Boy, If Only Life Worked Like This

Josh Marshall gets this right, it was an Alvy Singer bringing out Marshall McLuhan at the cinema moment:

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), seeking to discredit Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy, cited her 2001 “wise Latina” speech, and contrasted the view that ethnicity and sex influence judging with that of Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, who “believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.”

“So I would just say to you, I believe in Judge Cedarbaum’s formulation,” Sessions told Sotomayor.

“My friend Judge Cedarbaum is here,” Sotomayor riposted, to Sessions’ apparent surprise. “We are good friends, and I believe that we both approach judging in the same way, which is looking at the facts of each individual case and applying the law to those facts.”

Cedarbaum agreed.

“I don’t believe for a minute that there are any differences in our approach to judging, and her personal predilections have no effect on her approach to judging,” she told Washington Wire. “We’d both like to see more women on the courts,” she added.

Sessions was clearly flustered by this, causing his lobster bib to flap full into his face and almost tip over his ten-gallon hat.

Perhaps the best part of this is that Judge Cedarbarum and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III were nominated by Ronald Reagan for the federal bench in the same year, 1986, but Sessions didn't make it as far as Cedarbaum, because of "a controversy surrounding comments he made involving the Ku Klux Klan and the NAACP."

This won't stop the silliness, but it was an amusing moment to distract us from, for example, Lindsey Graham comparing the "wise Latina" comment to sectarian violence and repression in Iraq.

Sotomayor Hearings Day II

Glenn Beck can today criticize the questioning of Senators toward Judge Sonia Sotomayor, because unlike yesterday, they're actually asking the questions. It's just joyful to watch Jefferson Beauregard "Jeff" Sessions III niggle over 15 year-old statements rather than anything resembling the legal record. You can watch it here.

...it's sad to watch Sotomayor explain precedent to Sessions. He was a judge, you know.



...I forgot to link to Judge Sotomayor's opening statement from yesterday.

Rudderless Ship

I don't know why I'm surprised by this freak-out on the right over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, but I am. The right wing had to have a fight to feed their starving base, and they oppose Democrats for the same reason George Leigh Mallory wanted to climb Mount Everest: "Because it's there." They don't believe that a Democratic President could possibly be legitimate, and therefore he doesn't have the legitimate right to nominate judges for the nation's highest court. QED.

But despite having advance knowledge of Sotomayor's potential nomination for a month, they have not been able to suffuse their objections to Sotomayor with anything but racial and identity politics. Michael Goldfarb says Obama has the "views of a 21 year-old Hispanic girl. Mark Krikorian simmers over the pronunciation of Sotomayor's NAME. Sen. Inhofe worries about "undue influence from her race and gender." The leader of the Republican Party called her a "reverse racist".

Look, I'm not going to tell Republicans they need to watch their opposition to a Latina woman solely because of her race and gender. They haven't asked for my help. I'd rather simply say that, when a party has no leadership, this kind of insanity can reign. The contradictions at work - conservatives touting Clarence Thomas' "empathy", the identity politics conservatives praised with the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor, the obvious disparity of conservatives demonizing empathy in the law while damning the "unfairness" of the Ricci decision to white firefighters - are just too obvious to count, as are the political sensitivities. But nobody has the controls of the Party, and nobody can douse these flames.

There's another theory on this, however. Conservatives have used racial coding for decades, and it's a well to which they have often gone over the years. But you know, we're in something of a new era when it comes to that. After all, take a look at the President.

Meanwhile, inside the Senate, there's no appetite for a filibuster, and Jeff Sessions even screwed up the only talking point that fell outside of the race/gender lines by saying that courts, in fact, do make laws. I plan to bring that little nugget out every time I hear about those "activist judges."

Dave Weigel: "Sotomayor's nomination will come crashing down when Larry Johnson releases the tape of her railing against whitey."

...and now Newt Gingrich calls her a racist. They really can't help themselves.

