Jeff Sessions deserves basic courtesy, fair hearing from Dems

How disappointing that Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have refused courtesy visits from Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general. The reasons range from objections based on racist comments Sessions allegedly made more than 30 years ago — which he has denied — or that his background will make it impossible for him to enforce the civil rights laws.

To judge someone on what was allegedly said so many years ago but ignore what that person has actually done over the years defies common sense and fairness.

He championed the passage of the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act. Prior law had disproportionately negatively impacted minority communities.

As U.S. attorney, Sessions enforced civil rights laws including a case which essentially bankrupted the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.

Sessions has a history of working in a bipartisan manner to protect the rights of some of the weakest amongst us, including his active support for the Victims Rights Amendment.

Craig Shirley wrote recently in Chronicles magazine that “(t)hough some pundits and commentators have gone out of their way to paint Sessions as a racist who does not work well with others, a few members of the media have paused long enough to examine the record and discover that he is, in fact the opposite of these things. While Sessions has demonstrated a firm commitment to his convictions, his time in the Senate has been marked by bipartisanship.”

Conspicuously absent in media coverage are the many positive comments by prominent African-Americans.

Take for example Horace Cooper, co-chairman of Project 21 (an initiative of the National Leadership Network Of Black Conservatives) stated that “Sessions is no racist, and such attacks are a means of personalizing policy differences.”

Or former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson who, in a letter published in The New York Times, wrote that Sessions “does not have a racist bone in his body. ... I have been an African-American for 71 years and I think I know a racist when I experience one,” he added. There are numerous other examples. Sessions deserves basic courtesy and a fair hearing without “prejudging” him based on policy differences.