Free Republic

If “pass this bill” is the phrase of the week for President Obama, “not so fast” is the phrase of choice for congressional Republicans. As Obama touts the American Jobs Act as a “fully paid for” panacea for high unemployment and sluggish economic growth, his critics insist he’s glossing over the fine print when it comes to adding to the deficit. “Given the depth of the economic crisis we now face … the lack of fiscal detail that has been provided to Congress is both disappointing and irresponsible,” wrote Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Budget Committee, in...

The GOP’s budget men have refused to relent in their calls for serious budgetary changes. House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) today sent a letter to President Barack Obama to demand he seriously address the need for Medicare reform. The letter states: The country deserves honest leadership on this critical issue. The Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget that you submitted to Congress this year showed a lack of seriousness about the major fiscal challenges before the nation. And, although you abandoned this budget in a subsequent speech, your administration...

The 18 Senators Who Approve Breaking The Internet To Protect Hollywood from the not-cool dept Last fall, we noted that the Senate Judiciary Committee had unanimously voted to approve COICA, a bill for censoring the internet as a favor to the entertainment industry. Thankfully, Senator Ron Wyden stepped up and blocked COICA from progressing. This year, COICA has been replaced by the PROTECT IP Act, which fixes some of the problems of COICA, but introduces significant other problems as well. A wide cross section of people who actually understand technology and innovation have come out against PROTECT IP as written...

Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama told Townhall he wants to see change out of the White House as the next step in what the government funds and cuts financially this year and next. Sessions said the president is “doing nothing positive” for sound financial management and the pressure is building on everybody as Congress faces expiring funding and record deficits. “I’ve just been stunned how in denial they’ve been about our financial situation,” Sessions said of the White House, pointing out the president is opposing entitlement reform (not addressed in his 2012 budget) while proposing significant investments. Sessions listed...

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) ripped President Obama in a Washington Post opinion piece Monday, accusing him of failing to provide leadership in addressing the budget deficit. He also proposed tying any vote to raise the nation's debt ceiling to a 10 percent cut in spending. “Last month, President Obama would agree to maintain current tax rates only if Congress would agree to increase federal deficit spending. We are headed toward a cliff, yet the president hits the accelerator,” Sessions said. In the lame-duck session, Obama agreed to an extension of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts...

As President Obama and his Democratic allies push to pass legislation this year that would allow certain illegal immigrants to become legal U.S. residents, Republicans are pushing back with details about the DREAM Act that have gone largely unnoticed. The legislation would permit young people to become U.S. residents after spending two years in college or the military. It would apply to immigrants who were under 16 when they arrived in the U.S., have been in the country at least five years and have a diploma from a U.S. high school or the equivalent. But Republican Sen. Jeff Session of...

As Commissioner Peter Kirsanow reported earlier, Rep. Lamar Smith sent a letter yesterday to President Obama asking him to appoint a special counsel to investigate not just the dismissal of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case but also “whether the Department has adopted a policy of enforcing voting rights laws in a racially discriminatory manner.”... ...all seven GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee... demanding an oversight hearing of the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ to investigate the dismissal of this case and the allegations of racialist enforcement of the civil-rights laws... ...Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes...

Here is video of Sen. Jeff Sessions this morning at the end of his questioning of Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan, saying to her that he was “taken aback” by her attempts to dodge the truth about how she prevented military recruiters from conducting their work at the Harvard Law School when she was Dean there, because she was trying to make a political statement against the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. “I’m just a little taken aback by the tone of your remarks, because it’s unconnected to reality. I know what happened at Harvard. I know you were...

Did you know that calling attention to an area where a Supreme Court justice nominee is from, which happens to be a well-known bastion of liberalism, is bigoted? If you didn't, you want to take a look at the wisdom of Salon.com's Joan Walsh. In her June 28 post "It's not even coded bigotry anymore," Walsh argued that references to SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan's Upper West Side of Manhattan roots are bigoted -since the neighborhood has Jewish features, references to it are anti-Semitic and as she puts it, "not even coded." "That said, Republicans on the Senate Judicial Committee are...

Chris Matthews reacts to Sen. Jeff Sessions' (R-AL) opening statement at the first day of the Elena Kagan confirmation hearing. The terms "terrorist," "terrorism" or "socialist" were not used in Sen. Sessions' opening statement.

Here is video of GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions saying a Republican filibuster of Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination is “conceivable,” based on her slim legal record, and her radical political leanings. Sessions said the fact she has never been a judge, has little track record of practicing law, AND has been extremely political in the past, is a very bad combination. Sessions said it will be important to assess whether she is capable of respecting the law as set forth in the U.S. Constitution and be willing to put aside her political bias.

