Sen. Jeff Sessions (Image from wikimedia.org)

Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Senator who led the charge against Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation yesterday, continued his assault against Sotomayor today. It’s no secret that Sessions fears Sotomayor will inject “racial bias” into her court decisions, a baseless anxiety made all the more laughable coming from Sessions, a man accused by multiple witnesses of being a racist himself.

Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he assumes Sotomayor understood and supported the stance of a civil rights group she advised in the 1980s that brought several race discrimination lawsuits for minorities who challenged jobs or promotions given to white employees.

“It raises questions about, is that her philosophy, and is she going to carry that to the courts and apply it even if the law does not support it?” Sessions told Fox News.

The fact that Sessions is even allowed into the room (and permitted to hurl accusations of racism at Sotomayor) during this confirmation hearing baffles the mind. When he was a US attorney in Alabama, Sessions reportedly called the NAACP an “un-American” and “Communist” organization, called a black attorney “boy” and warned him to “be careful what you say to white folks.” Sessions now says none of these accusations are true, and he claims he was “caricatured,” even though at the time, multiple witnesses made the claims.

Sessions unsuccessfully prosecuted three civil rights workers (including Albert Turner, a former aide to Martin Luther King, Jr.), on a supposed case of election fraud for the 1984 election. A June 17, 1985 Chicago Tribune article quotes Maryland state Sen. Clarence Mitchell, chairman of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators: “This is a blatantly racist investigation, no question about it. … The Justice Department has vigorously pursued this action in Alabama counties where blacks have gained political control while ignoring calls for vote-fraud investigations in neighboring counties where whites hold political control.”

Sessions was nominated by President Reagan in 1986 to be a U.S. district judge. However, the Senate Judiciary Committee killed the nomination on a 9-9 vote, partly because some critics of Sessions testified that he had demonstrated “gross insensitivity” on racial issues. A U.S. attorney had testified that he had heard Sessions claim that he had once admired the Ku Klux Klan.

At the time, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said the vote sends “a clear signal to the Reagan administration that their judicial nominees must meet at least a minimum standard of sensitivity” on civil rights.

And yet, this district judge reject, who has been accused of allowing his racist biases to influence his courtroom behavior multiple times, is now leading the charge against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, the woman who would be the Supreme Court’s first Hispanic justice. Today’s New York Times live blog of the confirmation reports (emphasis mine):

Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican, has started to cut off Judge Sotomayor’s answers as he tries to show that she’s now contradicting things she’s said in the past about how her experiences may influence her decisions.

Sessions Grills on Policy-Making | 10:14 a.m.: Toward the beginning, [Sessions] asked for an explanation about what she’d meant at a law conference when she said that appellate judges got to make policy. She said it would be clear — if people listened to her entire remarks rather than watching a snippet on YouTube — that she was not suggesting judges make policy as Congress does. She said that it was “very clear that I was talking about the policy ramifications of precedent, and never talking about appellate judges or courts making the policy that Congress makes.”Mr. Sessions: “I don’t think it’s that clear.”

Word Play | 10:21 a.m. Judge Sotomayor, confronted by Senator Sessions about how her take on a wise Latina’s decisions differed from that of Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, pointed out that Ms. Cedarbaum was her friend and was sitting in the audience. (In one of her speeches, Ms. Sotomayor had referred to Ms. Cedarbaum’s discussions about the number of women joining the bench and whether those numbers were having any impact.)

Mr. Sessions repeatedly said he was “troubled” and very concerned as to whether she could be impartial if she couldn’t put her experiences aside. Ms. Sotomayor replied that she believed she did apply the facts to each case, and applied the law.

But as far as the “wise Latina judge” remarks, Ms. Sotomayor relented a little bit, saying she had attempted a play on words that “fell flat. It was bad.”

How has no one (I’m looking at you, Al Franken) turned to Sessions and said, “Really, Jeff? Really? You’re afraid a judge is going to inject racial bias into her decision-making process? Really?? Aren’t you the guy who is BFFs with the clan and tried to take down Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assistant? Really??”

