The depressing Sessions

With Arlen Specter's move to the Democratic side, the number one Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee is... Alabama's very own Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. God help us.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan named Sessions a federal judge, despite his fame for harassing civil rights workers during voter registration drives to increase the number of black voters in Alabama.

In confirmation hearings, a career federal employee testified that Sessions had said the NAACP and the ACLU were "un-American" and "Communist-inspired" groups that "forced civil rights down the throats of people." He also testified that Sessions had called a white lawyer handling voting rights cases a "disgrace to his race." Undaunted, Sessions stood by his contention that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a "piece of intrusive legislation."

Another witness said that Sessions was overheard by legal personnel during a 1981 KKK murder investigation saying that he "used to think (the Klansmen) were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers." This same witness said Sessions had called him "boy," told him to "be careful what you say to white folks," and said that the National Council of Churches and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were "un-American."

In the end, the Judiciary Committee (controlled by Republicans) voted 10-8 against sending the nomination to the full Senate. But in 1994 Sessions became Alabama's attorney general, and In 1996 the state elected him to the US Senate.

Since then, he has opposed federal affirmative action programs, hate-crime laws and investigation of the disproportionate number of minority kids in detention centers. And now he will influence decisions about the Supreme Court and immigration. His circle includes John Tanton, the grandfather of today's white nationalists. (The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that Tanton is founder of the" racist Social Contact Press" and has corresponded "with Holocaust deniers, white nationalist intellectuals and Klan lawyers for decades." He also founded the white nationalist groups CIS, NumbersUSA and FAIR. NumbersUSA named Sessions its 2008 Defender of the Rule of Law.)

Sessions is a top-level anti-immigration voice. When the Senate tried to bring about comprehensive immigration reform two years ago, he called it the "Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act of 2007."

Even with a black president and a new generation of colorblind citizens, some people apparently can't leave the "good old days" behind. And that's pathetic.