SENATE CONFIRMS SESSIONS AS ATTORNEY GENERAL DESPITE OBJECTIONS OVER CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUES
By Miriam Raftery
Photo by Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons via Wikipedia
February 9, 2017 (Washington D.C.) – The Senate yesterday confirmed Alabama Senator Jeffrey Sessions as Attorney General on a 52-47 vote, with just one Democrat crossing the aisle to vote with the Republican majority.
Senate leader Mitch McConnell drew criticism for rebuking progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren, shutting down her testimony and preventing her from reading a letter from Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 1986 letter, King objected to Sessions’ nomination for a federal judgeship . Her letter stated that Sessions abused "the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge."
Three male Democratic Senators later read the letter, in which King pointed out Session’s voting fraud prosecutions of civil rights advocates who helped register African-Americans to vote, the Boston Globe reported. The defendants were acquitted by a jury.
Back in 1986, the Senate opted not to confirm Sessions as a judge due to evidence that he opposed civil and voting rights.
But yesterday, the Trump nominee won confirmation to serve as the highest law enforcement officer in the land.