top newspapers, including the New York Times, on cable news and blogs all over the country. But it may not be the most important thing people need to know about the senator who is sitting in judgment on who will be allowed to serve on the nation’s highest court to shape the future of American law for a generation.
What they need to know is that Mr. Sessions has been on a crusade on the side of corporate America and against the rights of workers and juries for many years.
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.
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
