Senator Sessions expectedly replied, over and over, that as Attorney General he would enforce the law, regardless of how he may have voted on the matter, while serving in the Senate. What a surprise that a conservative senator has a conservative voting record. Before being a senator, he served as Attorney General in Alabama. The Senate hearings seem to be an opportunity for grandstanding, with little other purpose.
New Jersey's Cory Booker has publicized his upcoming crucifixion of Sessions. Booker will make history today, and testify against a fellow senator in a confirmation hearing. While Cory concerns himself with smears against Sessions from thirty years ago, he had no issue with Eric Holder wanting to transfer terrorists from Guantanamo to New York City, and afford them protection under US justice codes. Sessions favors retaining the prison at the Naval base in Cuba.
photo of Senator Sessions in Iraq
The job of the attorney general is to enforce the law as it is written, not to pick and choose and extend the meaning to what one thinks it should be. As for Booker, it seems the democrats now believe that to regain the white house , they need a new black candidate. How about looking for candidates that appeal to all of the country not just to the coasts and big cities.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mr Nemeth with regards to the role of the Attorney General is to enforce fairly and equally, the laws passed by Congress and signed by the President. It is not the AG's role to selectively enforce laws based on their opinion of what they agree with and what they don't.
ReplyDeleteWe've had that environment both in Washington under Holder and Lynch, and also here in Pennsylvania under AG Kaine. Listening to the hearings yesterday, that is what the Democrats want under Senator Sessions. This clearly is to circumvent the will of the people as the Democrats have lost control of Congress due to election defeats during the Obama years.
I thank GOD we are returning to a government based on our Constitution, not a government based on the will of political views. Both here in Pennsylvania as well as in Washington.
Perhaps if MM watched a little more television, in real time, he would understand what the Hearing is all about.
ReplyDeleteOf course Sessions denied he is a racist and that he said he will follow the law as ruled by the Supreme Court. The point, however, is that he stated he personally is opposed to the Civil Rights Law, a right to abortion & same sex marriage, and criminal reform of the marijuana laws. DUH! Read between the lines. He means he will continue the federal prosecution of people for weed, even in states where it is legal (under state law), and that DOJ, under his watch, will encourage & advocate for restrictive abortion laws & legislative adoption/bathroom/religious bills like in NC that discriminate against the LBGT community.
Yes, Trump snowflakes, I know elections have consequences and so the victors make the rules now. What Booker & other Democrats are doing is highlighting this....what the opposition should be doing.
WHAT? Politicians have election agendas.....gee Ray, thanks for informing us of that. Guess Senator Tom Cotton, had none, when he authored that letter (joined by 47 of his Republican colleagues) advocating treason, telling Iran to ignore President Obama's decision on the Nuclear deal. Guess Jamie forgets that, under the Constitution, the President makes that decision, not Congress.
trent@5:33, i actually watched the hearings all day, yesterday and today. as previously stated, they are mostly a television opt for the senators.
ReplyDeletebooker and lewis both sounded ridiculous. the complaint that they were only allowed to speak last, from the back of the bus, was pathetic.
on facebook today, a democratic partisan stated that at least tillerson sounded more intelligent than sessions. i didn't know that holder and lynch were such scholars. i asked the partisan if she thought that perhaps the CEO of exxon-mobile could be as intelligent as john kerry?
Also, MM, had you followed the news in real time, you would know that 99% of the prisoners at Guantanamo have been proven to be mostly cab drivers and such, that were turned in by fellow Pakastians, in order to collect the bounty that we paid for names. Essentially NONE were combatants actually captured in the field by US Special Forces. The whole thing was just a GW Bush publicity deal. Only TWO guys, Abdul Rahman Shalabi & Zacarias Moussaoui, were militant who claimed they were one of the masterminds of 9-11 (the so called "the 20th" & "21st highjackers) and now it is universally believed they were merely "wantabbes...nobody....at most, on the periphy of the planning, not even mentioned by the papers & stuff of Ben Ladin. Confessions yielded by torture, and said to be bogus by intelligence professionals.
ReplyDeleteNo one has yet escaped from a US domestic "super maximum prison" where it was proposed to house them. Guantanamo is just a very expensive PR stunt...much like TSA "security" at airports. (The Ft. Lauderdale shooter had no problem carrying a gun in his storage luggage...it's your grandmother carrying shampoo in her purse and wearing sneakers that have to be pulled over for inspection.)
Speaking of agendas, America is absolutely sick and tired of the Race (and Gender) Card Hustle and signaled as much in the last Presidential election.
ReplyDeletetrent5:58, the issue is foreign combatants having a military tribunal or article 3 rights. obama and holder wanting the latter for gitmo inmates, suggests that they were never the legal scholars as purported
ReplyDeleteMM, you are correct that there is no unanimity of legal opinion on this.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in the past, the government has gone both ways. In the case of the Nazi saboteurs who landed on US soil during WW2 the government issued a proclamation creating a military tribunal route, because among other things, they were afraid a civilian court would be too lenient on the accused, since several were actually ant-Nazi and had turned themselves in promptly, and informed on the others. A former Supreme Court decision also went that way, on the grounds that the accused in that case were unlawful combatants.
In other examples, the government preferred civilian courts, especially because it is felt the precedent would help American agents when they are caught by foreign countries. Hence, the civilian trials of the Rosenbergs & Colonel Abel. And, indeed, when Gary Powers was shot down over Russia, he was tried in a civilian court (albeit a typical Moscow "show trial" but still not a military court.
So, Holder & Obama had every right & legal precedent on their side to want civilian trials. Most of the detainees were not even soldiers or combatants, but civilians.
At any rate, none have received trials at all, another reason that Guantanamo is considered illegal by the rest of the world. Indefinite detention without trial (going on 15 years now)is not an American value to be proud of...it's third world crap.