Sessions to Meet the Spirit of Teddy

You might expect someone with the given name Jefferson Beauregard would have been born somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, or at least had parents from those parts, and you would be correct, 100%, if the Jefferson Beauregard is one and same as the shortened “Jeff”,  belonging to U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Al). Nothing in a name however makes the person fit some caricatured  version of a Deep South slave master of the mid-19th century. Except when it does.

Of course Mr. Sessions doesn’t herd human chattel on a cotton crop or peanut plantation down ‘Bamy Way, since that practice was banned about 150 years ago. But old habits die hard with the good ol’ boys down yonder, and  he has made his reputation in public office paying homage to the tradition of racial superiority.

In an opinion piece written for the Boston Globe, longtime Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy evokes the irony of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Mr. Sessions as PEOTUS Trump’s Attorney General. Leahy notes that the room has been named the Kennedy Caucus Room, in honor of Ted Kennedy, who led the opposition to the same Jeff that had been nominated for a U. S. District Court judgeship way back  in 1986. Sessions was subsequently rejected for the post.

Leahy lists questionable positions on bills and resolutions the nominee has taken more recently (in 2009, 2013, 2015) concerning civil rights protection for women, hate crimes, and religious qualification for entry into the U. S. since his reported reincarnation as a decent person. Extending voter rights and has been another pet peeve of his; and his severely Puritanical viewpoint on the use of marijuana has no equal in Congress.

May the ghost of Teddy fill the room tomorrow.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/columns/2017/01/08/jeff-sessions-extremist-then-and-now/PAuCCurFRbxoQlpHEGgTQL/story.html