The New Republican Point Man On Judiciary

In addition to everything else, Arlen Specter was the Republican ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. His departure necessitated the GOP to choose a replacement, and given seniority issues and the inability for a member to repeat as chair or ranking member, it was not a clear-cut solution. After a weekend of discussion, Jeff Sessions won the job for the time being.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) will take over the ranking member position on the Senate Judiciary Committee after striking a deal with his more senior colleagues over the weekend, sources confirm to The Hill.

Sessions and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reached the deal that will allow the Alabama Republican to take over for Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), whose departure from the GOP last week left the committee without a ranking member.

Under terms of the deal, Sessions will serve as ranking member until the 112th Congress, when he will take over the ranking member post on the Senate Budget Committee. Current Budget Committee ranking member Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) is retiring at the end of the 111th Congress.

Grassley, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, will then become ranking member on the Judiciary Committee.

In the near term, Sessions will hold the ranking member position during the confirmation hearings for Obama's next Supreme Court nominee. Which means that the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee at this important time was denied a federal judgeship by the same committee because of his racist past.

Sessions entered national politics in the mid-'80s not as a politician but as a judicial nominee. Recommended by a fellow Republican from Alabama, then-Senator Jeremiah Denton, Sessions was Ronald Reagan's choice for the U.S. District Court in Alabama in the early spring of 1986. Reagan had gotten cocky by then, as more than 200 of his uberconservative judicial appointees had been rolled out across the country without serious opposition (this was pre-Robert Bork). That is, until the 39-year-old Sessions came up for review.

Sessions was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. The year before his nomination to federal court, he had unsuccessfully prosecuted three civil rights workers--including Albert Turner, a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr.--on a tenuous case of voter fraud. The three had been working in the "Black Belt" counties of Alabama, which, after years of voting white, had begun to swing toward black candidates as voter registration drives brought in more black voters. Sessions's focus on these counties to the exclusion of others caused an uproar among civil rights leaders, especially after hours of interrogating black absentee voters produced only 14 allegedly tampered ballots out of more than 1.7 million cast in the state in the 1984 election. The activists, known as the Marion Three, were acquitted in four hours and became a cause c?l?bre. Civil rights groups charged that Sessions had been looking for voter fraud in the black community and overlooking the same violations among whites, at least partly to help reelect his friend Senator Denton.

On its own, the case might not have been enough to stain Sessions with the taint of racism, but there was more. Senate Democrats tracked down a career Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit reluctantly, that in a conversation between the two men Sessions had labeled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) "un-American" and "Communist-inspired." Hebert said Sessions had claimed these groups "forced civil rights down the throats of people." In his confirmation hearings, Sessions sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as "un-American" when "they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions" in foreign policy. Hebert testified that the young lawyer tended to "pop off" on such topics regularly, noting that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases. Sessions acknowledged making many of the statements attributed to him but claimed that most of the time he had been joking, saying he was sometimes "loose with [his] tongue." He further admitted to calling the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a "piece of intrusive legislation," a phrase he stood behind even in his confirmation hearings.

It got worse. Another damaging witness--a black former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama named Thomas Figures--testified that, during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he "used to think they [the Klan] were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers." Sessions claimed the comment was clearly said in jest. Figures didn't see it that way. Sessions, he said, had called him "boy" and, after overhearing him chastise a secretary, warned him to "be careful what you say to white folks." Figures echoed Hebert's claims, saying he too had heard Sessions call various civil rights organizations, including the National Council of Churches and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "un-American." Sessions denied the accusations but again admitted to frequently joking in an off-color sort of way. In his defense, he said he was not a racist, pointing out that his children went to integrated schools and that he had shared a hotel room with a black attorney several times.

During his nomination hearings, Sessions was opposed by the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, People for the American Way, and other civil rights groups. Senator Denton clung peevishly to his favored nominee until the bitter end, calling Sessions a "victim of a political conspiracy." The Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee finally voted ten to eight against sending Sessions to the Senate floor. The decisive vote was cast by the other senator from Alabama, Democrat Howell Heflin, a former Alabama Supreme Court justice, who said, "[M]y duty to the justice system is greater than any duty to any one individual."

