SALON

Wednesday, Jun 30, 2010 10:31 PM UTC

The dubious Senate testimony of Jeff Sessions

The Alabama Republican says he doesn't believe Elena Kagan. But in 1986, it was his honesty that senators doubted

By

Topics: Jeff Sessions, Elena Kagan, Supreme Court, U.S. Senate,

The dubious Senate testimony of Jeff SessionsSen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)

Whenever Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., insinuates that Elena Kagan is lying in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about military recruiting at Harvard Law School,  it is worth recalling the dubious quality of his own testimony before the same committee when it rejected his nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986. At the time, to put it politely, he appeared insufficiently candid on certain crucial matters.

Of course everyone knows that the fundamental reason for the committee’s decision to dump Sessions was his unreconstructed Deep South attitude, usually described in the oh-so-careful Washington lexicon as a “lack of racial sensitivity.” Copious evidence included persuasive testimony from former colleagues who recalled his appalling remarks in private about the Klan (he liked them until he learned that some Klansmen were “pot smokers”), the NAACP (“un-American” and “Communist-inspired”) and the American Civil Liberties Union (also “un-American” and “Communist-inspired”). He had castigated a white lawyer who fought for equal voting rights as “a disgrace to his race” and repeatedly called a black assistant U.S. attorney “boy,” warning him to “be careful what you say around white people.”

The squalid legal career of Sessions, who had misused his power as U.S. attorney to protect Alabama’s racist political machinery, was thoroughly examined in 2002 by the New Republic’s Sarah Wildman. She reported that Sessions admitted making some of the ugly remarks and denied others, but dismissed them all as mere joking. But Thomas Figures, the black former U.S. attorney who had worked for Sessions, was not amused:

Sessions, he said, had called him “boy” and, after overhearing him chastise a secretary, warned him to “be careful what you say to white folks.” Figures [said] … he too had heard Sessions call various civil rights organizations, including the National Council of Churches and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, “un-American.” Sessions denied the accusations but again admitted to frequently joking in an off-color sort of way.

While Sessions acknowledged that some of the allegations were true — including the ugly “disgrace to his race” comment — he denied calling Figures “boy.” But Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, since deceased, said publicly that he didn’t believe Sessions. The nominee had “changed his statements” from one hearing to another, complained Metzenbaum, because “he fully understood that these statements might cost him his judgeship.” According to the Ohio Democrat, Sessions revised his story about the “disgrace” slur in particular: “Once he said he said it, once he said he didn’t recall saying it, and once he said he didn’t say it … This is a man who is hostile to civil rights organizations and their causes.”

Sessions firmly insisted that he was wholly unprejudiced and guilty only of jesting too freely. But Alabama Democrat Howell Heflin, who had initially supported the nomination, ultimately voted no after hearing all the testimony, presumably because he felt that the nominee had been untruthful about himself and his past. 

Joe Conason is the editor in chief of NationalMemo.com. To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. More Joe Conason.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 39 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations