A Time for Change

more about “Rachel Maddow on Jeff Sessions racist…” (please click on link to view video)

Senator Jeff Sessions will now take the place of Arlen Spector as the head of the GOPasaurus Judiciary Committee that will vet President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.  Ironically, Session was nominated by former President Regan for a position as a District Judge.  His nomination was blocked because of evidence of racism. According to Talking Points Memo, the hearings on Senator Sessions then candidacy for a District Court judge revealed several witnesses who addressed Sessions’ racism.

…the testimonies of two witnesses–a Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, and a black Sessions subordinate named Thomas Figures–helped to doom Sessions, then a U.S. Attorney, at his Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings. According to Wildman, Hebert testified reluctantly “that in a conversation between the two men Sessions had labeled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” And Figures–then an assistant U.S. Attorney–told the committee that “during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he ‘used to think they [the Klan] were OK’ until he found out some of them were ‘pot smokers.’”

There’s more though. Session also unsuccessfully prosecuted three civil rights workers, known as the “Marion Three,” including Albert Turner, who was a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., on a case of election fraud for the 1984 election. He spent a long time interrogating black voters in predominantly black counties, finding 14 allegedly tampered ballots out of approximately 1.7 million ballots cast. The three civil rights workers were acquitted after four hours of jury deliberation. Civil rights groups charged that Sessions had been looking for voter fraud in the black community while overlooking the same violations among whites, at least partly to help reelect his friend Senator Denton.

Mow he’ll be attacking President Obama’s nominee about his / her views on torture and no doubt twisitn the President’s comments that he would like the next justice to have “empathy.”  Per Talking Points Memo:

Chosen by the Senate Republican Caucus to represent the interests of good Republicans everywhere, Sen. Sessions will be certain to inquire of the nominee whether he or she believes recent practices of US interrogators amount to torture and whether the nominee bears any empathy toward anyone to such a degree as it could affect his/her decisions.

He will do what good Republicans expect him to do, he will show that good Republicans everywhere believe that empathy is bad and that torture is good, and that no Republican could, in good conscience, vote in favor of a nominee who could empathize with those less fortunate or see any illegality in torture.

What a sad, sad commentary on that party that they have a racist leading the inquiry to support torture and to ridicule empathy, yet they ironically call themselves the “family values” party.  

What values? Intolerance and bigotry?

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