Jefferson Beauregard Sessions Makes Alabama Proud

Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions makes Alabama proud! Not. Is anyone surprised Alabama Senator Sessions is leading the charge of the gop brigade attacking the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall?

It was Marshall who, with Howard Law School Dean Charles Hamilton Houston, his mentor, conceived and then painstakingly effectuated the jurisprudence that led to the striking down of the odious "separate but equal" doctrine that threatened to destroy this country. While many decry "activist judges" (by which they seem to mean judges who uphold civil rights for minorities and women), those judges who undermine civil rights often demonstrate the most extreme forms of activism. Judges such as those who declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation was constitutionally sound turned the Constitution on its head and made a mockery of equal protection. Those activist judges subjected an entire segment of Americans to more than half a century of state-imposed degradation, subjugation and humiliation.

I'm not surprised, after all Beauregard threw the first salvo when he made sure The Azalea Trail Maids were the ONLY official representative from Alabama the Beautiful in the Inaugural parade of the first African American President. State NAACP President Eddie Vaughn tried to tell y'all....

MOBILE -- Katie Henson hopes when she and the other 49 Azalea Trail Maids stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue in their hoop dresses and matching bonnets that the nation sees them as they see themselves -- the embodiment of Southern hospitality.

For the president of the NAACP's Alabama chapter, though, 50 young women -- 39 of them white -- wearing costumes reminiscent of the time when slavery existed doesn't conjure up an image he thinks is fitting for the swearing-in of the nation's first black president, Barack Obama.

Some thought Mr. Vaughn and I were making a big deal out of nothing and accused of "attacking the young women" and told to SFTU because it was a "diverse group".

With all of the problems and challenges facing this country and President Obama, fifty Alabama women (including some African-American ones) marching in a parade wearing strange outfits and freezing their tusses off, is not high on my "to worry about" list.

Kathy said it best;

Mr. Vaughn has an undeniable point. When you see a single young woman, let alone fifty, as a neon-colored caricature of Miss Scarlett at the Barbecue, it calls to mind, well, Miss Scarlett at the Barbecue. I’m sure girls north of the Mason-Dixon line wore hoop skirts too—we’ve all seen Little Women—but the silhouette of the big ruffledy Barbie-cake skirt and parasol is forever linked in the American mind with the antebellum South. And not just any aspect of the South, but the sprawling, colonnaded white plantation house, where in the evening by the moonlight you can hear those darkies singing. And when we choose to present that as the single representative image for our state, it looks like we’re yearning to hear ‘em singing again. It just does, y’all.

Let's rewind to the Sonya Sotomayer confirmation hearing when Senator Sessions slammed her for not voting like other Puerto Ricans

This morning, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) castigated Sotomayor for not ruling with her fellow Puerto Rican colleague, conservative Judge José A. Cabranes, when she decided to deny an en banc appeal in Ricci v. DeStefano, a process in which all judges of a court hear a case (as opposed to a three-judge panel of them). Sessions seemed to indicate that people of the same ancestry should vote the same way:

Thought for the day;

I would pay good money to hear Sonia Sotomayor say, “Senator Sessions, I think it’s ironic to be facing these questions from a man whose judicial nomination was rejected by this very committee on the grounds that he’s a huge racist.”

Update Seriously, though, when the Republican Senate Conference was meeting, did nobody say "if we're going to oppose the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, maybe we shouldn't have a giant racist leading the charge?" This seems like a situation in which Mel Martinez might have been able to offer a useful perspective. Or they could have called up JC Watts out of retirement. What were they thinking?

Can you say circular firing squad?

But back to 1986. During the debate over his nomination, committee Democrats questioned Sessions' prosecutorial discretion, focusing in particular on a case he pursued against three Marion, AL civil rights workers--Albert Turner, Turner's wife Evelyn, and Spencer Hogue, Jr.--whom he accused of voter fraud. Sessions was unconcerned with claims of fraud outside the so-called Black Belt, but he alleged that the trio had falsified absentee ballots in Perry County during the 1984 election. After conducting an exhaustive investigation, though, he was able to account for only a small handful of questionable examples, and even those he couldn't pin on his defendants, who were acquitted after only a few hours' deliberation.

Of course none of this is mentioned in the MSM or by the Talking TeeVee Pundit Heads.
Senator Sessions was right (pun intended) on the money to question Elana Kagens qualifications, but he is dead wrong to use the confirmation hearings to call her a liar and to lead an attack on Thurgood Marshall.

Sessions is engaging in what the Supreme Court engages in, interpretation of the law based on an interpretation of the Constitution. He says it in a very self-assured way, in a way that says "I know I'm right" but that doesn't change the fact that the 2nd amendment is just as unclear as the 8th.

In Sessions' world it's only activism if he disagrees with it. I'm not a big Kagan fan, but the GOP is off the fucking rails.

What nelliah said;

This racist won't care what he says no matter how bigoted. His constituency will still elect him. That is the reason for this appointment. He will enable the other Republicans on the committee and Senate keep their hands clean. Sessions will do all the name calling innuendoing and bring up nothing but bullshit to muddy the debate. It will be easy for the Republicans to scream about what Sessions says even if is is unadulterated crap. They will have every argument they have used in the past; communist, pro-gay, pro-abortion pro-taxes, anti-religion. And many more wedge issues they are fixated on. Pitiful. Especially with the mild mannered wimps the Democrats have leading this Senate. If they once took the gloves off and said this is how it is going to be and used the reconciliation ploy as the Republicans did and only needed 51 votes I would croak! Especially for SCOTUS justice nominees.

Look away. Look away.