I'm on my phone and was lazy. He'll get a proper edit once I get home.
7 big areas where Jeff Sessions could change policy at DOJ
- Thread starter Dr. Acula
- Start date
oh i wasn't talking about your thread title or anything. to the writers of these articles, he's just innocuous jeff sessions. and that would be alright if he wasn't a racist and just had an unfortunate name, but the fact that he is a racist means they shouldn't be running away from his full name.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Jeff Sessions’ Other Civil Rights Problem
By THOMAS J. SUGRUENOV. 21, 2016
By THOMAS J. SUGRUENOV. 21, 2016
- In 1986, the Republican-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee torpedoed Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Jeff Sessions to the federal bench. As sworn testimony there revealed, Mr. Sessions, then the United States attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, had referred to the N.A.A.C.P. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (founded by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) as “un-American” and “Communist inspired.” He had joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was “O.K.” until he discovered some of its members smoked pot, and had accused a white attorney who supported voting rights of being a race traitor.
The details revealed in this hearing, troublesome enough to sink his nomination, are surfacing again, now that President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected him to be his attorney general. But it’s worth looking beyond those notorious hearings to Mr. Sessions’s more recent actions as well.
Eight years after his failed nomination, Mr. Sessions was elected Alabama’s attorney general. While he held the position for only two years — using it as a steppingstone for his campaign for the Senate — he left an indelible mark. He used the power of his office to fight to preserve Alabama’s long history of separate and unequal education.
Mr. Sessions became attorney general four decades after the Supreme Court struck down segregated schools in its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. In the intervening years, racial segregation diminished somewhat, but separate and unequal continued in another form. In 1956, as a way to sidestep Brown, Alabama voters amended the state Constitution to deprive students
of a right to public education. Public support for school funding collapsed in its aftermath.
As a result, by the early 1990s, huge disparities in funding separated Alabama’s haves and have-nots. Alabama’s wealthiest school district (and also one of its whitest), Mountain Brook, in suburban Birmingham, spent nearly twice as much per student as the state’s poorest, Roanoke, in a declining manufacturing town about two hours southeast. Poor schools often lacked even rudimentary facilities, including science labs. They struggled to pay teachers, even to repair dilapidated school buses. Half of Alabama’s school buildings lacked air conditioning. Underfunded schools had a particularly hard time meeting the needs of disabled students, whom they were required to support under federal law.
Photo
Jeff Sessions in court as Alabama’s attorney general in the mid-1990’s.CreditTerry Ashe/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
Nearly 30 of Alabama’s poorest school districts, with support from disability rights groups, civil rights organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit against the state. The most vocal critics of school reform, including the far-right activist Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, warned that it would bring “socialism” to Alabama.
After nearly three years of litigation, Judge Eugene W. Reese of the Alabama Circuit Court found the inequitable funding unconstitutional and ordered the state to come up with a system to remedy the inequity.
Attorney General Sessions led the battle against the decision. He argued that Judge Reese had overreached. It was a familiar war cry on the segregationist right: An activist court was usurping the power of the state’s duly elected officials to solve the problem on their own. For the next two years, Mr. Sessions sought to discredit Judge Reese and overturn his ruling. In one of the twists of austerity budgeting in the mid-1990s, Mr. Sessions had laid off 70 lawyers in the attorney general’s office, and had to find outside counsel to handle the case. Lawyers working on contract for the office were to be paid no more than $85 per hour, but for the challenge to the equity case, the fee cap was lifted.
Mr. Sessions was lauded by fellow Republicans for his efforts. They saw funding inequities as part of the natural order of things, not as a problem to be remedied. And any remedy would entail either the redistribution of funds from wealthier to poorer districts or an increase in taxes. Both positions ran against the small-government, privatization dogma that Mr. Sessions promoted.
