Saturday, November 19, 2016

Senator Sessions will be the next Attorney General. What needs to be understood is his loyality to his predecessors in that office.

Revenge is a common experience in the Republican Party, not necessarily in fighting, but, everytime some kind of nomination has to move through the US Senate there are always past defeats of the past mentioned. Robert Bork will live forever as the most avenged judicial candidate in history. That is part of their political strategy. Fear. Revenge as a political priority is to instill fear and over ride any legitimate objection to their power. There are plenty of people who have suffered because free speech was viewed as a weapon and not a right by Republicans. 

What needs to happen during the US Senate nomination process, this time, is to have US Senator Sessions accept and be loyal to the work of previous Attorney Generals.

November 18, 2016
By Mary Troyon and Brian Lyman

...But the road to Senate confirmation (click here) will be rough based on the reaction from Democrats and a whole host of civil rights organizations who fear Sessions’ views on immigration, civil rights and criminal justice – many of them dating back to his time before he was in the Senate – will move the Justice Department in a sharply conservative direction after eight years of President Obama.

Among the harshest critiques was from Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who called Sessions “anti-immigrant and anti-civil rights.’’

“If you have nostalgia for the days when blacks kept quiet, gays were in the closet, immigrants were invisible and women stayed in the kitchen, Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is your man,’’ Gutierrez said in a statement.

The most important reviews of Sessions’ record, however, will come from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who will decide whether to recommend him to the full Senate for confirmation. Senators traditionally show great deference to their colleagues when they are elevated to positions in the executive branch. And there were no signs Friday that any Senate Republican, even those who opposed Trump, had reservations about the appointment.

Sessions’ Democratic colleagues were signaling that his path to the Justice Department will not go unchallenged.

“Sen. Sessions has served on the Senate Judiciary Committee for many years so he’s well aware of the thorough vetting he’s about to receive,’’ said California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Judiciary’s ranking Democrat. “And while many of us have worked with Sen. Sessions closely and know him to be a staunch advocate for his beliefs, the process will remain the same: a fair and complete review of the nominee.’’

The confirmation hearings, which could start even before Trump is sworn in Jan. 20, are expected to relive a series of events more than three decades ago in Alabama that had a profound impact on his career....