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THE US SENATE has confirmed Jeff Sessions as attorney general, despite fierce debate about his civil rights record and Democratic concern over whether he serves as the nation’s top law enforcement officer independent from President Donald Trump.
Lawmakers greenlighted the senator as the 84th US attorney general on a mostly party line vote of 52 to 47, with one Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, voting with the Republican majority.
When the tally was announced, many senators broke into extended applause for their colleague.
Trump has harangued Democrats for slow-walking his nominees, blasting their unprecedented obstruction as a “disgrace”.
He appeared particularly angered by the delay on Sessions, who as attorney general would wield enormous power regarding the administration of justice, including on the issue of voting rights.
“Congratulations to our new attorney general,” Trump tweeted shortly after the vote.
Sessions, widely seen as an inspiration for Trump’s anti-immigration policies, is just the sixth of 15 cabinet members to be confirmed, in addition to the cabinet-rank positions of CIA director and US ambassador to the United Nations.
He takes charge of the Justice Department and its 113,000 employees amid a swirling legal debate over Trump’s most controversial White House action to date, an executive order temporarily blocking all refugee arrivals and immigration from seven mainly Muslim countries.
Acrimonious
With Trump using Twitter to bully a judge who rolled back the ban, and an appeals court weighing whether to reinstate it, debate over Sessions grew increasingly acrimonious and personal.
On Tuesday night, it turned ugly. Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sternly rebuked Democrat Elizabeth Warren for reading a letter written by the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr that criticized Sessions’s civil rights record.
“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted,” McConnell said of Warren’s violation of the chamber’s rules of decorum.
Warren, a potential 2020 presidential candidate, later said: “I will not be silent about a nominee for AG who has made derogatory and racist comments that have no place in our justice system.”
In 1986, Coretta Scott King wrote a letter to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee urging senators to reject Sessions’s nomination as a federal judge. His appointment ultimately failed.
“Mr Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens,” King wrote.
At that time Sessions was dogged by racist comments he was accused of making while serving as US attorney in Alabama. He was said to have called a black assistant US attorney “boy” and the NAACP “un-American” and “communist-inspired.”
“Jeff Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era, which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past,” the late Massachusetts Democrat, Senator Edward Kennedy, brother of assassinated president John Kennedy, said during the 1986 confirmation hearing.
During the hearing, a former assistant US attorney, Thomas Figures, who is black, said Sessions referred to him as “boy,” and told him to be careful what he said to “white folks.” Sessions said he never called Figures “boy,” but Kennedy produced a letter from an organisation of black lawyers that said Figures made the allegation about Sessions to the organisation’s investigators at least twice.
Present-day Senator Sherrod Brown expressed concern about Sessions in light of Trump’s recent executive order.
“We need an attorney general who will be an independent voice beholden to the Constitution and the American people, not the president,” Brown said.
‘August responsibilities’
The genteel Sessions, who like the president is 70, was an early loyal Trump supporter who became a pivotal figure in his campaign and his transition team.
Sessions grew up in Alabama, in the segregated South. He was a US prosecutor from 1981 to 1993, before serving as the state’s attorney general. He won a seat in the US Senate in 1996.
His career was almost derailed when the Senate panel rejected him for a federal judgeship amid concerns over past comments he had made about blacks, and voter rights.
At his confirmation hearing last month, Sessions endured pinpoint attacks by Democrats on his civil rights record, but he insisted that “this caricature of me from 1986 was not correct”.
Shortly after his confirmation he sought to assuage concerns about how he would run the department.
“I fully understand the august responsibilities of that office,” he said.
Sessions also recognized the heated US political debate since Trump’s election victory and urged Americans to come together.
“Our nation does have room for Republicans and Democrats,” he said.
But Senate Democrat Chris Murphy said he was “scared” about changes Sessions could bring.
Sessions’s “history of opposing civil rights, anti-gun violence measures and immigration reform makes him uniquely ill-fitted to serve” as attorney general, Murphy said.
“I want a chief law enforcement official that will be a champion of the disenfranchised and dispossessed, not a defender of discrimination and nativism.”
With AP reporting
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Any chance of an update on concerned citizen millionaire banker brother of FG TD who you claimed yesterday was a non political small business owner? No didn’t think so.
