IF YOU LIKED TRENT LOTT... I see that right-wing Kos-wannabe site RedState is prominently displaying a "Jeff Sessions for RPC Chair" banner. This is...highly instructive. First of all (as anyone who watched the Roberts hearings knows) there's the fact that in terms of sheer intellectual firepower Sessions makes George W. Bush look like Oliver Wendell Holmes. (Sample question: "And on the Supreme Court, if a case comes up to you, you will probably have briefs from both parties, you will receive the transcript of the trial that the issue arises from and you'll study that. And you have several law clerks who will help you study that. Every one of the nine Supreme Court justices are also studying this same record and all these briefs. Isn't it true that friends of the court can submit briefs?") And second, he would seem to be the candidate for people who think that George Allen lost because he was too progressive on race. Matt reminds us of the terrific New Republic article written by fellow TAPPED alumna Sarah Wildman. Wildman details Sessions' failed legal crusades against civil rights workers, his red-bating of the NAACP, and his "joking" that he thought the Klan were OK until he found out they were "pot smokers." (Ho ho!) And much more. However, it must be conceded that none of this changes the fact that Robert Byrd was a member of the Klan during the Roosevelt administration.
--Scott Lemieux