Senate Judiciary has jurisdiction over election reform and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, as well as their prosecution of voter fraud cases, by the way.

This is like someone who flunked the driver's test running the DMV.

Holder Pattern

I caught a little of the Eric Holder testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the way in. I guess the page one headline is that he called waterboarding torture. If that's so, then he is obligated by law to prosecute those who authorized and directed it. Just sayin'.

The cable gabfests are probably talking about him taking responsibility for mistakes made in the Marc Rich pardon. I want to focus on a couple other things. First, the issue of Guantanamo:

Holder echoed that stance Thursday but said shuttering the prison would be difficult and would take time. Many detainees could be transferred to other countries, he said, and some could be charged in U.S. courts. That is a contentious proposal because many oppose the idea of bringing terrorism suspects onto U.S. soil.

"There are possibly many other people who are not going to be able to be tried but who nevertheless are dangerous to this country," Holder said. "We're going to have to try to figure out what we do with them."

What we do is old-fashioned detective work, figure out if we can charge these people, and if we can't, release them. It's as simple as that. That's going to take a little time, since the evidence is currently in complete disarray, as a former prosecutor at Gitmo acknowledges. But it can and should be done as quickly as possible. Furthermore, there is an error in assuming this applies to every detainee still at the facility. It does not. There are hundreds that present no threat to the United States and should be released.

A federal judge ordered the release yesterday of a detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that the government's evidence is too weak to justify the man's continued confinement.

It is the second time that U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon has ordered the release of a detainee after examining government evidence, most of it classified. Leon said that the Justice Department failed to prove that Mohammed El Gharani, 21, is an enemy combatant because it relied heavily on statements made by two other detainees whose credibility is questionable.

In fact, the least we can do is allow some of the detainees whose lives we destroyed to remain free in the United States, even as a symbolic act of contrition and tolerance. This will make it easier to export other detainees to Western nations. If the Obama-Holder plan is just a kinder and gentler indefinite detention and more friendly military commissions, then they own a process which, among other things, is trying children in sham courts, against international law.

A couple other things - Jeff Sessions' questioning of Holder was hilarious. Sessions admitted being "concerned" that Holder wants to operate within the "spirit of the Constitution," because that could mean different things to different people. Yes, see, if your version of the Constitution means that we're not allowed to crush the testicles of children, Mr. Holder, we've got a problem!

In Chuck Schumer's testimony, Holder was asked if he would review the case of Bradley Schlozman and the politicization of the civil rights division, to determine why the US Attorneys declined to prosecute, and Holder said he would. So the Schloz is not out of the woods yet. And he was strong on the overall issue of politicization.

Holder promised to be an independent attorney general, telling lawmakers that he did not believe the attorney general's job was to serve as the president's lawyer — a frequent criticism of Gonzales' tenure under President George W. Bush. He also pledged to restore the independence of a Justice Department where Bush administration appointees used political benchmarks when making hiring decisions.

"One of the things I'm going to have to do as attorney general in short order is basically do a damage assessment," Holder said.

Several Republicans have already agreed to back Holder, so the effort to oppose him is pretty much a sideshow. Inside the false media narrative, however, there is some important information coming out.

Disrespecting The Dodd

Harry Reid is guessing that getting the FISA debate outside of primary season will lower the progressive volume against telecom amnesty. He's wrong.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday he would seek to extend a controversial interim wiretapping law through February to avoid the early presidential primary season.

Reid said Senate Democrats might have a better chance of resolving internal disputes and moving a rewrite of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) once the early primaries have concluded [...]

“By sometime early in February, the presidential nomination will likely be pretty well determined on the Democratic side, at least,” Reid said. “So I think, for all those reasons, it would be a good idea to extend it.”

