U.S. Senator Jeff
Sessions soon will assume his duties as President Donald Trump’s Attorney
General. His nomination was opposed by leading Democrats in the U.S. Congress
chiefly because he was not Eric Holder. At one point during his cross examination of
Sessions, U.S. Senator and mud thrower from Connecticut Dick Blumenthal subtly
suggested that Sessions might have a soft spot in his heart for the KKK.
Blumenthal noted that Sessions had received some awards during his twenty years
in the Congress, among them an award from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Frank
Gaffney's Center for Security Policy and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the latter of which Blumenthal noted is classified as a
hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, according to a story in the Washington Examiner.
"Given that you
did not disclose a number of those awards,” Blumenthal asked, “are there any
other awards from groups that have similar kinds of ideological negative views
of immigrants or of African-Americans or Muslims or others, including awards
that you may have received from the Ku Klux Klan?"
In one bold stroke,
Blumenthal had marked David Horowitz -- author of “Radical Son,” a record of
Horowitz’s accession from Red diaper baby radicalism to conservativism, and
“Progressive Racism,” which Blumenthal, a progressive himself, might want to skip reading – as a KKK sympathizer; it only remained after that to tie Sessions to
Horowitz, not easily done since both are honorable men who disdain the KKK,
which has never been welcoming to Jews such as Horowitz or Sessions who
had, according to Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, “worked to prosecute
the Ku Klux Klan. He has worked to desegregate public schools.”
A little mud goes a long way. “Mud sticks,” Said Cardinal John Henry Newman, “sticks, but does not stain.”
A little mud goes a long way. “Mud sticks,” Said Cardinal John Henry Newman, “sticks, but does not stain.”
Prior to Judge
Gorsuch’s interrogation by hostile Democrats, a prelude to his almost certain
appointment to the Supreme Court, Gorsuch, making the rounds of U.S. Senators,
had a chat with Blumenthal, who previously had announced that Gorsuch would be
closely questioned, much in the manner of tail gunner Joe McCarthy running over
the reputation of one of his hapless victims. Some commentators wondered if
Gorsuch would be borked by Blumenthal or some other stiff and morally superior
grand inquisitor.
Robert Bork was
borked by then Senator Edward Kennedy. Less than an hour after Bork had been
nominated, Mary Jo Kopechne’s chauffeur exploded on the floor of the Senate, “Robert
Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley
abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could
break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be
taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of
the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the
fingers of millions of citizens.”
But would Blumenthal
be able measure up to Kennedy’s surreal, though politically useful, rhetoric?
And does Blumenthal believe that such sentiments expressed by a senator
concerning a sitting judge and a nominee for the Supreme Court are "disheartening" and
"demoralizing," words purportedly used by Gorsuch to describe a
tweeted remark issued by President Donald Trump concerning a judge who stayed a
temporary interdiction of refugees. Trump, as everyone knows, is prone to pull
the tweeter trigger when grievously disappointed, and Gorsuch, known to be
jealous of the independence of the judiciary, already has acknowledged so
characterizing the tweet.
Trump birched the
federal judge in Seattle for having stayed a constitutional presidential order
to ban unvettable refugees from seven crumbling states in the Middle East from
entering the United States. Citing the statute that gives presidents broad
authority to restrict immigration, Trump said the ruling of the "so-called
judge” was "ridiculous and will be overturned." The stay is not
harmless. The Washington Times, not a KKK publication, is reporting, “A
staggering 77 percent of the 1,100 refugees let in since Judge James L.
Robart’s Feb. 3 order have been from the seven suspect countries. Nearly a
third are from Syria alone — a country that President Trump has ordered be
banned altogether from the refugee program. Another 21 percent are from Iraq.
By contrast, in the two weeks before Judge Robart’s order, just 9 percent of
refugees were from Syria and 6 percent were from Iraq.”
Here is Blumenthal
speaking to CNN, mountainizing the molehill: “I said to Judge Gorsuch and I
believe that ordinarily a Supreme Court nominee would not be expected to
comment on issues or political matters or cases that come before court, but
we're in a very unusual situation. We're careening, literally, toward a
constitutional crisis. And he's been nominated by a president who has
repeatedly and relentlessly attacked the American judiciary on three separate
occasions, their credibility and trust is in question."
Naturally, we want
courts to be independent of the two other branches of government. But the
courts, unlike Caesar’s wife, should never be above criticism – even from a
twittering president, especially when the court has attacked a clearly
constitutional measure, however disagreeable, that is for the most part
self-elapsing and issued to secure the safety of the nation. Why should the
president be prohibited from launching verbal sallies one regularly sees in
hundreds of robust editorials or political commentary pieces? Propriety and good manners never stopped Ted
Kennedy.
It is doubtful they
will stop the mud-throwing senator from Planned Parenthood.
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