Shortly after becoming dean of the Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan kicked the military out of the school's recruitment office while our troops were putting their lives on the line in two wars overseas. Now that President Obama has nominated Kagan to the Supreme Court, her actions at Harvard must be closely examined. As ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have pledged that Kagan will receive a fair and thorough hearing. Because Kagan's legal record is thin — she has never been a judge and practiced law for only two years — her time at Harvard is especially...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) tells Fox News that GOP members of the Senate Judiciary committee may boycott the confirmation hearings of Solicitor General Elena Kagan. "In my view, what I believe is that if there's an absolute -- if there's a circumstance where legitimately producible documents are being withheld, I don't take anything off the table," Sen. Sessions said in response if he and other GOP Senators will boycott the hearings.

Shortly after becoming Dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan kicked the military out of the school’s recruitment office while our troops were putting their lives on the line in two wars overseas. Now that President Obama has nominated Ms. Kagan to the Supreme Court, her actions at Harvard must be closely examined. As ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have pledged that Ms. Kagan will receive a fair and thorough hearing. Because Ms. Kagan’s legal record is thin—she has never been a judge and practiced law for only two years—her time at Harvard is especially significant. The...

The Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Jeff Sessions, R-AL, seized on Elena Kagan’s role in prohibiting military recruiting on Harvard's campus during her tenure as the dean of Harvard Law School in an exclusive "This Week" interview and called it “no little-bitty matter.” He insisted that Kagan was not only wrong in her decision, but broke the law. Sessions was joined by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Patrick Leahy, D-VT, who called the issue “sound and fury signifying nothing.” The controversy revolves around Kagan’s decision to prohibit military recruiting directly on the law school’s campus because the...

Here is video of GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions saying today that it is "unacceptable" that Obama Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan banned military recruiters from Harvard when she was Dean of the Harvard Law School. Kagan did so because she disagreed with the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays in the military. Sessions said: "She would not allow the military recruiters to come onto the Law School in order to recruit JAG officers for the military because she didn't agree with the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Policy President Clinton had adopted - and they just wouldn't let them...

The government's traditionally enforced safety standards on automobiles sold in the United States. But the government didn't always own a car company. So you'd expect the media to take a hard look when the government's roles as regulator and competitor converge. But unless you saw the Jan. 28 broadcast of CNBC's "Power Lunch," you might not realize that this is exactly what has happened. In an interview with CNBC "Power Lunch" co-host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., was asked about the Toyota recall, which involves 2.3 million vehicles since a Toyota manufacturing facility had recently located in Alabama. "We've...

We guess immigration is never not an issue, even in putting terrorists on trial. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee today are demanding to know the immigration status of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9/11 plotters, should they be brought to the United States to stand trial. Their fear is that KSM and his henchmen might seek asylum under immigration laws, setting all kinds of worrisome precedents. “As you can imagine, even if they are not ultimately eligible for relief, terrorist detainees may seek legal rights under our immigration laws or assert such rights in federal court, thereby setting a...

-- Vote could come as early as MondayHe has been called "extreme" by some. But to others, he's beyond extreme... he's a "Radical's Radical."  Whatever he is, he could become President Obama's next choice for the federal judiciary. This radical is Judge David Hamilton, and he's been nominated for a position on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Hamilton has made many political enemies on the right, seeing that his politics are to the far left of the political spectrum.  Oh yes, judges aren't supposed to be political, but this one has engaged in quite a bit of leftist activism....

Federal Bench: Yet another judicial nominee seeks to impose the "empathy" standard on the courts. He thinks judges should base rulings on a plaintiff's status, legislate from the bench and amend the Constitution. Indiana federal judge David Hamilton stands poised to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to assume a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals serving Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. He's a former fundraiser for Acorn and a former leader of the Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. He is also another in a series of activist judges who believe the U.S. Constitution is not...

Sen. Jeff Sessions believes Judge Sotomayor would be an activist Justice on the Supreme Court.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) talks about doing "that crack cocaine thing" with a black Attorney General at the Sonia Sotomayor hearing.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor ended four days of testimony this afternoon with prospects of rapid confirmation to the Supreme Court improved, as a conservative Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee edged toward endorsing her and the panel's ranking Republican said the GOP would not block a vote on her nomination. Shortly before the committee concluded its questioning of Sotomayor, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the panel's senior GOP member, told Sotomayor he would "look forward to you getting that vote" by the time the Senate takes its annual summer break, slated to begin Aug. 7.

WASHINGTON – Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Republican equating Sonia Sotomayor's supposed empathy with racial bias, was blocked from the federal bench himself two decades ago for making insensitive remarks about the Ku Klux Klan and the NAACP. The third-term Alabama senator, this week at least, is the face of a party without a clear leader. His role strikes some as hypocritical. But arguably, no one knows more intimately what a political minefield race has been for the GOP. ~SNIP~Sessions is the personification of a party with an overwhelmingly white, Southern, religious membership.

