Democrats are hoping Arlen Specter’s replacement on the Senate Judiciary Committee, a white Southerner with a history of racial provocation, will help paint the Republican image into a corner, Politico reports. As the GOP’s chief questioner of President Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee, Jeff Sessions will “help galvanize and crystallize why we need a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate,” says a Democratic senator.
Sessions has been accused of bringing questionable fraud charges against black civil rights workers, saying the Ku Klux Klan was “OK,” and calling the NAACP and ACLU “un-American” and “communist-inspired.” He says his comments were taken out of context and that he’s fought for civil rights—and his Democratic counterpart on the Judiciary Committee notes that he was one of AG Eric Holder’s only GOP supporters in the confirmation process.
(More Jeff Sessions stories.)