Sotomayor vs. Sessions
I’m still digesting Sonia Sotomayor’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Though watching all the testimony has resulted in some degree of indigestion (not because of anything that was said but because of the many things that weren’t said), I’ll keep plugging until I can come up with something that will be loosely called my analysis.
One of the great ironies of all this (which has been noted but not nearly as much as one would have thought) is that Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was rejected 23 years ago by the Senate Judiciary Committee when he was nominated by President Reagan to be a federal district judge in Alabama. He was rejected largely because of what was believed to be his intemperance toward civil rights issues.
He hasn’t announced how he will vote on Sotomayor, but he’s likely to vote against her confirmation. He’s previously labeled the Puerto Rican Defense and Education Fund, an organization of which Sotomayor served on the board for many years, as an extremist organization.
One wonders how Sotomayor would have voted on Sessions, given the charges leveled against him. I’m inclined to believe she would have voted against him. What do you think?
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If there was ever a time when a Senator should have recused himself from the proceedings, this is probably it. In fact, one has to wonder whether Sessions can provide any objectivity, given his failed judiciary campaign.
It’s like letting Pete Rose help decide who goes into baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Frank,
As always you make good points, but I have to disagree. There is nothing requiring Sessions to recuse himself. If he were inclined to do that just on the basis of personal ethics or whatever, then he should have declined membership on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In terms of objectivity, based on the hearings, he is no less objective than every Democrat on the Committee. Every one of them had made up his/her mind before the hearings started and said as much.
The difference between Pete Rose and Sessions is that Pete doesn’t have a vote. Sessions does.
Thanks for weighing in.
John