Round 2 in the Senate starts this week

The Senate is set this week to again take up the immigration reform bill it shelved several weeks ago amid signs that that version would not pass. Sunday news talk shows featured several prominent supporters and critics of the bill. This includes one who is so dead-set against some legislation that could be seen as a step toward resolving a grey-society of people who live within our borders but who reside "underground," that he vows to continue to "slow (the) process down and...hold up the bill." This statement was actually uttered by Jeffrey Sessions, a Republican Senator from Alabama. Nice to know he keeps an open mind on legislation before it even starts getting debated again.


Of course, in reviewing this statement, perhaps it should not be surprising that Sen. Sessions holds staunch-conservative views. He once was sidetracked from receiving a federal judgeship due to accusations of "gross insensitivity" on racial issues. Okay....so what did he do? He apparently led an unsuccessful prosecution against 3 civil rights workers for voter fraud in an election in 1984 over 14 allegedly tampered with ballots....out of 1.7 million. Not quite the same wide-sweeping impact as the hanging chad but worth the fight, I guess, to Sen. Sessions.


Seems he also like to cling to McCarthy-isms: he has called the NAACP and the ACLU, groups that espouse the rights of the down-trodden or minority, as "un-American" and "Communist-inspired." He has also said that the Ku Klux Klan was "OK" - kinda like saying that Hitler had a few good ideas.


One of his primary concerns (surprise-surprise) about the reform bill is that it does not do enough to "secure" our borders. In fact, he cites a congressional report that illegal immigration will be abated by 13% over the next 20 years as further justification to kill the current bill. Putting our national need for pragmatic decision-making and democratic debate from our Legislative Branch aside, resolute ties to ideology kill free-thinking. Shameful that this still occurs in America.

Sen. Sessions serves on the judiciary committee administering debate on the current reform bill.