That's a real man bites dog headline, I know, but Sessions has decided to get particularly nasty over an utterly irrelevant issue in the Sotomayor nomination. He's demanded decades worth of paperwork from a Puerto Rican civil rights organization. Sotomayor once served on the board for the group, Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Sessions has demanded reams of documents from the organization that weren't written, edited, reviewed, or approved by Sotomayor, acting in her capacity as a board member. Which White House Counsel Greg Craig pointed out in a letter sent to Sessions.
"Perhaps there is confusion about Judge Sotomayor's role with PRLDEF, and that confusion may account for your unusual interest," Craig wrote. "Let me be clear: On Judge Sotomayor's behalf, we submitted all documents the committee requested of her, and we did so in record time."
To which, Session responded:
"During her time there, the organization took extreme positions on legal issues ranging from the death penalty to abortion to racial quotas," Sessions said in a statement. He said it was "absurd" for the White House to call the documents irrelevant.
Because staff that was not under her control or supervision wrote things that she was not in a position to approve or reject. Gottcha. This is pro forma obstructionism from Sessions, another pathetic attempt to try to drum up some kind of real opposition to Sotomayor and to potentially delay the hearings while they wait for irrelevant documents.
Senator Leahy remains philosophical, saying:
some in the GOP were going to oppose any Obama pick - "even if the president had nominated Moses."
Republicans "were going to object no matter who it was. And several of them have told me that privately," Leahy told The Associated Press in an interview at his Vermont farmhouse.
That would be an interesting nomination fight, Sessions versus Moses. As it is, they aren't going ot be able to stop the Sotomayor nomination. But that won't stop them from being assholes about it for as long as they can, riding that wave of white male privilege into electoral irrelevance.