O-blog-dee-o-blog-da

By Melanie Nathan, Nov 18, 2016.

President Elect Donald Trump has appointed Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to the job. The United States Attorney General (A.G.) is the head of the United States Department of Justice per 28 U.S.C. § 503, concerned with legal affairs and is the chief law enforcement officer and chief lawyer of the United States government. This appointment will still require Congressional confirmation.

Jeff Sessions is no friend to gays, immigrants or people of color. He was refused confirmation to a federal judge post during the Reagan administration because even the Republicans found him to be an embarrassment.   Well maybe only Ted Kennedy had the courage to use the actual words – but hey lets take a leaf out of the Trump book – lets let go of all political correctness and call ‘a spade a spade’:

Jeff Sessions is a racist, a bigot and a homophobe and his career history proves it:

Session’s record of opposing civil rights dates back to his days as a US Attorney in Alabama in the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan picked the then federal prosecutor, to  fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court in Alabama.  The nomination, way back then,  was so controversial that it got quashed by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sessions, a U.S. attorney became the second man only in 50 years to be rejected by Congress for a federal judicial appointment, and it was made clear that his denial was because of racist statements he made and for falsely prosecuting black political activists Albert Turner, Turner’s wife Evelyn, and Spencer Hogue, Jr.- in Alabama.

An  African American former assistant US attorney, Thomas Figures, testified that Sessions had called him “boy”, and that he had joked about the Ku Klux Klan in ways that implied he wasn’t particularly appalled by their appalling tactics. UPI reported during the hearings on Figures’s testimony.

”Mr Sessions … stated that he believed the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Operation PUSH and the National Council of Churches were all un-American organizations teaching anti-American values,” Figures testified. ”The statement clearly was not intended as a joke.” Figures also said he was present when Sessions said he believed the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he learned its members smoked marijuana – a statement Sessions has said was clearly made in jest. ”I certainly took it as a serious statement,” Figures said.

The late Senator Ted Kennedy was at the helm of this exposure, noting:

“….“Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era that we thought was in the past.  Inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude could be a Judge or even a US attorney. It is inconceivable … that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a US attorney, let alone a United States federal judge.”

Later Kennedy would say that the hearings created a ”clear and convincing case to gross insensitivity to the questions of race” on the part of Sessions. His Democratic colleague, senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, called Sessions a man of ”marginal qualifications who lacks judicial temperament. … A nominee who is hostile, hostile to civil rights organizations and their causes.”

Back then, there would be no place for Jeff Sessions on the federal bench but through the will of the people of Alabama, his political career was off to a good start. It seems known racists win the day in places like that. The Alabaman went on to become the state’s attorney general.

In 1996, he won his Alabama Senate seat: 

“…… and came to the Senate with the kind of rabid conservatism that today makes people feel the Republican party is out of touch with the country. The ACLU gives him an “anti-civil rights” sticker. The Human Rights Campaign dubs him an unambiguous “anti-gay rights” legislator with a 0% record on gay issues. And the NAACP labels him firmly “anti-affirmative action”.

And now all eyes are on 2017 – Will the Republicans of 2017 (now having the majority control on Congress) confirm the appointment of Sessions, the man who the Reagan Republicans could not stomach !

Please read about my personal experience with Jeff Sessions:

Back in June of 2009, I sat feet away from Jeff Sessions in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and witnessed first hand the disturbing machinations of a true blood racist – homophobe – xenophobe.

 I watched the beady smug face of Jeff Sessions as he jabbed away at the witnesses with his distorted version of same-sex relationships.  It was cruel – I watched as the sons of a stellar community member took the blows of those abusive assertions. I heard what he said that ripped at the hearts of those young loving sons.  READ MORE HERE