This is a slap in the face to Chris Dodd, with the implication that he's only whipping up support against amnesty to further his Presidential aspirations. Look, Dodd's not going to be President and I think he knows that; unfortunately, this country doesn't appear to base its Presidential vote on leadership. If he doesn't have to ping-pong back and forth from Iowa he could focus MORE on the amnesty issue. And he'll be joined with other allies who were on the campaign trail this time.

We're not going to shut up about this. What's really going on is an attempt to give the White House 30 more days to intimidate Congress into giving in. But they can't intimidate 300 million people. And those paying attention to this debate don't believe that allowing phone companies to break the law protects our security. And anyone who heard this statement should be shocked:

“The civil libertarians among us would rather defend the constitution than protect our nation’s security.”

Sen. Sessions apparently doesn't know that he made an oath to defend the Constitution. It's practically his only job. And no matter what the Washington elites say, we're going to hold him to it.

The Siegelman Case And The Politicization of Justice

Wingnut noise machine freak-outs like attacking a sick 12 year-old serve a useful purpose, regardless of the lies. The intent is to distract the media and even the progressive movement while the politicized federal government goes about their deceitful business. The quintessential example of this is the Don Siegelman case. Siegelman, the Democratic former governor of Alabama, was railroaded and convicted of corruption in office last year. Apparently, the lobbyist who "blew the whistle" on Siegelman had dealings with a lot of Alabama politicians, many of then Republicans.

On may 8, 2002, Clayton Lamar (Lanny) Young Jr., a lobbyist and landfill developer described by acquaintances as a hard-drinking "good ole boy," was in an expansive mood. In the downtown offices of the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, Ala., Young settled into his chair, personal lawyer at his side, and proceeded to tell a group of seasoned prosecutors and investigators that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to some of the biggest names in Alabama Republican politics. According to Young, among the recipients of his largesse were the state's former attorney general Jeff Sessions, now a U.S. Senator, and William Pryor Jr., Sessions' successor as attorney general and now a federal judge. Young, whose detailed statements are described in documents obtained by TIME, became a key witness in a major case in Alabama that brought down a high-profile politician and landed him in federal prison with an 88-month sentence. As it happened, however, that official was the top Democrat named by Young in a series of interviews, and none of the Republicans whose campaigns he fingered were investigated in the case, let alone prosecuted.

The Siegelman investigation was clearly politicized, a fact stated by 44 former state Attorney Generals from both sides of the aisle. But this revelation calls things into question even further. It seems that the initial cause of the investigation included a lot of actionable information on Republicans - but that information was simply forgotten.

The prosecutor in the case claims that nothing untoward was done here - that Lanny Young's description of payments to Jeff Sessions were "legitimate." Does this sound legitimate to you?

Early in the investigation, in November 2001, Young announced that five years earlier, he "personally provided Sessions with cash campaign contributions," according to an FBI memo of the interview. Prosecutors didn't follow up that surprising statement with questions, but Young volunteered more. The memo adds that "on one occasion he [Young] provided Session [sic] with $5,000 to $7,000 using two intermediaries," one of whom held a senior position with Sessions' campaign. On another occasion, the FBI records show, Young talked about providing "$10,000 to $15,000 to Session [sic]. Young had his secretaries and friends write checks to the Sessions campaign and Young reimbursed the secretaries and friends for their contributions."

If true, Young's statements describe political money laundering that would be a clear violation of federal law.

This Time article is a blueprint for how the Justice Department has acted in the Bush/Rove era, as a political arm of the Republican Party. And we've seen this habit throughout the federal government. We've seen Scott Jennings briefing members of the General Services Administration about how they can help Republican candidates (Jennings, incidentally, resigned last week, right on the heels of this Time article, interestingly enough). We've seen the efforts to install a known vote suppressor, Hans Von Spakovsky, onto the Federal Election Commission. And now we're seeing it in this case in Alabama. There's a hearing scheduled about this in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. Jeff Sessions sits on that committee. He must recuse himself. The Justice Department has refused to turn over any documents regarding the Siegelman case. How can the Democrats confirm someone to run that Department without them?