Advocates of school equity cried foul. “They’re asking for the last 50 years to disappear, as far as improving public education,” complained C. C. Torbert, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and the lawyer for the poor districts, about Mr. Sessions and his allies. Special-education and disability organizations were especially outraged: the poorest districts could not provide even basic services to students in need. If Mr. Sessions won, he would “consign an ever-growing number of Alabama schoolchildren to an unconstitutionally inadequate and inequitable education,” Justice Torbert added. When Mr. Sessions insisted that as attorney general, he was representing the Alabama State School Board, the board members protested that he did not represent their position. No matter. He fought on.
Finally, in 1997, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld Judge Reese’s finding that the state’s educational inequity was unconstitutional. But, as Mr. Sessions (by then a senator) had hoped, the court left the remedy to the state’s increasingly conservative Legislature, which made only modest changes in the state’s school funding structure.
Alabama’s public schools, still underfunded, still separate and unequal, ranked near the bottom nationally, stand as one of Jeff Sessions’ most enduring legacies. It’s a troubling mark on the record of the man who is to be nominated to oversee the Department of Justice, the federal agency responsible for upholding America’s civil rights laws.
- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/o...hts-problem.html?smid=fb-nytopinion&smtyp=cur
Dusty Bake Activate
Fukk your corny debates
Obama didn't put on a cape and jump in front of the bullets that killed Philando Castille so how could things be any worse?
Jeff Sessions Could Reverse Years Of Progress On Marijuana Policy
Drug reform advocates have a few concerns about President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general nomination.
11/18/2016 07:04 pm ET
8k
Matt Ferner National Reporter, The Huffington Post
CARLO ALLEGRI / REUTERS
President-elect Donald Trump has nominated hardline drug policy reform opponent Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to be attorney general of the United States, a move that sent shockwaves through the marijuana legalization movement on Friday.
Marijuana remains illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act, despite the expansion of recreational programs in Colorado, Washington state, Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C. (The District, however, continues to ban sales, unlike the state programs.) Four new states approved legalization on Election Day, and 29 states in total have legalized marijuana for medical purposes. This movement has only been able to press forward because of guidance urging federal prosecutors to refrain from targeting state-legal marijuana operations.
Under President Barack Obama, the Department of Justice has allowed states to forge their own way on marijuana policy. But that guidance could be reversed when the Trump administration enters the White House. If confirmed, Sessions would sit atop the DOJ, the federal agency that oversees federal prosecutors and enforces federal law on the plant.
“Jeff Sessions should scare every regulator, government official, cannabis industry operator, patient and consumer across the country,” said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who writes extensively on marijuana policy.
An Attorney General Sessions could reverse the federal guidance allowing state marijuana programs “with the stroke of a pen,” Hudak said.
He could also use the FBI to crack down on marijuana operations nationwide and use the Drug Enforcement Agency to enforce federal prohibition outside of the jurisdiction of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court ― the court that ruled in August that a federal rider blocks federal officials from prosecuting state-legal marijuana operators and patients. This rider that the 9th Circuit affirmed must be reapproved each year, and Sessions could order DEA enforcement nationwide if it were allowed to expire. He could also file lawsuits that seek to shut down state and local governments enforcing marijuana reforms and administering regulatory programs.
“In all, [he] could undo much of what has become the Obama Doctrine with regard to marijuana policy in the United States,” Hudak said. “That policy reversal is the worst-case scenario for the marijuana industry.”
Advocates for drug policy reform have blasted Trump for selecting Sessions.
“Donald Trump’s decision heralds a return to the worst days of the drug war,” said Bill Piper, senior director of national affairs at Drug Policy Alliance, a drug policy reform group.
Donald Trump’s decision heralds a return to the worst days of the drug war.Bill Piper, senior director of national affairs at Drug Policy Alliance
“Jeff Sessions is a drug war dinosaur, which is the last thing the nation needs now,” said Ethan Nadelmann, DPA’s executive director. “Those who counted on Donald Trump’s reassurance that marijuana reforms ‘should be a state issue’ will be sorely disappointed.”
Trump has said he would respect states’ rights on the issue, but Sessions’ track record of opposing marijuana reform is deeply troubling to people who favor progressive drug laws.
During a Senate hearing earlier this year, Sessions spoke out against marijuana and urged the federal government to send the message to the public that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He went on to say that “we need grown-ups in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized” and blasted Obama’s stance on the issue. He called the legalization of marijuana “a mistake” last year.