The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. Unsurprising, but mind-boggling.

Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee, before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. (Image from Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Senator Jeff Sessions wasted no time today at the top of Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing. The New York Times live-blog reports that shortly into his speech, he said that the confirmation hearing marks a “fork in the road.” Sessions is worried by President Obama’s decision to include empathy as a qualification for the Supreme Court. Remember, “empathy” is that bad thing we don’t want in our judges.

“Like the American people I have watched this process for a number of years, and I fear this empathy standards is another step down the road to a liberal activist, results-oriented and relativistic world where – laws lose their fixed meaning, unelected judges set policy; Americans are seen as members of separate groups rather than simply Americans, and where the constitutional limits on government power are ignored when politicians want to buy out private companies. ….Call it empathy, call it prejudice, but whatever it is, it is not law. In truth, it is more akin to politics. And politics has no place in the courtroom.”

But what Sessions fails to acknowledge is that politics is always in the courtroom, and every justice has their own set of ideologies, biases, and prejudices. Rolling out the fossilized attack of “liberal activism” may be part of more political grandstanding. However, this line of thinking is not only antiquated, but also disingenuous. Two of the biggest partisan hacks on the court, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia (both Republicans) are wildly ideologically biased, and yet they are never labeled as “activist judges.”

Scalia could be called a gun activist, since he is a gun owner, and went beyond defending the Second Amendment in his ruling during District of Columbia v Heller. He said self defense is a “central” constitutional right that requires the ownership of guns (specifically handguns) be permitted so that it can be fully exercised. Crowbarring “handguns” into the definition of “right to bear arms” might have opened up Scalia to accusations of being a “right-wing activist,” but luckily, he avoided such inconveniences.

Clarence Thomas, Scalia’s younger, crazier cousin, is the definition of an activist judge. Check out his dissent in the voting rights case Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder. Thomas was the only one of the nine justices who wanted to throw out Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act as an unconstitutional intrusion on states’ rights.

The Voting Rights Act (VRA), originally enacted into law in 1965, establishes comprehensive safeguards against discrimination in voting based on race, color, national origin or language status. One of the act’s provision (Section 5) requires that “covered” jurisdictions submit any changes in election practices for “preclearance” to either the attorney general or a three judge panel of the federal district court in Washington, D.C.. Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder involved a wealthy Texan district arguing that it should be exempt from the jurisdiction provision of VRA on the grounds that the district isn’t racially diverse (the combined African-American and Latino population of the district is 7 percent,) and the district is too small for Section 5 to apply to it, and the burden of its application is “too great.”

The Department of Justice and the NAACP defended the constitutionality of Section 5 by stressing the ongoing need for federal involvement in ensuring that the Fifteenth Amendment, which bars discrimination based on race in voting, is protected.

The Supreme Court basically avoided making a decision on this case, but Thomas was the only judge to propose throwing out Section 5. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court’s opinion that avoided a decision on Section 5’s constitutionality. Some legal analysts accused Roberts of rewriting the law, which might have been seen as an activist move, but Roberts is a Republican, who as we all know, are incapable of activism.

Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder was an extremely important case because Republicans continue to actively work to suppress minority voting by introducing legislation like PCB-EDCA 09-08 (AKA House Bill 7149,) a Republican-sponsored measure to suppress the minority vote in Florida. By adding impediments to voter registration, early voting, and election day voting, Republicans were clearly targeting minority voters (historically Democrat votes,) which illustrates why the need for VRA and Section 5 are still essential. PCB-EDCA 09-08 is only one example of many such cases.

Unfortunately, Activist Justice Clarence Thomas doesn’t see it that way: “Enforcement efforts before the enactment of Section 5 had rendered the right to vote illusory for blacks in the Jim Crow South,” Thomas wrote. “Despite the Civil War’s bloody purchase of the 15th Amendment, the reality remained far from the promise.” Thomas argued that because seven states, which are covered by Section 5, have black voter registration that exceeds the national average, this somehow proves that the law no longer meets the threshold for being a constitutional exercise of congressional power over the states.

