http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_05/018025.phpRANKING MEMBER SESSIONS.... When Sen. Arlen Specter left the Republican Party last week, he created an inconvenient vacancy for the GOP: the party needed a new ranking member for the Judiciary Committee. With more senior Republicans already committed to other committees, the job will apparently fall to Jeff Sessions.
(SNIP)
In 2002, The New Republic ran a rather devastating piece about Sessions' background, most notably with regards to the Alabama Republican's background on race relations.
Sessions got his start in Alabama politics as a U.S. Attorney. His most notable effort was prosecuting three civil rights workers, including a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., on trumped up charges of voter fraud.
Also during his illustrious career in Alabama, Sessions called the NAACP "un-American" because it, among others, "forced civil rights down the throats of people."
A former career Justice Department official who worked with Sessions recalled an instance when he referred to a white attorney as a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases on behalf of African Americans. Sessions later acknowledged having made many of the controversial remarks attributed to him, but he had been joking. Yeah, "disgrace to his race" is hilarious. That's not all. Thomas Figures, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama and an African American, later explained that during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan,
Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he "used to think they were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers." Sessions once again acknowledged making the remark, but once again claimed to have been kidding. Figures also remembered having heard Sessions call him "boy," and once warned him to "be careful what you say to white folks." (SNIP)
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