What is one thing I never want to hear from Republican again? How they respect the legacy of MLK. Today the Senate confirmed Jefferson Beauregard Sessions for the Attorney General of the United States. I do believe he really was joking with that line about liking the KKK until he found out they smoked pot (because I can almost see myself making that kind of stupid, inappropriate, ham-fisted quip–certainly not for any love of the KKK). But I also think he has been a foe of voting rights, and sends exactly the wrong message in this post-Ferguson era. The confirmation vote was notable for GOP senators voting to silence Elizabeth Warren for the temerity of besmirching Sessions’ reputation by reading an unflattering letter about him from Coretta Scott King, a move that resulted in a textbook example of Streisand effect (see this). Before the final vote came in today, I shared my disapproval with my two senator’s Chicago offices. I got through to one real person, and left another message on voicemail. As we now know, only one Democrat broke ranks, and the question now will be whether dems give him the Tea Party treatment in the next election.
confirmation
Day 7: The Senate
Before moving on to our main topic for the day, a quick update. As I’ve mentioned before, our petulant chief executive, who brings to the office all the emotional maturity of a 3-year-old, has had a bee in his bonnet about the lamestream media’s insistence on reporting the actual fact that his inauguration crowds were a little, let’s say, flaccid. There were rumors that the toddler-in-chief had pressured the National Park Service to airbrush a few tens of thousands of people into their crowd estimates, and now the Washington Post gives a play-by-play of that fateful morning when an interim director of an under-the-radar federal agency gets a call from THE PRESIDENT. These new details come from ‘unnamed sources,’ adding to the recent impression that the new administration is leaking like a Russian prostitute (no offense to Russian prostitutes of course, but I couldn’t pass that one up).
Anywho, on a more serious note, Betsy DeVos, multi-billionaire nominee for Secretary of Privatizing Education faced some tough questions in her confirmation hearing, and her appointment seems a little more tenuous now. Here’s a list of the members of the Senate on the committee that will decide whether to pass her nomination on. Do any of you live in Tennessee, Wyoming, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Louisiana, Indiana, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas or South Carolina? Probably not. But if you do (or perhaps know someone who does), give those dear Senators a call. Even if your senators are dems (Washington, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Wisconsin or Connecticut) give them a call anyway. It gives them political cover to take tough positions. Does one phone call really make any difference? Maybe so. It turns out that 1000 calls constitutes a deluge as far as Senate staffers are concerned, meaning that you and a few of your friends can account for a good percentage of a popular uprising. The DeVos nomination may never make it to the floor, but I registered my opinion today via Contact forms on the websites for our new Senator Tammy Duckworth and our liberal stalwart Dick Durban.
1461 Days of Resistance 