I don’t know if Coretta Scott King still pulls any water in Congress, but she once did. In fact, she may have been influential enough in 1986 to sink the confirmation of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to serve as judge in the Southern District of Alabama. She was unable to appear in person to testify against Sessions, so she wrote a long detailed letter to the Judiciary Committee explaining her strident opposition to the idea of giving Sessions a lifetime appointment. The committee chairman, Strom Thurmond, somehow managed not to enter the letter into the congressional record, but that didn’t prevent it from having some influence. In particular, Alabama Senator Howell Heflin surprised the Reagan administration by rescinding his earlier support and voting against Sessions in committee. This effectively sunk Sessions’ confirmation hopes.
For a long time, no one could locate a copy of King’s statement, but Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post has managed to unearth it and you can now read it for yourself.
This all happened a mere eighteen years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, which is considerably less time than has elapsed since. Maybe there’s no longer a consensus that King’s work had immense almost sacred value and that people like Sessions are an affront to his legacy. But I think Coretta’s testimony should stand, and it should count for much more when considering Sessions for the position of Attorney General of the United States.
I don’t see anything in Sessions’ subsequent record that would have changed her mind about his suitability for a position of such responsibility and I am certain that she would see Sessions as an outright threat to voting rights and the accomplishments of the movement of which she and her husband were such an important part.
I sent my protest letters to my Senators yesterday, Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown. I specifically protested the choice of Sessions and explained succinctly why I find him unfit for the job.
Sherrod Brown’s office responded that they had received my message, but Portman’s office did not. I don’t know if our voices will be heard, or if they’re heard, will the committee vote Sessions down. It seems unlikely, as usual. There could be solid evidence that Sessions was a KKK grand dragon and the Republicans would push him through. I expect the Cabinet nominations will stand.
And Mrs King, as significant a civil rights figure as she was, is possibly already fading into history. It’s so like the Republicans to claim that Jeff Sessions has moved away from the past and we should do the same.
While I have no regard nor respect for Sessions and would prefer that he not be confirmed, introducing a thirty year old letter opposing him makes me uncomfortable. First, it’s not going to convince anyone that otherwise would support his nomination or enlighten anyone as to who Sessions is. It’s not as if he’s been hiding under a rock for all these decades. Second, it has a whiff of what the rightwing did continuously whenever Bobby Byrd took a liberal or progressive position — doncha libs know that Byrd was a KKK member?
Read it.
Of course they have no trouble at all going back 30 years on something that does damage to Clinton.
Discussions on how she acted when she was First Lady of Arkansas was all the rage.
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Not by me and in real time I also objected to the Arkansas project crap and Paula Jones. So, be careful with that broad brush you use just like wingers do with theirs.
It does not seem likely that the views of black civil rights leaders, however famous, living or dead, are going to carry much weight with the senate Repub caucus.
J Beauregard Sessions III is a critical cog in the upcoming Repub misrule. Having a neo-confederate as attorney general ensures that the pot can be kept simmering on the Repub campaign to restore increasing racial animosity in America. This is the planned Bread and Circuses for the incompetent white electorate, who can swoon with delight over Sessions’ smiling disdain for “political correctness”. To a large extent, a neoconfederate attorney general can do Der Trumper’s racial dirty work for him, and as another amoral psychopath, Sessions is happy to do it.
JBSIII has been bleating “I’ll follow the law” as his all-purpose mantra, much like CJ Roberts’ lies about being an “umpire” merely “callin’ the balls and strikes”. As though the “law” somehow follows itself, or operates automatically and independently of human judgement. Dems can’t seem to take apart this meaningless slogan, no matter how many times he blats it out.
The hearings so far have produced little damage to Sessions as far as I have seen. There is no real focus, with questions all over the board. When Sessions repeatedly disavows some Trumper promise or another, there is no effort to call him on how exactly he will oppose his prez. (Same with SOS RExxon) It doesn’t seem like any punch has landed to date. As for King’s letter, the fact that Sessions was demonstrably a black vote suppressor in 1986 is a stirring accolade in 2017…
I also oppose this nomination, but, in practice, the Senate supports their own. Maybe someone versed in Senate history can tell us if the Senate has ever rejected a sitting colleague? Might have a better chance with SoS. What are Tillerson’s foreign policy credentials?
Off the top of my head, similar to but less than Herbert Hoover’s when he was appointed head of the US Food Administration in 1917 (by the Democratic POTUS and was solicited by Wilson to run in the 1920 presidential election as a Democrat). But would be surprised if there’s not a precedent for Tillerson’s nomination.
In the private sector Hoover himself created the Committee for the Relief of Belgium (CRB) which “spent almost $1 billion in assistance, issued 5 million tons of concentrated food, and fed over 9 million people in Belgium and northern France, all with an administrative overhead of less than 1 percent.” (The Atlantic).
While Tillerson and Exxon have been leading the climate change denial parade.
Yes, as I said “less than Herbert Hoover.” But Hoover was wedded to a laissez-faire form of capitalism and we know how well that served him and the national economy.
The “climate change denial parade” was ushered in with the last “business” administration in 2001 and out of the same biz sector as Tillerson.
John Tower was not confirmed, as stories of alcoholism and womanizing came out. Kinda tame compared to some stories we are hearing now.
Jeff Sessions will be confirmed. He will enforce the laws.
Something more to chew on from DallasNews:
Rep. Mo Brookes of Alabama is now claiming the objection to Sessions is part of the “war on whites.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/11/politics/kfile-mo-brooks-war-on-whites/
Nevermind Sessions’ actual, documented history of racism plus anti-civil-rights/anti-voting-rights Congressional voting record (unless you want to consider that just a subset of his racist history . . . I think an argument could be made for doing so).
There’s literally no projection jiu-jitsu too low for them to stoop to.