Maddow Analyzes Republican Race & Gender Tactics - Part 1 (HQ)

Part 1: Rachel Maddow reports on the Republican tactics in questioning Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor with focus on Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Confirmation Hearing Day Two. MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show (aired: 07/14/09).

Mini-Bar Bio: Jeff Session was elected to the Senate in 1997 and is the current ranking member on the Judiciary Committee. Sessions was one of only nine opponents of Senator John McCain's anti-torture amendment. Sessions supports former Vice President Dick Cheney's proposal to exempt the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from any ban on the use of torture and has advocated the extension of FISA legislation to legalize the Bush Administration's wiretapping techniques.

Sessions opposes approval of the Uniting American Families Act. In June 2009, during testimony by a 42-year-old Filipino woman, Shirley Tan, who was scheduled to be deported in April 2009 despite being the mother of two American children and having a relationship for 23 years with an American woman, Sessions was audibly heard relaying to one of his aides, "Enough with the histrionics" when the woman's 12-year-old son began crying during the testimony.

On September 9, 2005, after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Sessions called his former law professor, Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions's legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which had lost momentum in Congress, and left a voicemail: "Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."

As U.S. Attorney for Alabama's Southern District, Sessions had unsuccessfully prosecuted three civil rights workers (including Albert Turner, a former aide to Martin Luther King, Jr.), on a case of election fraud for the 1984 election. Sessions spent hours interrogating African American voters in predominantly black counties, finding 14 allegedly tampered ballots out of approximately 1.7 million ballots cast. The three civil rights workers were acquitted after four hours of jury deliberation.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• sonia
• sotomayor
• jeff
• session
• rachel
• maddow
• supreme
• court
• confirmation
• hearing
• race
• gender
• republican
• miguel
• estrada
• dawgnpony

[mccainisthrough]

Great Post!

[dawgnpony]

Rachel Maddow is quickly becoming one of the most concise and best analytical minds on any of the cable news broadcasters and I know that not everyone is capable of receiving MSNBC. I'm just a very small cog but thank you nevertheless.

[Smartassawhip]

By the way.. I like that little movie thing at the beginning.. just cute.

[dawgnpony]

Thank you...

[tomitstube]

yep, i watched olbermann bitch slap sessions all over the place, now rachel. i'm thinking sessions is having a hard time walking. 

what you have here folks is the right's strategy to scare white people. a black president, a puerto rican woman on the high court, and the underlying scare issue of whites losing the majority.

the beauty of it all is sonia, what an impressive woman. these morons are trying to bait her and she's making them look like the racist idiots they truly are.

[3slimdog]

I believe Sessions put his foot in his Republitard ass. Carry on.

[gombis666]

I think judges as a whole are arrogant, mediocre, cunts. I love seeing them squirm during these hearings and get their pride all fucked to hell for once.

[MrScholar69]

Sessions and the Apolinsky scumbag are a gruesome twosome. Evil, greedy SOBs who look to line their pockets from the naivety and misfortune of others.

[ericclaptonismygod31]

Glad to see MSNBC copy the Fox tone and format. Rachel/Beck elevanting the discourse.

A boot in the mouth of this idiot.

[tomitstube]

rachel rocks.

[ConservativemanOmega]

I don't why people talk bad about putting yer foot in yer mouth. It's delicious.

[librophile]

Acute Racism is oozing out from every skin pores of RepubliKKKan Senator Jess Sessions!!

When the mask of apparent normalcy from this elected official is removed, the stench from his rotten carrion hidden behind his suit & necktie, permeates the entire conservative approach to this hearing and proves to be a disgrace to our Nation.

[spock8585]

The republican party looks like it is getting ready to bring back Louisiana republican EX-Senator David Duke.

The republican party is destroying itself by playing on the fears of a small group of Racist white people.