Good aul Hugh deleted my comment yesterday as I outed him. Good man Hugh.
*yawn*
Neal what’s yawn about this story, it was plastered all over the media yesterday that’s he was a small business man who was apolitical. He was lying about both these issues, he was the CEO for a banking fund and he is the brother of ex FG TD, Seymour Crawford.
Nothing yawn about it. Downright deceitful!!
I am outraged!
Can we have additional reporting done on your article regarding Mary Lou and this concerned citizen from yeaterday please. This is what you need to be covering not some elitist boarding school in the US.
Exactly.
What we need is a witch hunt against the private citizen who dared to criticise SF.
We need to know his name, his family history, his occupation and as many details of his personal life as possible.
We need to show people that dissent will not be tolerated.
We need to print his name as often as possible to try to intimidate others into silence.
WE NEED TO SHOW – IN CAPS LOCK – THAT WE ARE A BUNCH OF SCREAMING WHINGING BABIES WHO ARE CHRONICALLY INCAPABLE OF RESPONDING TO CRITICISM WITHOUT ASSASSINATING THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSON CRITICISING OUR POLICIES.
That’ll show ‘em.
Calm down ffs you will give yourself an ulcer. Politics is a dirty game and this was up there in the top five but SF are no strangers to doing the odd dirty trick.
A private citizen expressing an opinion publicly is not a dirty trick, Donna.
Printing his name, occupation, background and – most disgustingly – family details online IS a dirty trick.
It sends a very clear message of intimidation. “Dare to criticise us, and our fanatics will expose you”.
Shameful.
Are you saying he just happened to be walking by at that time? Did he not seek her out to confront her? Is he a FG supporter? Connected to FG?
I’ve no idea, Donna.
He could be the worst ***** in all of Christendom for all I know.
But what I do know is shooting the messenger, playing the man and not the ball and refusing to engage in any discussions or debates with someone who disagrees with you paints SF supporters in a very bad light.
Ad hominem attacks make SF supporters look like whinging toddlers.
Why not point out where he was wrong?
Try to convince us where his argument was weak?
Show us that there is a better way?
Spot on Brinster. A knee-capping will be next.
Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t vote SF no matter what they promised. Your man was a bit of a knobend. Mary loo is like Adams all talk and nothing else just the same old mantra.
Btinster , do you really think that Hugh would report the truth , that Concerned Citizen is actually Concerned Hedgefund Manager and FG TD’s brother ? It’s above his (FG) pay grade.
two weeks in a row, I won’t get my head out the door
3 in a row and you qualify to write articles on here.
Lucinda Creighton will be watching you next week. Locked up for life if you get three!
a whole article, now I’m really going to try
Richard , it’s a trick to quiten you down.They did the same to Captain Adebayor , haven’t heard from him since. Time to change your moniker from Richard Cynical to Richard Compliant.
Ah Captain A had some great comments , very witty .
That “concerned citizen” was a dirty trick by fg,labour. They will pay for it in GE.
Yeah – and hijacking every other story because someone dared to criticise Mary Lou doesn’t make you look like a whinging, screaming toddler at all.
Maybe you could try to defend the policies, rather than attack the messenger?
His Brown Thomas leather gloves and blue scarf kind of gave it away for me.
Id like to see the journo covering that fake FG supporter who went on the attack at Mary Lou ….come on Hugh
I will not be voting FG after that episode yesterday. If you can’t get votes fairly then you don’t deserve them.
If he was a plant,it’s another own goal by FG..but in fairness to ML..she engaged with him once he said he wasn’t a journalist..
Mary Lou engaged and fair play to her. It’s the SF activists who screamed blue must and immediately started the witch hunt that I have the issue with. Demanding to know who he was, what’s his family history, publishing his name for dating to speak his mind. Whinging toddlers the lot of them.
*Blue murder
The shinnerbots don’t like it up ‘em! Been a bad few days on the campaign trail, Jorry making a fool of himself with Sean Duignan….sounds like an email went out from IRA HQ this morning saying “Attack every comments board you can find”. It’s actually very funny to see.
I notice Eugene hasn’t commented so he must be still sleeping off his hangover !
have your say