With Jeff Sessions watching over the Sotomayor nomination for the R's, we need to remember just who he is

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions: the wrong man

in the wrong job at the wrong time?

by Ken

You have to hand it to the president in the matter of the Sotomayor nomination to fill David Souter's Supreme Court seat. In large part it was a challenge and a booby trap for the "Just Say No" Right. Judge Sotomayor's qualifications and experience are so solid, and her record so unimpeachably moderate, that an all-out campaign against her would likely make her attackers look foolish, not to mention anti-Hispanic and anti-female.

Although most of the Right-Wing Noise Machine, working on auto pilot, sure enough went into immediate attack mode, it wasn't long before some of the people on the Other Side with working brains recognized the trap that had been laid for them, and backed off. Of course we still have the committed know-nothings on the attack, and you don't know whether to laugh or cry when you see and hear Rush Limbaugh declare in that patented smarmy way, "She's a racist."

And indeed the spectacle we're left with is an opposition that is itself deeply racist, taking great pleasure in hurling this dismissl at Judge Sotomayor.

Where the spectacle goes from curious to spooky is in the identity of the current ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, through which the nomination will of course have to pass. It would have been one sort of spectacle with Arlen Specter in the job. We don't know exactly what sort of spectacle it would have been, because we know only too well how shameless, ruthless, and fact-defiant the senator can be in the confirmation pit of the SJC. Oh, Arlen probably would have put on some kind of a show, but it seems likely that he would have been one of the Republicans smart enough to understand the political perils of trying to tear Judge Sotomayor down.

However, with the gentleman from Pennsylvania's switch of parties, the SJC ranking memberdom fell to, of all people, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who actually is a confirmed racist. And a confirmed racist with baggage. In the years when Ronald Reagan began the right-wing project of rounding up the grungiest and slimiest specimens of humanity for herding onto the federal bench, a project that Chimpy the Prez pursued avidly but didn't initiate, our Jeff proved too grungy and slimy for prime time. A deadlocked SJC (at 9-9) was unable to send the nomination on to the full Senate.

The other day our legal-eagle colleague Ian Millhiser felt compelled to bring Senator Sessions' shady past out into the light of day, and I've been meaning to share it (there are of course many links on Think Progress):

Sessions Uses Sotomayor Nomination To Continue His Lifelong Crusade Against Civil Rights

Conservatives have chosen a strange leader to spearhead their charge against Judge Sotomayor — Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). With only days remaining until Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings begin, Sessions has focused his attacks on Sotomayor’s past service on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), a leading civil rights organization that Sessions calls “extreme” because it “brought several race discrimination lawsuits for minorities” while Sotomayor sat on its board.

Setting aside the facial absurdity of this attack — race discrimination is illegal, a fact which apparently also bothers Sessions — it’s puzzling that conservatives would let Sessions be their public face of opposition against the first Latina nominated to the Supreme Court, especially in light of his own checkered history with race.

In 1986, Sessions’ nomination to the federal bench was rejected by the Senate because of Sessions’ deep-seated hostility to the very notion of civil rights. In comments that are strikingly similar to his recent attacks on PRLDEF, Sessions attacked the NAACP as an “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” organization that “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” When confronted about these statements at his confirmation hearing, Sessions reluctantly conceded that they “probably w[ere] wrong.” Watch:

Nor were Sessions’ attacks on the NAACP an isolated incident. As a federal prosecutor, Sessions conducted a tenuous criminal investigation into voting rights advocates that registered African-Americans to vote, an investigation that culminated in an unsuccessful prosecution against a former aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Additionally, an African-American attorney who once worked for Sessions testified at his hearings that Sessions said that he “used to think [the KKK] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.” The same attorney also recalled being called “boy” by Sessions and being told to “be careful what you say to white folks” after Sessions overheard him chastising a white secretary.

So Sessions’ attacks on PRLDEF fit into a much larger pattern; they are just the most recent phase of Sessions’ crusade against civil rights and the organizations that promote them. America has changed a lot since 1986, but Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III remains exactly the same.

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