With the recent announcement that Justice David Souter will retire from the U.S. Supreme Court, President Obama must now find a replacement. And over the next four years - eight years if there is a second Obama term - the president has the opportunity to shape the federal courts to reflect 21st century realities. Much damage has been done in the judiciary under the Bush administration. In his attempts to create an enduring legacy of radical conservatism on the bench, the previous occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue stacked the federal courts with corporate shills, Christian Taliban and torture enablers.
With only one woman on the Supreme Court, seven White men, and a Black justice who is the functional equivalent of a conservative White man, the high court does not look like modern-day America. Now with the winds of change blowing, there is a fighting chance that diversity - of backgrounds and life experiences, of gender, of ethnicity, of opinion, of law schools, and the like - will be a factor in the shaping of the court. Times must change. As someone who clerked for two African-American judges in the federal courts, I can appreciate the value of diversity on the bench, of having more than the usual “suspects” wielding the gavel.
But it seems unlikely that the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jefferson Beauregard “Jeff” Sessions (R-Alabama), feels the same way. Sessions, it should be noted, was nominated by Reagan in 1985 to a federal judgeship, but was dinged by the Senate. Sessions was a critic of the Voting Rights Act. He had called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” groups that “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” In addition, as a U.S. attorney in Alabama, he reportedly called a Black assistant U.S. attorney “boy”, and told him to “be careful what you say to white folks.” As a federal prosecutor, Sessions engaged in a voter-fraud witch-hunt against three Black civil rights workers, including a former aide to Dr. King. Moreover, during a 1981 KKK murder investigation, 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.”
As a senator, Sessions voted against expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. Based on his voting record, he has a 0% rating from the Human Rights Campaign (he is anti-gay rights), a 7% rating from the NAACP (he is anti-affirmative action), and a 20% rating from the ACLU (he is anti-civil rights). And this is the person the Republicans have entrusted in a position of leadership in this important committee in the Senate. It speaks volumes about the GOP and the statement they are making here, particularly when one considers Sessions’ association with anti-immigration, White nationalist groups.
A lawmaker with a solid anti-immigration record, Sessions is criticized by immigrants’ rights groups for his anti-immigration rhetoric, and for his close associations with three organizations: the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has designated FAIR as a hate group, notes that all of these organizations “were founded and funded by John Tanton, a retired Michigan ophthalmologist who operates a racist publishing company and has written that to maintain American culture, ‘a European-American majority’ is required.” He has published writings by John Vinson, head of Tanton’s American Immigration Control Foundation, and a devout White supremacist. Vinson has called for the secession of the former Confederate states in order to racially and economically protect Whites.
Tanton has been a driving force in the White nationalist and anti-immigration movements for years. His organizations and associates have affiliations with skinheads, neo-Nazis, and the Council of Conservative Citizens, the modern-day reincarnation of the White Citizens’ Councils, the “white-collar Klan” of the Jim Crow era. And with financial support from the pro-eugenics Pioneer Fund - also designated a hate group whose members believe that Black people have smaller brains and lower intelligence than Whites - Tanton has been able to infiltrate, and unfortunately shape, the mainstream dialogue on immigration reform. And sadly, the mainstream media have helped to legitimize his organizations.
Senator Sessions often quotes Tanton’s groups and their sham reports, appears at their press conferences, and has received recognition and campaign contributions from them. And this individual will be sitting in judgment of nominees to the federal bench, including African Americans, Latinos and other judges of color? In recent years, the Republican Party has been reduced to a regional extremist party - all-White, Christian fundamentalist, uneducated and racist. And apparently, on judicial and criminal justice matters, Sessions is their standard bearer, the end product of a thorough barrel-scraping process. This is not surprising, but one must wonder what’s really going on here.
Published in BlackCommentator.com.
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Comments
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Thanks for fleshing out the post I wrote entitled "Why?" With a picture of Sessions. The entire post consisted of the question quoted above.
"In recent years, the Republican Party has been reduced to a regional extremist party - all-White, Christian fundamentalist, uneducated and racist."
With the recent statements of Buchanan, Cheney, and Limbaugh regarding Colin Powell, the phenomenon you cite is becoming acutely apparent. You ask "...What is going on here?" It seems to be an ideological purge of some kind. The extremists are hijacking the political apparatus of the Republican Party.
What should be cause for concern is not that it's happening, but that they don't seem to care whether they can win elections in this way. Moderate Republicans are , in effect, being told to go form another party. We may well be seeing the genesis of the formation of a third party. If this happens, with average voters being split on a roughly 50/50 basis, a third more extreme right- wing conservative party could, in years to come, hold the balance of electoral power even though they will represent a relatively small minority....
Our "Open Dialogue On Race" is designed to get OS bloggers to share their views on matters of this nature. Part III will be posted shortly and we look forward to your contribution in Part IV.
We need more of this stuff out there. Is this in print somewhere other than your blog? It should be in a letter to the editor of a major paper at the very least.
I would leave out this bit, though: "In recent years, the Republican Party has been reduced to a regional extremist party - all-White, Christian fundamentalist, uneducated and racist."
I would say that the Republican party can be more accurately described as having been overwhelmingly white and WASP for decades (the one major exception being Cuban-Americans). It has more recently become more closely aligned with Christian evangelicals and it continues to be the party of choice for people in some regions of the country (like say, the south, the midwest, the mountain west, alaska, maine, texas, etc... and what about Hawaii and California with their Republican governors?)
The party of the white supremacist groups (uneducated racists) is probably actually the libertarian party. They want their hate speech protected and they want to keep their guns.
Basically, the point that I'm making is that the line: "In recent years, the Republican Party has been reduced to a regional extremist party - all-White, Christian fundamentalist, uneducated and racist" is too much of an outlandish attack and it weakens the rest of your excellent piece.
Supreme Court Nominee Announced
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Nice post. Thanks.
http://open.salon.com/blog/kevin_lee/2009/01/18/the_bloom_is_off_the_azalea
Read it and weep.
I laughed here - incredible...it's ok to hate and kill blacks and Jews, etc... but not smoke pot. I guess Sessions dislikes me more than you then (haa haa)
We road trip to visit my in-laws in Southern Alabama every year - I'll have to ask them about this character next time I talk with them. And I thought the cudzu (spelling??) was bad...
Quality report as I am accustomed to seeing from you my friend.
Monte
I know I'll get to anger, but right now? Just sad.
David, I'm glad you'll be contributing to our "Open Dialogue on Race" that RonP01 initiated and I contributed my two cents to.
Thanks for opening the door and pulling the light chain.
Thumbed and dugg!
I take exception to this remark. There are Black Republicans and many many Christians that are educated, and not racist that belong. How can you make a comment like this? It is so very insulting and I take offense. To be a true Christian, you cannot be racist, if you are, then there is something terribly wrong with your walk.
Judge not, lest you be judged accordingly.