In 1986, when Sessions had been nominated to be a federal judge, a former assistant U.S. attorney accused him of saying that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was acceptable until he found out members smoked marijuana. Sessions allegedly made the statement in connection with the prosecution of a Klan member who had hanged a black man.
Despite Sessions’ retrograde views on the plant, the trend of state-level legalization reflects a broader cultural shift toward acceptance of marijuana, the most commonly used illicit substance in the United States. National support for the legalization of marijuana has risen dramatically in recent years, reaching historichighs in multiple polls just last month. States like Colorado have established regulated marijuana marketplaces, and successes there have debunked some lawmakers’ and law enforcers’ predictions that such polices would result in disaster.
X
And although many drug policy reformers are disappointed in the Sessions pick, some are holding out hope that they’ll be able persevere should he be confirmed.
“While the choice certainly isn’t good news for marijuana reform, I’m still hopeful the new administration will realize that any crackdown against broadly popular laws in a growing number of states would create huge political problems they don’t need and will use lots of political capital they’d be better off spending on issues the new president cares a lot more about,” said Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority.
Mason Tvert, communications director for Marijuana Policy Project, said he expects appointees who “serve at the pleasure of the president” to stick the president’s position.
“It would certainly be controversial if Sen. Sessions completely defied the president who appointed him,” Tvert said.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who has been at the forefront of efforts to reform marijuana laws at the federal level, called Sessions potentially helming the nation’s justice system “deeply disturbing,” considering his opposition to reform on issues like criminal justice, immigration and marijuana.
“I am hopeful that the next administration, regardless of the attorney general’s personal feelings, will respect the 10th Amendment and states’ rights to set their own policy in regards to cannabis,” Blumenauer said, calling on the Senate to reject Sessions’ nomination.
But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a leading conservative voice on marijuana policy reform, told The Huffington Post that people shouldn’t be concerned about Sessions interfering with state marijuana policies as long as Trump upholds his campaign promise.
“The president of the United States will be making that decision and Trump has publicly stated during the election that he was in favor of letting the states make the decision on this policy,” Rohrabacher said. “Jeff Sessions is a loyal man with integrity, he will do what his boss wants him to do.”
He added that Trump likely picked Sessions because of the senator’s views on immigration, not weed.
“They have probably never discussed marijuana,” he said.
Still, Hudak said Trump’s notorious tendency to waffle on any number of issues is a reason for concern, and noted there is no indication that Sessions would help the marijuana industry.
“The only question is how much will he be allowed and to what extent, he will harm the industry,” he said.
Drug reform advocates have a few concerns about President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general nomination.
11/18/2016 07:04 pm ET
8k
Matt Ferner National Reporter, The Huffington Post
CARLO ALLEGRI / REUTERS
President-elect Donald Trump has nominated hardline drug policy reform opponent Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to be attorney general of the United States, a move that sent shockwaves through the marijuana legalization movement on Friday.
Marijuana remains illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act, despite the expansion of recreational programs in Colorado, Washington state, Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C. (The District, however, continues to ban sales, unlike the state programs.) Four new states approved legalization on Election Day, and 29 states in total have legalized marijuana for medical purposes. This movement has only been able to press forward because of guidance urging federal prosecutors to refrain from targeting state-legal marijuana operations.
Under President Barack Obama, the Department of Justice has allowed states to forge their own way on marijuana policy. But that guidance could be reversed when the Trump administration enters the White House. If confirmed, Sessions would sit atop the DOJ, the federal agency that oversees federal prosecutors and enforces federal law on the plant.
“Jeff Sessions should scare every regulator, government official, cannabis industry operator, patient and consumer across the country,” said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who writes extensively on marijuana policy.
An Attorney General Sessions could reverse the federal guidance allowing state marijuana programs “with the stroke of a pen,” Hudak said.