Here is video of Sen. Jeff Sessions making his opening statement today at the Senate Judiciary Committee's Confirmation Hearing for Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor. . . . . . . (Watch Video)

Here is video from the NAACP Convention this weekend where they issued a warning to Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions that he should "tone down his rhetoric" about Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor, whose confirmation hearings begin today. Sessions is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and will have opportunity to question Sotomayor. The NAACP essentially told Sessions "we are watching you," and are seeking to cow him into silence. It won't work. Jeff Sessions is a man of tremendous character and integrity. He won't be intimidated by the radical NAACP, an organization with a proud history, but one that...

Cannot post. Here is the linkhttp://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090712/OPINION01/907120317/1036/Opinion

The senior Republican senator who will question Sonia Sotomayor says the Supreme Court nominee must demonstrate she will not show bias on the bench. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions tells CBS's "Face the Nation" that in speeches over the past 10 years, Sotomayor has said repeatedly that personal experiences influence a judge's decisions. Sessions says Sotomayor has criticized the idea that a woman and a man would reach the same result. That point of view, according to Sessions, reflects a philosophy that is incompatible with the American system. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, says...

As the confirmation hearings for President Barack Obama's Supreme Court appointee Sonia Sotomayor are upon us, the left-wing attack machine had to take a few last shots ranking Senate Judiciary Committee Republican Sen. Jeff Session, Ala., and the Republican Party as a whole. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explained the junior Alabama senator would take over the spot after Sen. Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party on her July 10 program, suggesting his selection to the post was part of some rebranding by the GOP. "Republicans have also decided to have Senator Jeff Sessions lead this battle for them," Maddow...

In a stunning report (pdf) released yesterday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the current financial crisis was traced back to government intervention in the U.S. housing market.  Yes, you read that right.   The report issued by the Republican minority didn’t disclose the names of the culprit individuals, but it sure pointed a lot of fingers at organizations, politicians, lobbyists and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. According to the report, government intervention “created ‘affordable’ but dangerous lending policies which encouraged lower down payments, looser underwriting standards and higher leverage.  Finally, government intervention created a nexus of vested interests...

Senate Republicans started focusing their critique of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, readying a series of speeches to illustrate conservative discomfort with President Barack Obama’s choice to succeed Justice David Souter. The first could come as early as Tuesday morning, when Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, is expected to take the floor. A central point, according to a Senate Republican aide: Sotomayor’s role in the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF. She belonged to the group’s board of directors from 1980 to 1992, leaving after President George H.W....

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/06/17/sen_sessions_calls_ag_holder_too_soft_on_terror.html

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, in the Republican Party's weekly message, said today that confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will be respectful, but he also warned that any evidence her personal history would shape her decision-making will be challenged forcefully. "Although we sometimes take our heritage of neutral and independent judiciary for granted, the truth is, this great tradition is under attack. And the American people are rightly concerned," Sessions said in the GOP address distributed nationally as a counterpoint to President Barack Obama's weekly address. ... In his remarks, Sessions maintained his cordial approach to...

Newt Gingrich says his initial reaction to Judge Sotomayor's nomination was "too strong and too direct." Sen. Sessions says he is "very glad" Gingrich has back off his "hostile" criticism. Sessions says this will "help" the GOP have a "real good discussions about the serious issues that the nation faces."

You'd expect to see this in the liberal blogosphere or possibly some of the national mainstream media outlets with an obvious agenda. But now some of the preemptive strikes against Republican senators leading up to the Senate confirmation hearings and eventual vote to confirm President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, are finding their way into local newspapers. An op-ed published in The Anniston (Ala.) Star on May 28 by Ari Rabin-Havt, the managing director of the left-wing Media Matters Action Network, attacked the new ranking Republican of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. ...more...

While there is growing anticipation that the summer will bring the spectacle of a pitched Supreme Court confirmation battle, some Senate Republicans are lowering expectations that they are planning any major political fight. President Obama has not yet named his choice to succeed Justice David H. Souter on the Supreme Court, but several Republicans acknowledge it is unlikely they will be able to derail the nomination absent some startling revelation about the candidate. Those Republicans, including both senior staff aides and some senators, suggested in interviews that that they believe President Obama’s first nominee for the court will be confirmed...

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) appeared this morning on "Morning Joe". "Gay tendencies"? What the... this is why people consider Republicans homophobic, intolerant, etc. Sure, I'm glad Sessions will look at someone's legal qualifications over anything else, but there had to be a better way to answer the question without using those words. What an idiot.

[Note: The link is a hit piece on Jeff Sessions, and it would be great if everyone could take a part of it and show how they're lying, misleading, taking things out of context, and so on. Simply dismissing this as not affecting you personally is not an effective thing to say. Simply saying, 'consider the source' is not effective. In order to counteract things like this, you have to show those who might be swayed by the report how the report is wrong.] From the link: Senator Jeff Sessions is one of the leading (and loudest) voices against comprehensive...