Nor does Thomas think states should be burdened by “second-generation barriers,” racial polarization or “discrete and isolated incidents of interference with the right to vote.” Such an opinion appears to be firmly rooted in Thomas’s own biases and ideologies, which makes him the very definition of an “activist” for his own beliefs.

So please, put the partisan hackery of “activist judges” to rest (forever.) All judges are activists, even when they claim to be “strict Constitutionalists” like Scalia. Even a justice that claims to strictly adhere to the word of the original law must occasionally creatively interpret the arcane language of the Constitution as Scalia did in District of Columbia v Heller. Whenever interpretation occurs during rulings, justices rely on their past experiences, ideologies, biases, prejudices, and yes — the most dreaded of human qualities — empathy. 

The press has barely been able to contain their excitement over President Obama’s trip to Africa. Their glee is understandable. America’s first black president is returning to the land in which his ancestors were born. The story is beautiful — poetic, really. But what few people are asking is, “Why Ghana?”

Image from ghanaoilinfo.com

One of the few news sources to pose this question, Democracy Now, proposed the answer may have something to do with the recent discovery of oil in Ghana. A quarter of US oil imports are expected to come from West Africa by 2015, according to estimates by the National Intelligence Council. That could explain why Obama chose Ghana over, say, his father’s homeland of Kenya. 

Perhaps aware of the “oil” question, the White House was quick to announce that Ghana was selected as Obama’s destination because the African country is a “trusted partner” and praised its sound governance and lasting development. Kwesi Pratt, editor of “The Insight”, a newspaper based in Accra, Ghana, doesn’t buy that excuse.

The official reason has been given of Ghana’s fledgling democracy, that the United States of America has a lot of confidence in Ghana’s fledgling democracy. But all of us know that the main interest is oil. If you read the Cheney report, the Cheney report states very clearly that by 2015 American oil imports will move from 11% to 25%. The Cheney report also makes a recommendation for the establishment of military bases in order to protect American interests and American oil. For me these are the two key reasons why the United States and Obama are interested in this. It has nothing to do with democracy, but the preservation of American interests.

Pratt is referring to former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s role in the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), a task force of senior government representatives charged with developing a long-range plan to meet U.S. energy requirements. Former President Bush chose Cheney to head NEPDG, and one of Dick’s main goals was to minimize the United States’ dependency on oil from the Persian Gulf. Of course, NEPDG didn’t want to supplement oil for “green energy.” The group just wanted to find oil somewhere else, and “somewhere” included non-gulf areas, including the Caspian Sea basin, the West Coast of Africa, and Latin America. 

Ghana is located near the Africa west coast. “West Africa is expected to be one of the fastest-growing sources of oil and gas for the American market,” the Cheney report observed with almost tangible, gluttonous glee.  At the time, the report focused on Nigeria, Guinea, and Angola because Dick Cheney and George W. Bush had no idea Ghana had a massive oil reserve just off her coast. 

Then in 2007, the UK firm Tullow Oil announced the discovery of 600 million barrels of light oil offshore from Ghana. Reporter Njei Moses Timah stated the obvious, “China and the United States are not going to fold their arms and allow Ghana to quietly enjoy the proceeds of the over $40 billion worth of oil (less exploration and production costs) that has been discovered.”

“U.S. President Barack Obama’s trip to Ghana on July 10th-11th is a subtle White House oil strategy to secure another source of energy on the continent of Africa,” says Patrick Morris, Chief Executive Officer of Gold Star Resources Corp. in an interview with AlphaTrade Finance. 

Gold Star Resources is a Vancouver-based company seeking high-impact ‘onshore’ oil and gas opportunities in Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana in West Africa. The company recently announced its acquisition of International Resources Strategies Liberia Energy Inc. (IRSLE). Gold Star also announced that it signed a Letter-of-Intent with Bengal Bight Ghana to acquire 100% of the hydrocarbon rights to the Tampoum mining concession, approximately 1,000 square km, in Cote d’Ivoire.

