DOWNLOADS: (131)

PLAYS: (1016)

Embed

From this Saturday's Weekends with Alex Witt on MSNBC, former Deputy Assistant and Deputy Press Secretary to George W. Bush, Tony Fratto took part in a discussion on Chuck Hagel's confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense and while I agree on the fact that Hagel's performance during that hearing was less than stellar to put it mildly, I've got to say, sorry Tony, but we don't have anyone on the Democratic side of the aisle that is the equivalent of that nasty piece of work, John McCain.

The media just can't stop giving undue deference to John McCain no matter how badly he behaves. Maybe we'd see less of that sort of nastiness out of him if he weren't continually rewarded for how he acts, but instead we see him given a complete pass and are told it was just payback that was somehow justified -- and no one was really paying attention anyway. Oh, and Democrats do the same thing, so it's no big deal.

Given the Republicans' propensity for feigned victimhood and pearl clutching at every turn for even mild chastising, I wouldn't even want to see their reaction if someone on the Democratic side of the aisle -- or who they perceive as aligned with them like Hagel when he turned against the Iraq war -- acted the way McCain did here:

DOWNLOADS: (285)

PLAYS: (1544)

Embed

DOWNLOADS: (2224)

PLAYS: (9061)

Embed

As Blue Texan at FDL noted, Al Franken laid waste to the GOP's anti-Thurgood Marshall Campaign and as they called it, their minority outreach program. Franken gives his "good friend" Lindsey Graham and the Republicans a little history lesson on what an "activist judge" is and why Justice Thurgood Marshall wasn't one of them.

Franken: You said there are three things that judges hold to when they’re not activists. You said that they respect precedent. They make narrow decisions and they defer to the political branches, in other words the legislature. And there are a lot of recent cases that we’ve been talking about that instinctively strike me and a lot of other people as falling outside of these three guidelines. And I think that in these cases the Supreme Court was legislating from the bench, which is being activist.

Franken goes on to discuss why the decisions in Circuit City v. Adams, Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Rent-a-Center v. Jackson, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS Inc., the Supreme Court would have fit into Kagan’s guidelines of what would define an “activist court” and noted that Republicans all “seem to like” those decisions. He went on to explain why there is no way that Brown v. Board of Education should be lumped in with those other cases and how it was “an exemplar of overturning a precedent that needed to be overturned.”

Franken: There are certain situations where the Supreme Court really should subject the law to a heightened scrutiny and this is what I think Justice Marshall was talking about when he said that the court should show “special solicitude for the despised and disadvantaged, the people who went unprotected by every other organ of government and who had no other champion.”

Now in the opening statements you were criticized for admiring Justice Marshall for believing this, but I actually think that this belief, Justice Marshall’s belief is just good, Constitutional law.

Are you familiar with Carolene Products… Carolene Products case of 1938?

Kagan: Yes sir.

Franken: Are you familiar with Footnote Four of that decision?

Kagan: Yes sir.

Franken: And you’re familiar with that because the footnote’s really important, isn’t it? It’s often taught in Constitutional law classes, whether they be in the first year or the second year or the third year, right?

Kagan: It is.

Franken: Can you tell me what that footnote says and why it’s important?

Kagan: Senator it seems as though you have it in front of you and you’re going to do a better job of it than I am at this moment.

Franken: You’re a mind reader. Footnote Four basically says that when courts interpret the Constitution and try to figure out whether a law complies with the Constitution, courts should give special scrutiny to laws that violate a specific part of the Constitution, that restrict the political process and that affect “religious, national, racial and discrete and insular minorities” who have a really hard time getting help through the normal political process.

Now to me discrete and insular minorities sounds a lot like the despised and disadvantaged that go unprotected and have no other champion. Is it safe to say that Justice Marshall’s belief is consistent with Carolene Products?

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (476)

PLAYS: (545)

Embed

Jeff Sessions is terribly concerned about Elena Kagan's "liberal leanings", claims that "she has the least experience of any nominee, at least in the last fifty years" and says that "if things come out that indicate she’s so far outside the mainstream--it’s conceivable a filibuster might occur."

Here he is with CBS's Bob Schieffer:

SCHIEFFER: Well, how far are you going to go with this? I mean, could a filibuster-- the option of-- of Republicans filibustering this nomination. Is that still on the table? Is that still possible?