Michael O'Brien over at The Hill reports that Senator Jeff Sessions (R, Ala.) told Fox News recently that he had no litmus test on abortion for judicial candidates and that a judge that had pro-abortion views could get his vote for confirmation. This might alarm anyone that is vehemently anti-abortion. It should also alarm all those conservatives that pushed for Senator Sessions to be made the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ...but hold your outrage for just a minute. Let's more closely look at what he said. Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday he could consider a gay nominee for the nation’s highest court. “I’m not inclined to think that’s an automatic disqualification,” Sessions said of a gay nominee. He said he intends to consider only the nominee’s legal judgment when deciding his support for Justice David Souter’s proposed replacement. “I may disagree with some legal opinion on those issues, but I think fundamentally it will be up to the president to submit somebody who would unite the country and would be a clear statement of a mainstream judge...

Now that Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. has been named the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, some on the far-left are gunning for Alabama's junior senator. The battle is happening as President Barack Obama is on the verge of naming an appointee to the Supreme Court to fill void of Justice David Souter.Some of the left-wing points that suggest Sessions has racist tendencies were incorporated into a May 6 Politico story by John Bresnahan and Manu Raju. "By elevating Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to their top spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republicans have selected their chief inquisitor for...

Sen. Arlen Specter said Tuesday he regrets his vote against Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) two decades ago that helped kill his nomination to the federal bench. Sessions, who has now assumed Specter's former position as the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 to be a federal judge — but Specter provided a key "no" vote after allegations were made that Sessions had a poor record on race relations as Alabama attorney general. Sessions has called those allegations false and unfounded. Now Sessions and Specter both serve on the Judiciary Committee and have...

Yesterday, in a move very pleasing to conservatives, Senate Republicans chose Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to be the new Republican ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The leadership seat was vacated by Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) when Specter switched to the Democrat Party in an attempt to win re-election next year. Republican voters in Pennsylvania made it quite clear early on that he would be ousted during the primary election. Principle and party have never been important to Specter. Sessions will now be the point man in Republican examination of President Obama’s nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice David...

Here's Sessions' statement in full: "It was inevitable from the start: politicians are now assuming operational control of the once-proud General Motors Corporation. Decisions are being made by an amorphous "task force," driven as much by how their decisions will impact the president's popularity as by their desire to ensure the success of the company. This bailout mentality, which has led to string of governmental interferences in the economy, is simply not compatible with our historic belief in the separation of the public and private sectors. "The question is not whether Rick Wagoner should be CEO of General Motors, but...

Jeff Sessions, appearing on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, attempted to explain his opposition to the Obama stimulus plan by stating that, “I don’t think we need to saddle future generations with 1.2 trillion of debt.” He’s right. It’s wrong to saddle future generations with huge amounts of debt. Yet it was Senator Jeff Sessions who was giving a rubber stamp to the Bush spending bills that added over 5 trillion dollars to the national debt. Where was Senator Sessions’ outrage when this runway spending was occuring under the Great Spender, George W. Bush? I’ll wait, but I won’t...

Toyota, BMW, Hyundai Workers' Senators Oppose Rescue

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration misled Congress about how it would spend the $700 billion allocated for the financial industry rescue, Sen. Jeff Sessions alleged in a heated letter to the White House on Friday.

The United States needs more senators like Alabama's Jeff Sessions. The Republican Party needs to recruit more senatorial candidates who have that potential. And the conservative movement ought to prod the Republican Party, sooner rather than later, to do so. First things first: Senator Sessions won election last week to a third term by a landslide margin, with 63 percent of the vote. He outpolled ticket-header John McCain in both percentage of the vote and in raw votes, even though far more votes were cast in the presidential contest than in the Senate one. He did so even though what...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WBRC-TV MyFoxAL.com) -- Alabama's two U.S. Senators don't seem overly optimistic about a revived bailout plan that is scheduled for a vote Wednesday night. A spokesman for Alabama Senator Richard Shelby tells FOX6 News he's reviewing the final language for the bill. Shelby has been a vocal opponent of the President's bailout plan. A spokeswoman in Senator Jeff Sessions office says as it stood Wednesday morning Sessions would likely vote against the bill. Congressional leaders from both parties said they are hopeful that a $700 billion financial industry bailout that derailed in the House is back on track...

Mr. President, I don't think, with all due respect to my good friend, the majority leader, who decided to bring up this bill, that discussing one of the most massive bills we have seen is a waste of time. I don't think 30 hours is too long. The Wall Street Journal, which he dismisses--I don't dismiss it--said:    This is easily the largest income redistribution scheme since the income tax.    That was today's Wall Street Journal editorial. I wish to say, this is not a matter that should be lightly dealt with. Thirty hours is not enough. We need to spend a...