Morris adds, ”The U.S. Department of Energy has already confirmed that the United States will be importing over 770 million barrels of African oil annually by the year 2020. The U.S. National Intelligence Council is projecting that 25 percent of U.S. oil imports will come from West Africa by 2015 compared to 15% today. My own professional experience tells me that the political stability of Ghana’s government, a credible democratic political party system, and a positive investment environment all favor closer ties to Ghanaians by the Obama White House.”

The United States and China have a history of raping Africa for her natural resources, and investing nothing into local African communities themselves. Serge Michel, West Africa correspondent for the French newspaper “Le Monde,” told Democracy Now that - in classic colonialist fashion - China extracts Africa’s natural recourses without contributing anything to the native people, say by building infrastructure like roads. The United States traditionally follows a similar pattern of conquer and pillage.

There is no reason to doubt Ghana will face a similar fate this time.

(Image from cartoonstock.com)

The proposed constitution enshrines Kurdish claims to territories and the oil and gas beneath them. But these claims are disputed by both the federal government in Baghdad and ethnic groups on the ground, and were supposed to be resolved in talks begun quietly last month between the Iraqi and Kurdish governments, sponsored by the United Nations and backed by the United States. Instead, the Kurdish parliament pushed ahead and passed the constitution, partly as a message that it would resist pressure from the American and Iraqi governments to make concessions.

via Kurds Defy Baghdad, Laying Claim to Land and Oil - NYTimes.com.

Apparently, indigenous Kurds didn’t get the memo that Iraq’s oil is now the property of the United States and its corporate allies. Oil companies have been bidding to develop Iraqi oil for the first time since Iraq nationalized its oil industry in 1972, and in late June, 32 companies took part in the auction, including the American Exxon Mobil and the British Royal Dutch Shell.

The multibillion dollar deal between Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB) and the Iraqi government to jointly develop domestic gas infrastructure in Iraq’s south is progressing and the oil ministry is submitting a feasibility study to the cabinet before concluding a final deal, Iraq’s deputy oil minister said during an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

“We are planning to submit a comprehensive feasibility study on the project to the cabinet by the end of this month,” Ahmad al-Shammaa told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview. According to the agreement Iraq’s South Gas Co. will control 51% while Shell will hold the remaining 49% of the venture. And yet, those dense Kurdish people haven’t gotten the hint. They want in on the action. As tends to happen whenever indigenous people thrust themselves into the middle of an intensely guarded wagon circle, the corporate coterie ain’t happy.

The concern over the sudden drafting of an entirely new constitution for the Kurdish semiautonomous region may be valid considering there has been little public debate, and Kurdish leaders may also be driven by greed and not some altruistic desire to see the democratic will of the indigenous people fulfilled (much like the US-led invasion of Iraq.) However, the outrage pouring from US officials is so deliciously ironic that it’s a small miracle Iraqis didn’t collectively fall over laughing when the first corporate mouthpiece stood up and declared, “Why, that’s our oil! Hands off, sirs!” 

Maybe this is all part of some brilliant Kurdish practical joke to give the Americans and British a taste of their own medicine. Somewhere, a group of giggling Kurds are crouched behind a boulder. Occasionally, they peek around to see a fuming Exxon Mobil representative, who shouts about those “goddamn, meddling brown people!” as he kicks at the dirt where the Kurds have buried a garden hose disguised as an oil siphon. 

We can only dream.

(Image from wikimedia.org)

NBC reports that more than 60 African-American campers from Northeast Philadelphia were turned away from a private swim club  because  – according to John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club — “there was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club.”

It may surprise some Americans to learn that not only do certain private clubs still refuse to admit African-Americans, women, and gay people, but that this kind of enrollment discrimination is considered perfectly legal. 

While the total number of private clubs is unknown, there are around at least 4,000 private golf clubs, according to Golf Digest. Of course, since these clubs are private, their exact enrollment standards aren’t part of the public record, so there is no way to know for sure if they discriminate against ethnic minorities, women, or homosexuals. Furthermore, even if they do adopt official “white males only” policies, these practices are considered “legal” in some jurisdictions, though many clubs have been sued for discrimination. 

