According to Paul Kane, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has the inside path to be the Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee that will oversee David Souter’s replacement on the Supreme Court.
In an odd twist the man most likely to replace Specter as the top Republican on Judiciary is Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), whose early career ambition was not elected politics. A federal prosecutor in Alabama, Sessions was nominated in 1986 by Ronald Reagan to be a U.S. District Court judge, but Sessions was accused of having a racially insensitive attitude. The line of attack was led by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Biden, who GOP senators accused of using the nomination fight to appeal to interest groups in advance of his1988 presidential campaign.
Specter also opposed Sessions, whose nomination was dealt a final blow when his home-state senator, the late Howell Hefflin (D-Ala.), turned against him. A decade later Sessions exacted his revenge on Hefflin when he won his Senate seat in 1996 and then got appointed to the Judiciary Committee.
He was too racist to serve as a federal judge but now the Republicans want to put him in charge of vetting federal judges? Seriously? Maybe not, but only because he is so stupid.
Sessions is a much more ideological conservative than Specter, but he is not considered as sharp a questioner as the Pennsylvanian. That’s part of the reason why there are some murmurs among GOP staff that maybe one of the more veteran Republicans on the committee would instead take over as ranking member.
Could be Chuck Grassley if he is willing to give up his health care work as Ranking Member on the Finance Committee. That would be less embarrassing.
That man and orin hatch of utah are the two most disgusting men in the senate. I detest them both.
Good idea. Somebody like Grassley might still have some credibility with “centrists”, or at least some ability to make his partisan objections sound sincere among those not paying attention. Sessions will rant for the benefit of the hardcore right and scare senators away from supporting a filibuster against Obama’s nominee.
Just start off with a few qualified Latino, African American, and female Federal Judge candidates. And then watch the Republican Party and Sen. Sessions draw themselves closer to their Goal of the DeMint 30.
those two programs should be interesting, maybe provide a little insight as to where this might be going, or maybe not.
via e/mail from leahy’s office:
let the spin begin
-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, 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.
http://www.jessejacksonjr.org/query/creadpr.cgi?id=%22006526%22
I believe it’s a given that the President will nominate a Latino. The GOP will not be able to help themselves. Let the games begin.