Too Racist to Be Federal Judge in 80s, Jeff Sessions to be Trump’s Attorney General

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:33 pm

The swamp just keeps filling up. This morning it was learned that a man the ACLU calls “anti-civil rights,” Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions – who as Zach Wahls points out, “was deemed too racist *in the 1980s* to be confirmed as a federal judge” – has been named by Donald Trump as Trump’s pick for attorney general.

Trump’s transition team told us yesterday that,

“The president-elect has been unbelievably impressed with Senator Sessions and his phenomenal record as Alabama’s attorney general and U.S. attorney. It is no wonder the people of Alabama re-elected him without opposition.”

And now we learn the nightmare is reality. CBS This Morning tweeted the news,

JUST IN: @CBSNews has learned Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions has been named as President-elect Trump's pick for Attorney General pic.twitter.com/ZrYJLBg7LX

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) November 18, 2016

Back in 1986, Sessions was the US attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and was nominated by President Reagan to the federal bench, only to be rejected by the Senate judiciary committee. Ted Kennedy found it “inconceivable … that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a US attorney, let alone a United States federal judge.”

What, precisely, was the attitude Kennedy spoke of? The New York Times relates that,

This is the face of the Trump administration, and you will remember how Trump promised to champion African-Americans. he has a strange way of doing so, just as he has shown a peculiar way of combatting lobbyists by filling his White House to the brim with them.

CBS News says “The choice of Sessions to be the nation’s top prosecutor is sure to be controversial” but it is much more than that and much worse for minorities across America. As Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert quipped upon learning the news,

“I told you the shit show would become so intense that the Bannon fiasco would soon seem like distant memory.”

Yeah, oh for the good old days.

In choosing Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump has certainly earned the acclamation of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists everywhere.

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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