American Future Fund

Senator Who Praised Segregationist Judges Will Lead Opposition To Justice Sotomayor

2009-05-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

Big surprise, right? Wasn't David Duke available?

By Brian Beutler, as posted at TPM Cafe - May 4, 2009, 12:43PM

As I noted below, it looks like Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) will be, at least for a time, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee. That's an interesting role for a man with Sessions'...history. In a 2002 New Republic article, Sarah Wildman detailed the Alabama senator's rise through the ranks of politics in Alabama and in Republican Washington.

Sessions first appeared on the scene in 1986 D.C. when President Ronald Reagan nominated him to serve on the U.S. District Court in Alabama. At the time, the Judiciary Committee was controlled by Republicans, but his appointment nonetheless went absolutely nowhere--a fact that may have had a thing or two to do with stories like this:

Senate Democrats tracked down a career Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit 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." Hebert said Sessions had claimed these groups "forced civil rights down the throats of people." In his confirmation hearings, Sessions sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as "un-American" when "they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions" in foreign policy. Hebert testified that the young lawyer tended to "pop off" on such topics regularly, noting that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases. Sessions acknowledged making many of the statements attributed to him but claimed that most of the time he had been joking, saying he was sometimes "loose with [his] tongue." He further admitted to calling the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a "piece of intrusive legislation," a phrase he stood behind even in his confirmation hearings....
Another damaging witness--a black former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama named Thomas Figures--testified 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." Sessions claimed the comment was clearly said in jest. Figures didn't see it that way. Sessions, he said, had called him "boy" and, after overhearing him chastise a secretary, warned him to "be careful what you say to white folks." Figures echoed Hebert's claims, saying he too had heard Sessions call various civil rights organizations, including the National Council of Churches and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "un-American." Sessions denied the accusations but again admitted to frequently joking in an off-color sort of way. In his defense, he said he was not a racist, pointing out that his children went to integrated schools and that he had shared a hotel room with a black attorney several times.

The committee ultimately voted 10-8 against reporting his nomination on to the floor. In a perverse form of poetic justice, Sessions will soon be that committee's most powerful Republican. And in that position, he'll no doubt be leading the charge (such as it is) against whomever President Obama nominates to the Supreme Court--or any court, really. Having been given the Robert Bork treatment in the past, it's hard to imagine Sessions treating Obama's picks all that genially.

As Wildman wrote, "it has been on judicial nominees that Sessions has really made a name for himself."

When Sessions grabbed Heflin's Senate seat in 1996, he also nabbed a spot on the Judiciary Committee. Serving on the committee alongside some of the senators who had dismissed him 16 years earlier, Sessions has become a cheerleader for the Bush administration's judicial picks, defending such dubious nominees as Charles Pickering, who in 1959 wrote a paper defending Mississippi's anti-miscegenation law, and Judge Dennis Shedd, who dismissed nearly every fair-employment civil rights case brought before him as a federal district court judge. Sessions called Pickering "a leader for racial harmony" and a "courageous," "quality individual" who was being used as a "political pawn." Regarding Shedd, he pooh-poohed the criticism, announcing that the judge "should have been commended for the rulings he has made," not chastised.

And after carefully reviewing Sessions' record, Republicans in Washington ~~took appropriate measures to limit his influence~~ gave him an extremely influential position in the Senate. It'll be...enlightening...to hear conservatives defend the move, or, better yet, excuse it on the grounds that the GOP's only giving these views special prominence for about a year and a half.

Maybe THIS Is Why the Republicans are Called "The Party of No"

2009-05-26T09:45:00.001-07:00

Here's a list of Republican "legislative alerts and updates" posted at the same Republican website, the "American Future Fund", that is opposing the nomination of soon-to-be Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and in which the headlines are "Say no", "Enough is Enough", "Say No", "Please Oppose", "Oppose", "Reject", and "Say No".

Legislative Alerts and Updates

Please say no to Cap and Tax
A $2 Trillion Tax Increase the the Last Thing We Need
Tell your Senators that Enough is Enough!
It's time to ease the tax burden, not crush our job creators
Say No to the Health Care Board
Washington Bureaucrats Shouldn't Make Our Health Care Decisions
Please Oppose the Solis Nomination for Labor Secretary
Yet Another Obama Cabinet Nominee Has Trouble With Taxes
Oppose Leon Panetta
His Conflicts of Interest Make Him Unqualified
Tell the Senate to Reject the House's Auto-Bailout Bill
Those who caused this mess aren't being held accountable
Enough is Enough! Say No To The Auto Bailout
Let's not throw good money after bad

Is there anything that the Republican Party is willing to support, aside from color-aroused politics and pollution?

