Red State: We Need Bigots To Carry Our Banner Against "Judicial Activism"

Digby beat me to it, but it was amusing to Red State touting Jeff Sessions as the ranking minority member on the judiciary committee. Digby got most of the good stuff, but here’s another tidbit from the Sarah Wildman’s article:

It got worse. Another damaging witness–a black former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama named Thomas Figures–testified that, during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he “used to think they [the Klan] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.” Sessions claimed the comment was clearly said in jest. Figures didn’t see it that way. 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 echoed Hebert’s claims, saying 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. In his defense, he said he was not a racist, pointing out that his children went to integrated schools and that he had shared a hotel room with a black attorney several times.

Hye-larious. Well, giving Sessions the job would at least provide a useful reminder that the roots of contemporary reactionary critique of “judicial activism” grew out of judicial opinions that opposed apartheid and white supremacy. Oh, wait, I’m sorry — all those “Impeach Earl Warren” signs sprung up because the Court would issue a popular ruling holding bans on abortion unconstitutional years later under a different Chief Justice. My mistake!