SESSIONS: I think the first thing we need to decide is, is she committed to the rule of law even if she may not like the law? Will she as a judge subordinate herself to the constitution and keep her political views at bay? And then, secondly, if things come out that indicate she’s so far outside the mainstream--it’s conceivable a filibuster might occur. The Senate rule that our Democrats led us to establish was that you shouldn’t filibuster except in extraordinary circumstances. I think that’s a legitimate rule and that will be what I would judge as to whether a filibuster is necessary.

Of course there's no one I'd rather hear from about someone's qualifications to be nominated to any court than Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III who Rachel Maddow laid bare in this segment for his racist past. From Sessions' Wiki page:

In 1986, Reagan nominated Sessions to be a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. Sessions was actively backed by Alabama Senator Jeremiah Denton, a Republican. The nomination of Sessions was first sent to the Senate for confirmation on October 23, 1985, and was resubmitted on January 29, 1986. A substantial majority of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which rates nominees to the federal bench, rated Sessions "qualified," with a minority voting that Sessions was "not qualified." [5]

At Sessions' confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, four Department of Justice lawyers who had worked with Sessions testified that he had made several racist statements. One of those lawyers, J. Gerald Hebert, testified that Sessions had referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as "un-American" and "Communist-inspired" because they "forced civil rights down the throats of people."[6] Hebert said that Sessions had a tendency to "pop off" on such topics frequently and had once called a white civil rights lawyer who dealt with voting rights suits a "disgrace to his race."[7]

Thomas Figures, a black Assistant U.S. Attorney, testified that Sessions said he thought the Klan was "OK until I found out they smoked pot."[8] Figures also testified that on one occasion, when the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division sent the office instructions to investigate a case that Sessions had tried to close, Figures and Sessions "had a very spirited discussion regarding how the Hodge case should then be handled; in the course of that argument, Mr. Sessions threw the file on a table, and remarked, 'I wish I could decline on all of them,'" by which Figures said Sessions meant civil rights cases generally. After becoming Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, Sessions was asked in an interview about his civil rights record as a U.S Attorney. He denied that he had not sufficiently pursued civil rights cases, saying that "when I was [a U.S. Attorney], I signed 10 pleadings attacking segregation or the remnants of segregation, where we as part of the Department of Justice, we sought desegregation remedies."[9]

Figures also said that Sessions had called him "boy." He also testified that "Mr. Sessions admonished me to 'be careful what you say to white folks.'"[10]

Sessions responded to the testimony by denying the allegations, saying his remarks were taken out of context or meant in jest, and also stating that groups could be considered un-American when "they involve themselves in un-American positions" in foreign policy. Sessions said during testimony that he considered the Klan to be "a force for hatred and bigotry." In regards to the marijuana quote, Sessions said the comment was a joke but apologized.[11]

The Republicans must be so proud to have this guy as their point man on judicial nominations. In the world of the Jeff Sessions out there, having even an inkling of liberal leanings is a mortal sin to maybe bring this extremely right wing court back to the center. Apparently for the GOP, putting out someone with Sessions background to question her qualifications isn't a problem, but her lack of experience as a judge is.

Quite frankly I'll take someone with Kagan's experience rather than the likes of a Jeff Sessions to be nominated to a high court any day of the week even though I'd prefer someone way to the left of Kagan. Anyone I'd be really happy with would probably never make it past a Republican filibuster.

It's too bad our media doesn't remind the public of what this man's background is when they bring him on for commentary such as this. If that were the case maybe Republicans would think twice before allowing racist hacks like Sessions to be nominated as their ranking member on the Judiciary Committee in the Senate.

Transcript via CBS below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (685)

PLAYS: (1763)

Embed

As Rachel noted, the media and the GOP establishment have been pretty quiet about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan lately but that hasn't stopped some of the more extreme on the right from keeping up the attacks. Kent Jones reports on how the right has been trying to paint her as wanting to put the U.S. under Sharia law.

Right Wing Watch has more on this nonsense.

The Pathetic Desperation of the Anti-Kagan Campaign:

Because the Right has very little ammunition against Elena Kagan heading into her confirmation hearings next week, they have been desperately trying to make up "controversies" that they can try to use against her.

Which is why a donation made by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal to Harvard University to establish an Islamic Studies program at the time that Kagan was Dean of Harvard Law School has been transformed into a right-wing claim that Kagan supports Sharia Law and "the enemy" while hating our troops.