Because of the shroud of secrecy surrounding enrollment at private clubs, these discriminatory practices usually only come to light when the media catches a prominent politician on the fairway. Katon Dawson, South Carolina GOP chairman and former candidate for the RNC chair, was forced to resign from the Forest Lake Club after members made public the fact that the club has a whites-only restriction and no black members. Then there was Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), who hosted a golf fundraiser at a whites-only club back in 2000 along with then-lawmakers Bob Ney and Tom DeLay. 

Back in 1992, Bill Clinton was accused of attending an all-white private golf club, though Mark Grobmeyer, the Little Rock lawyer who played at the club with Clinton, denied there was a “no blacks” policy. Why were there no black players then? Mr. Grobmeyer replied, “None have applied.”

President Kennedy was once challenged by future Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, over his membership at the Links Country Club because the club excluded Jews from membership. President Kennedy reportedly chuckled and replied, “Hell, Arthur, they don’t even allow Catholics.” 

This recent case of discrimination at the Philadelphia club is merely a continuation of discriminatory admission standards. Such official bans on non-Anglo Saxon men may seem superfluous considering outrageous membership fees are usually enough deterrence to keep non-white people off the golf courses and out of the pools, but when The Creative Steps Day Camp managed to pay the $1900 for their young campers to enter The Valley Swim Club, the staff resorted to drastic measures.

“When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool,” Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. “The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately.”

Remarks like that make it difficult to remember that it’s 2009. According to attorney Benjamin Leedy, another shameful episode occured a little over a decade ago when Hall Thompson, founder of the all-white Shoal Creek club in Birmingham, AL (site of the 1990 PGA Championship,) declared that his club would not be pressured into accepting African-American members. “This is our home, and we pick and choose who we want,” he said.

Leedy cites another recent example in 2003 at the Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, where Martha Burke, head of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, demanded that the club allow women to become members. Hootie Johnson chairman of Augusta National, responded “There may well come a day when women will be invited to join our membership, but that timetable will be ours and not at the point of a bayonet.”

In 2001, Birgit Koebke and Kendall French, a lesbian couple registered as domestic partners under the California Domestic Partner Rights and Responsibilities Act of 2003, sued Bernardo Heights Country Club alleging that the club discriminated against them on the basis of sexual orientation. The club’s membership privileges were only available to members’ spouses and children, but not to members’ domestic partners. In 2005, the California Supreme Court concluded “that since, under California law, registered domestic partners have rights equivalent to legal spouses, the question of whether the club’s practice of granting playing privileges to members’ spouses but not to members’ registered domestic partners constituted unlawful discrimination under California’s anti-discrimination law must be left to a jury decide.”

This most recent case of discrimination in Philadelphia is particularly sinister because it involves banishing children. “I heard this lady, she was like, ‘Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?’ She’s like, ‘I’m scared they might do something to my child,’” said camper Dymire Baylor. 

What a terrible lesson to teach two children — one white and one black. The white child learns to fear those who are different from them. The black child learns there is something “wrong” and “dirty” about their very existence. Hopefully, another more enlightened swim club will welcome the campers from The Creative Steps Day Camp, who are now looking for a place to keep cool during the summer.

Update: The public email and phone number for The Valley Swim Club is 215-947-0700 and info@thevalleyclub.com. The President of the club is John Duesler.

Updated at 9PM: The staff at Girard College, a private Philadelphia boarding school for children who live in low-income and single parent homes, have stepped in and offered their pool to the campers.

Updated on July 9: The Michael Smerconish Program interviewed an eyewitness named “Jan,” who is a member of The Valley Swim Club. Jan says the children from The Creative Steps Day Camp were very well-behaved, and the camp supervisors were highly attentive. This puts a dent in the argument that, perhaps, the children were behaving in an overly rowdy fashion, which is why they were ejected.