There is an irony to Sessions’ promotion. The same committee denied Sessions when he came before them in 1986 seeking the job of federal judge. Sessions, then a prosecutor, had been selected by then-President Reagan to fill a vacated slot in the District Court in Alabama. The Democrats on the Republican controlled committee questioned Sessions’ actions regarding a case that involved three civil rights workers.

From Brian Beutler: 

… During the debate over his nomination, committee Democrats questioned Sessions’ prosecutorial discretion, focusing in particular on a case he pursued against three Marion, AL civil rights workers–Albert Turner, Turner’s wife Evelyn, and Spencer Hogue, Jr.–whom he accused of voter fraud. Sessions was unconcerned with claims of fraud outside the so-called Black Belt (ed. note- Alabama counties that had recently started moving towards black candidates), but he alleged that the trio had falsified absentee ballots in Perry County during the 1984 election. After conducting an exhaustive investigation, though, he was able to account for only a small handful of questionable examples, and even those he couldn’t pin on his defendants, who were acquitted after only a few hours’ deliberation.

…”I don’t know why he’d be promoted,” Hogue said. “It will give him more power to do things he shouldn’t.”

“We were trying to get the right to vote,” Hogue said. “He tried to persecute us.”

That “small handful” of questionable examples, according to a comprehensive article Sarah Wildman wrote for TNR in 2003, was actually “14 allegedly tampered ballots out of more than 1.7 million cast…in the 1984 election”.  This incident wasn’t the only evidence of Sessions’ issues with race, which led to his committee rejection on grounds of “racial insensitivity”. 

A Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Herbert was brought before the committee to testify on conversations he’d had with Sessions in which the latter called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “Communist-inspired”, claiming they “forced civil rights down the throats of people”. According to Herbert, Sessions also “called a white civil rights lawyer a ‘disgrace to his race’”. 

The committee also called on Thomas Figures: 

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.

Yes, he invoked both the “It was just a joke!” brushoff and the “I’m not a racist because I’ve met a black person” defense.  During his confirmation hearing, Sessions stood by having said that the Voting Rights Act was a piece of “intrusive legislation”. His views on the act haven’t improved with time. 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed a year after the Civil Rights Act to diminish voting disenfranchisement practices targeting black voters. The act forbade practices like poll taxing and literacy tests that many Southern states were using in an attempt to prevent blacks from voting.The VRA has been amended through the years and was granted a 25 year extension by the most recent President Bush.

Sessions voted in favor of that extension but not before throwing a bit of an “it’s not fair!” tantrum about his state being subject to section 5 while Northern states are not. Section 5 dictates that the Justice Department must approve of any electoral process changes being considered by certain regions (::cough:: the South ::cough::). Sessions (and other Southern politicians) have argued that their states are capable of regulating their own elections. The Supreme Court is currently considering a Section 5 challenge and may deem it unconstitutional. 

There are more blemishes on Sessions record (in favor of CIA torture, wiretapping and HIV travel bans, to name a few) that I’ll spare for the moment for the sake of brevity but this promotion is further evidence that the GOP plans to continue their habit of moving backwards into a wall. On the upside, Sessions will only serve as Ranking Member for a year and a half due to a deal struck with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who has seniority over Sessions but is currently chairing the Senate Finance Committee. We’ll take apart the Grassley bridge when we come to it.