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Regarding Jeff Sessions
My letter to Senator Rob Portman- R. OH
Senator,
I’m deeply concerned about the conduct in your chamber. I don’t care for Judge Sessions, but I expect that he will be confirmed. That being said, the tactic employed by your colleagues to silence Senator Warren is unacceptable.
This process is intended to verify the character as well as the judiciary experience and credentials of a man who will spend the term defending the law of this land.
If we are to consider giving this man the power of membership in the highest department of legal defense authority in the land, whether a letter is condemning or praising cannot be considered as grounds to dismiss it.
It’s at once immaterial and highly pertinent that this letter was written thirty years ago.
On the one hand, you are, again, considering an appointment of great power. If this man is to wield this power for possibly this entire presidency, then how he has wielded his power in the earlier part of his life must be considered. It doesn’t matter if he persecuted the black community 5 years or 30 years or 50 years ago, it doesn’t matter if he was saying racially charged remarks in jest or in a court of law. He’s being considered for a mighty appointment and the conduct of his entire lifetime should be open to scrutiny.
On the other hand, it is incredibly important that Mrs. King wrote this 30 years ago. You and your colleagues by silencing Senator Warren have at once opened a discussion about the rights of women in the Senate compared with their male colleagues, but at the same time she has thrown into stark relief what it really is we are thinking about here.
Thirty years ago Mrs. King wrote these words and they evidently fell on deaf ears. You and your colleagues are determining in these deliberations what progress has been made in that time.
If you choose once again to turn a blind eye to these complaints, to indeed even forbid the suggestion that he behaved improperly, then you are not only failing to properly vet this man in the interests of the American people but you are also declaring that we have made no progress in these thirty years- that white people as a whole are still as rotten as ever, that if a white man obstructs the right of black people to vote it will go uninvestigated.
In the 80s he could still be nominated to a federal circuit with no serious questions asked about these matters. Is that still true today?
I’m not telling you that you must reject this man, but I am telling you that you have no choice but to examine these allegations with the seriousness they call for. It is absolutely unacceptable to once again sweep these charges under the rug. This conversation needs to be had, and it is your duty to have it. Indeed, even if you think that these matters were sufficiently addressed in 1986, it is time to re-examine them and see if he would pass muster under modern standards, to see if we really have become a better people.
Adam Locke