Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, rejected for judgeship for racist views, lectures Sotomayor

[seafan]

1986





Sessions Using Sotomayor In Anti-Civil Rights Agenda

Posted by Skeptic
My Auburn Journal

July 14, 2009

In his opening statement of the confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Senator Jeff Sessions lectured her about "prejudice" and said when Judge Sotomay(o)r talked about how a "wise Latina" might reach a "better conclusion than a white male," he found it "shocking and offensive."

In 1986 Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was rejected by the very same Judiciary Committee for his own racist behavior. The committee discovered that Sessions said he thought the K(u) Klux Klan was OK, until he found out some of them "smoke pot." It was also revealed that Sessions called white civil rights attorneys "race traitors" and "embarrassments to their (white) race."

Nor did it help Sessions when he admitted to routinely referring to an African-American attorney who worked for him as "boy" -- even once warning that attorney to "be careful what you say to white folks!"

And it wasn't just talk, either.

Sessions, it was disclosed, had a disturbing record of indicting black civil rights activists as US Attorney in Mobile, Alabama. Invariably the cases were later dismissed. He was also accused of not investigating the spate of black church burnings that swept the state of Alabama the year he became attorney general.

Sessions further injured his own reputation when he prosecuted a black couple who suggested in a news article that US Attorney Sessions may have been less than diligent during his investigation of a jail lynching of a black man accused of shoplifting.

During his own confirmation hearings, Sessions at first lied but later admitted that "I may have said something about the NAACP being un-American and Communist, but I meant nothing by it."

Immigration reform groups have named Sessions "one of the leading (and loudest) voices against comprehensive immigration reform in the United States Senate." They also tied him to John Tanton, an anti-immigration activist who is identified as a White Supremacist by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Sessions entered national politics in the mid-'80s not as a politician but as a judicial nominee. In 1986 Sessions was rejected as a federal judge because of his racist remarks and disturbing anti-civil rights record. Moreover, Sessions remains unrepentant for his racist attitude, although he did reluctantly concede at his confirmation hearing that it "probably was wrong" when he attacked the NAACP as an "un-American" and "Communist-inspired" organizations that "forced civil rights down the throats of people."

Now, in 2009, Sen. Jefferson B. Sessions is in charge of overseeing the confirmation of America's first female Puerto Rican Supreme Court Justice, who was nominated by America's first black president.

And before some yahoo screams, 'Well Robert Byrd did it, tooooooo!', let's review some facts.



Robert Byrd has acknowledged his mistake in his association with the Ku Klux Klan as a young, politically ambitious man.




WP, June 19, 2005

Throughout a half-century on Capitol Hill, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) has twice held the premier leadership post in the Senate, helped win ratification of the Panama Canal treaty, squeezed billions from federal coffers to aid his home state, and won praise from liberals for his opposition to the war in Iraq and his defense of minority party rights in the Senate.

Despite his many achievements, however, the venerated Byrd has never been able to fully erase the stain of his association with one of the most reviled hate groups in the nation's history.

"It has emerged throughout my life to haunt and embarrass me and has taught me in a very graphic way what one major mistake can do to one's life, career, and reputation," Byrd wrote in a new memoir -- "Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields" -- that will be published tomorrow by West Virginia University Press.

The 770-page book is the latest in a long series of attempts by the 87-year-old Democratic patriarch to try to explain an event early in his life that threatens to define him nearly as much as his achievements in the Senate. In it, Byrd says he viewed the Klan as a useful platform from which to launch his political career.

.....

"I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times . . . and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened." ----Senator Robert Byrd, 2005

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is still stuck in the poisonous racist hatred of the last two centuries.



Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, U. S. Senator from Alabama




And indications are that Senator Sessions of Alabama knows a great deal about the orchestrated destruction of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman's career by a diseased Republican Party.



He's up for re-election in 2015.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. Watching Judge Sotomayor sitting there,

stoic, charming, even smiling when you know she wants to deliver a knuckle sandwich, tells me everything I need to know about this soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice.

She is doing our gender proud, she is doing our profession proud, her dignity is making these anklebiters look like the yippy, impotent little lapdogs that they truly are, and I am just in awe of her ability to smile these fuckers on, as we say in the old 'hood, and let them hang themselves with all their words and their bigotry.

She's class. She's elegant. She's brilliance. And, best of all, she's street-smart.

I'm now officially a Great Big Fan of hers......................

[DebbieCDC]

2. Ol' Jeff Beau is doing a hell of a job projecting don't you think?

[TexasObserver]

3. Recommend

[provis99]

4. "Beauregard"? What a surprise...Not

It seems like every hoity-toity racist in the South is named after some Confederate general; that should be a clue right there on his attitudes towards blacks.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

5. Too many of these stupid crackers .....

:banghead:

Idiots.

[Kingofalldems]

6. The Bush loving 'Siegelman is guilty' punk(s) must love this guy

[noiretextatique]

7. sotomayor makes him look and sound like a complete idiot

how ironic...an unrepentant, lifelong racist lecturing a latina woman about racism :eyes:
only in america.

[WI_DEM]

8. "I meant no harm" What an ass.

[mrbarber]

9. BUT BUT BUT SOTOMAYAR IS THE RACIST ONE!!!!

Freaking idiots.

This needs to be posted alongside this Yahoo story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090715/ap_on_go_su_co/us_sotomayor_ricci

"The liberal group People for the American Way said the dyslexic man got his firefighting job in New Haven in the first place by claiming discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"I don't think Mr. Ricci thought that his being hired was a case of reverse discrimination against those who weren't disabled," says Marge Baker, the group's vice president. "But you can't have it both ways. These laws can't be good when you use them to protect yourself and bad when they're used to protect someone else."

The hypocrisy, it just keeps on coming.