He could also use the FBI to crack down on marijuana operations nationwide and use the Drug Enforcement Agency to enforce federal prohibition outside of the jurisdiction of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court ― the court that ruled in August that a federal rider blocks federal officials from prosecuting state-legal marijuana operators and patients. This rider that the 9th Circuit affirmed must be reapproved each year, and Sessions could order DEA enforcement nationwide if it were allowed to expire. He could also file lawsuits that seek to shut down state and local governments enforcing marijuana reforms and administering regulatory programs.
“In all, [he] could undo much of what has become the Obama Doctrine with regard to marijuana policy in the United States,” Hudak said. “That policy reversal is the worst-case scenario for the marijuana industry.”
Advocates for drug policy reform have blasted Trump for selecting Sessions.
“Donald Trump’s decision heralds a return to the worst days of the drug war,” said Bill Piper, senior director of national affairs at Drug Policy Alliance, a drug policy reform group.
Donald Trump’s decision heralds a return to the worst days of the drug war.Bill Piper, senior director of national affairs at Drug Policy Alliance
“Jeff Sessions is a drug war dinosaur, which is the last thing the nation needs now,” said Ethan Nadelmann, DPA’s executive director. “Those who counted on Donald Trump’s reassurance that marijuana reforms ‘should be a state issue’ will be sorely disappointed.”
Trump has said he would respect states’ rights on the issue, but Sessions’ track record of opposing marijuana reform is deeply troubling to people who favor progressive drug laws.
During a Senate hearing earlier this year, Sessions spoke out against marijuana and urged the federal government to send the message to the public that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He went on to say that “we need grown-ups in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized” and blasted Obama’s stance on the issue. He called the legalization of marijuana “a mistake” last year.
In 1986, when Sessions had been nominated to be a federal judge, a former assistant U.S. attorney accused him of saying that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was acceptable until he found out members smoked marijuana. Sessions allegedly made the statement in connection with the prosecution of a Klan member who had hanged a black man.
Despite Sessions’ retrograde views on the plant, the trend of state-level legalization reflects a broader cultural shift toward acceptance of marijuana, the most commonly used illicit substance in the United States. National support for the legalization of marijuana has risen dramatically in recent years, reaching historichighs in multiple polls just last month. States like Colorado have established regulated marijuana marketplaces, and successes there have debunked some lawmakers’ and law enforcers’ predictions that such polices would result in disaster.
X
And although many drug policy reformers are disappointed in the Sessions pick, some are holding out hope that they’ll be able persevere should he be confirmed.
“While the choice certainly isn’t good news for marijuana reform, I’m still hopeful the new administration will realize that any crackdown against broadly popular laws in a growing number of states would create huge political problems they don’t need and will use lots of political capital they’d be better off spending on issues the new president cares a lot more about,” said Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority.
Mason Tvert, communications director for Marijuana Policy Project, said he expects appointees who “serve at the pleasure of the president” to stick the president’s position.
“It would certainly be controversial if Sen. Sessions completely defied the president who appointed him,” Tvert said.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who has been at the forefront of efforts to reform marijuana laws at the federal level, called Sessions potentially helming the nation’s justice system “deeply disturbing,” considering his opposition to reform on issues like criminal justice, immigration and marijuana.
“I am hopeful that the next administration, regardless of the attorney general’s personal feelings, will respect the 10th Amendment and states’ rights to set their own policy in regards to cannabis,” Blumenauer said, calling on the Senate to reject Sessions’ nomination.
But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a leading conservative voice on marijuana policy reform, told The Huffington Post that people shouldn’t be concerned about Sessions interfering with state marijuana policies as long as Trump upholds his campaign promise.
“The president of the United States will be making that decision and Trump has publicly stated during the election that he was in favor of letting the states make the decision on this policy,” Rohrabacher said. “Jeff Sessions is a loyal man with integrity, he will do what his boss wants him to do.”
He added that Trump likely picked Sessions because of the senator’s views on immigration, not weed.
“They have probably never discussed marijuana,” he said.
Still, Hudak said Trump’s notorious tendency to waffle on any number of issues is a reason for concern, and noted there is no indication that Sessions would help the marijuana industry.
“The only question is how much will he be allowed and to what extent, he will harm the industry,” he said.