So I guess it was only a matter of time until we started seeing things like this in Frank Gaffney's column in The Washington Times:

Hats off to Sen. Jeff Sessions. The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee has opened up an important new front in the debate over Solicitor General Elena Kagan's fitness to serve on the Supreme Court: her attitude toward the repressive legal code authoritative Islam calls Shariah and her enabling of efforts to insinuate it into this country.

By so doing, the Alabama legislator has given his colleagues and the country an opportunity not only to flesh out and evaluate the thin public record of President Obama's second nominee to a lifetime appointment on the nation's highest court but also afforded us all what Mr. Obama might call a "teachable moment."

Specifically, this Supreme Court nomination offers a prism for examining the concerted and ominous campaign under way to bring Shariah to America, thanks to the troubling role Ms. Kagan played during her tenure as dean of Harvard Law School.

And from Think Progress's Wonk Room.

Sessions Takes The Low Road Against Kagan:

Speaking on the Senate floor yesterday, Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) brought the debate over Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan substantially closer to the gutter by invoking the dread specter of ISLAMIC SHARIA LAW.

“New information has come to light,” Sessions ominously intoned, “suggesting that Ms. Kagan may even have been less morally principled in her approach than has been portrayed.”

...The idea that learning about Islamic faith and culture is, in and of itself, a form of indoctrination into extremism is a common trope on the goofball right. Unsurprisingly, World Net Daily is already touting the Sessions speech, likely soon to be followed by Commentary, the Weekly Standard, National Review, and Frank Gaffney claiming that Elena Kagan “may still be a Muslim.”

Honestly, I’m really not sure what’s more troubling here, the idea that the study of Islam necessarily connotes/inculcates support for Islamic extremism, or that Sessions thinks the conservative base is ignorant and bigoted enough to believe this. Or that he may be right.

And as Media Matters noted, The Washington Times fabricated a photo of Kagan in a turban in an attempt to tie her to Shariah.

Anyone who publishes anything Frank Gaffney has to say without huge warnings that neocon hackery is about to follow should not be allowed to pretend they're a "news" organization. Just shameful. Putting up a picture of a Supreme Court nominee in a turban to accompany that article puts them into Murdoch New York Post territory.

DOWNLOADS: (154)

PLAYS: (708)

Embed

Rachel Maddow reminds of us of why the likes of Jeff Sessions is the last person who should be taken seriously when asking someone else about racial prejudices.

MADDOW: That was Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois speaking at today‘s confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama‘s pick for the Supreme Court. It is widely assumed that Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed. She will be sworn in as the first ever Latino to serve on the Supreme Court, not to mention only the court‘s third woman.

Which means Republicans in the Senate are using the Sotomayor hearings, not so much as an opportunity to block the president‘s nominee, because they know that pretty much they can‘t, but rather to demonstrate the character of themselves in opposition which, it turns out, looks a little something like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Many of Judge Sotomayor‘s public statements suggest that she may indeed allow or even embrace decision-making based on her biases and prejudices.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Already prejudiced against one of the parties.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Allow biases and personal preferences - the wise Latina woman quote.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your wise Latina -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your wise comment -

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R-AL): Justice Sotomayor has said that she accepts that her opinions, sympathies and prejudices will affect her rulings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: If your irony-sensing ulcer is spitting bile right now, let me confirm that that last guy there was Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, accusing Sonia Sotomayor of having a prejudice problem.

That would be the same Jeff Sessions whose own nomination for a federal judgeship could not make it out of the Republican-run Judiciary Committee in 1986 after testimony that he had called the NAACP un-American and communist-inspired, had joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he found out members of the Klan smoked pot, and that he agreed with another lawyer who said a Department of Justice attorney, who was white, was a disgrace to his race because he represented African-Americans.

And those are the things that he admitted to saying and tried to defend. The charges he denied included the allegation that he told a black attorney he should, quote, “Be careful about how he talked to white folks,” and that he called a black attorney “boy.”

Now Jeff Sessions is leading the charge against Sonia Sotomayor on the grounds that she has a prejudice problem. And Sen. Sessions is doing it as part of the hearing process that is basically certain to result in Judge Sotomayor‘s confirmation, which means that Sen. Sessions, specifically, and his party generally, are using this opportunity to stand on the giant media platform that is a Supreme Court nomination to proclaim themselves to the nation as opposed to the first ever nomination of a Latino to the Supreme Court, mostly on the basis of questions about race.