Hey, anybody remember that whole thing where the Bush "administration" US Attorneys were illegally politicized by, among others, Karl Rove, who never answered his subpoena from either the House or Senate Judiciary Committees on the subject?
Yeah, me too.
And I know that everyone's got their eye on the issue of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) just being a straight-up racist. (That perhaps gets easier to fathom when you realize that cute-'n-cuddly "Jeff" Sessions' full name is actually Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.)
But here's something that I think is being overlooked in that. It's definitely a seminal part of the record on the accusations of racism, but there's a more salient point to be gleaned from it, in my opinion: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is one of the original politicized Republican US Attorneys, present at the creation of the still-active conspiracy to use partisan-driven, trumped up "voter fraud" charges to suppress traditionally Democratic African-American voter turnout.
Sarah Wildman, in her Dec. 2002 New Republic article, explains:
Sessions was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. The year before his nomination to federal court, he had unsuccessfully prosecuted three civil rights workers--including Albert Turner, a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr.--on a tenuous case of voter fraud. The three had been working in the "Black Belt" counties of Alabama, which, after years of voting white, had begun to swing toward black candidates as voter registration drives brought in more black voters. Sessions's focus on these counties to the exclusion of others caused an uproar among civil rights leaders, especially after hours of interrogating black absentee voters produced only 14 allegedly tampered ballots out of more than 1.7 million cast in the state in the 1984 election. The activists, known as the Marion Three, were acquitted in four hours and became a cause célèbre. Civil rights groups charged that Sessions had been looking for voter fraud in the black community and overlooking the same violations among whites, at least partly to help reelect his friend Senator Denton.
Sound familiar? (It should. The Bush White House was targeting US Attorneys for firing if they didn't get with the Sessions program.)
The US Attorneys scandal is still fresh in mind, and among the various possibilities for probes into the Bush/Cheney "administration's" misconduct, an investigation into the "possible attempts to use [the] Justice Dept. for political purposes" actually evidenced the most support of the issues polled -- 71% supporting either criminal probes or investigation by an independent panel.
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III may or may not be an old school racist. But there's little doubt he's an original gangster Republican US Attorney. And with Judiciary Committee subpoenas still outstanding for testimony in the Bush/Cheney White House's outrageous escalation of this campaign, and strong public support for getting to the bottom of it, it seems more than a little ridiculous for the ranking member of the Committee to be a guy who actually made his political bones committing the very same political subterfuge they're (supposed to be) investigating.
That he's also going to be the face of the GOP as he sits in judgment of President Obama's judicial nominations only makes things worse. They may be out of office, but as they continue to ignore Congressional subpoenas and now elevate a co-conspirator to the ranking member's position, it's clear Republicans are both unrepentant about their crimes, and fully intent on continuing them.