Black Bloggers Express Pride in Obama's Nomination of First Latino Supreme Court Justice

2009-05-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

Charles Hamilton Houston’s view that African-American attorneys should be social engineers has cast a long shadow. Houston’s statement about the importance of black attorneys to American society had a direct impact on his students and colleagues such as Thurgood Marshall. Marshall famously said of Houston and his influence on the civil rights movement, “we wouldn’t have been any place if Charlie hadn’t laid the groundwork for it.” AllAcademic.Com

Soon-to-be justice Sonia Sotomayor follows in the footsteps of Charles Hamilton Houston, as she says in the video above. Republicans say they oppose the use of law as social engineering, but these are the same white supremacists who supported laws preventing Blacks and whites from marrying one another. Republicans are avid social engineers when its suits their color-aroused prejudices.

I am so proud of President Barack Obama today for nominating "U.S. appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court." WaPost I first read about it at Yahoo News, and I think this is the kind of moment that I will always remember, where I was and what I was doing when President Barack Obama nominated the first Latino for the US Supreme Court.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama named federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice on Tuesday, praising her as "an inspiring woman" with both the intellect and compassion to interpret the Constitution wisely.
Obama said Sotomayor has more experience as a judge than any current member of the high court had when nominated, adding she has earned the "respect of colleagues on the bench," the admiration of lawyers who appear in her court and "the adoration of her clerks."
"My heart today is bursting with gratitude," Sotomayor said from the White House podium moments after being introduced by Obama.

I feel like President Obama has read my blog and quoted me when I read in Yahoo News what he said in announcing this appointment:

Obama and Sotomayor both noted the historic nature of the appointment. The president said a Hispanic on the court would mark another step toward the goal of "equal justice under law."
Obama and Sotomayor stood with Vice President Joe Biden. It was a striking picture of diversity: a black president, a white vice president and a Hispanic nominee to the nation's highest court.

Sotomayor said she grew up in poor surroundings and never dreamed she would one day be nominated for the highest court. Yahoo News

Now, to the politics of this decision: There is absolutely nothing the Republicans can say about this nomination that will help them politically, except "congratulations!" If they oppose this nomination they will enrage, infuriate and alienate the Latino vote for generations.

As Tanehisi Coates said in the Atlantic this morning, and as was quoted approvingly by Jack and Jill Politics,

Obama is tactical as always--I just don't think [color aroused US Senator (my riff)] Jeff Sessions, with his history, really wants it with a Puerto-Rican woman who worked her way up from the projects and went on to be summa cum laude at Princeton, and went on to Yale Law. Not to mention you have the first Latina Supreme Court judge, appointed by the first black president. Just on the crass politics, it ain't a good look.

As for Black people, I think we have a unity of interests with Latinos in terms of decisions made by the US Supreme Court, because we need the same things: an end to color-aroused police brutality and electrocution; an opportunity to go to schooo, universities and work, even though our skin is brown in America; juries that are not stacked against us by their very all-whiteness . . . and police who do not target us simply because our skin is brown.

That's why President Obama was speaking directly to me and my needs as a Black American today, when he used the phrase, "equal justice under the law." I think we all know that the goal of equal justice under the law is among the foremost concerns, if not the single most unanimous concern, of the AfroSpear and the afrosphere.

"My heart today is bursting with gratitude," Sotomayor said from the White House podium moments after being introduced by Obama.

Justice Sonia, my heart is bursting with gratitude as well.

White reporters will be calling Black bloggers and other highly public figures and they will be asking us if we are not disappointed that Obama did not choose a Black person. The answer is as follows: We are all Americans and Federal Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayo is one of us. I congratulate President Obama for this appointment, which will cement his place in American history as a courageous visionary who brings the "change" of which he speaks and who fulfills the promises of our nation. President Obama nominated a woman who understands the needs of people like me, and who will also understand the immigrant experience, even if she personally was born in Puerto Rico, within the United States of America.

I could not be more proud of President Obama than I am right now. I am relieved that there will now be at least one justice on the US Supreme Court whose background and and votes reflect personal experience with being among the minority in the United States. But we must also remember that, as a woman, Sotomayor is among the largest single demographic group in America, and in a country with a better history of equality it would not be surprising that the majority of the citizenry be among the majority of the nation's highest court.

Now, the Republican white supremacist misogynistic immigrant haters - "the party of 'no' ", will crank up their noise machine , as they have in their new anti-Justice Sonia website and say abominable things that will alienate Latinos, women and Blacks.

Senate Republicans, led by then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), blocked her nomination by Bill Clinton to the Second Circuit for an entire year, arguing — presciently — that she was being tapped in preparation for a SCOTUS appointment.

Sens. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) joined a unanimous slate of Dems in pushing Sotomayor through by a 68 to 28 margin. American Future Fund, citing Politico.com

This nomination, from every perspective, is a fatal wrench in the Republican noise machine. We, all of us, --Latinos, women, Blacks and white men of good conscience, Asians and Native Americans -- will never, ever forget what the Republicans say and do right now.