.
In Tennessee speech, AG Sessions defends stop and frisk policing, says "If you want crime to go up, let the ACLU run the police department." https://t.co/RrmFPcqK2I
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) May 9, 2018
… Newly appointed U.S. District Attorney Doug Overbey introduced Sessions Tuesday morning in a law enforcement conference held inside the Gatlinburg Convention Center…
The nation’s top law enforcement official encouraged the officers, spoke quickly about the opioid crisis and railed on the policies of the “fuzzy-headed left” and illegal immigration in a 25-minute speech.
As he has in other stops recently, Sessions promised to continue being strict on immigration by adding 35 prosecutors and 18 immigration judges to border states to deal with backlogs of immigrant cases.
He used the event to praise the officers who came from across the Southeast. He said the room was filled with “some of the best people in America.”…
Sessions also spoke about the increasing threat of fentanyl, the deadly drug often used with heroin.
“Drug use, addiction, overdose deaths have surged, as you know,” he said. “So we have to work resolutely to stop these trends. We must reverse them. That must be our goal. We know how. We’ve proven what works. Science proves what works … we share good practices at conferences like these.”…
The ever-solicitious NYTimes, last month:
… Mr. Sessions has taken more abuse from President Trump than any other member of his high-churn cabinet because he recused himself from the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Over 14 months in office, Mr. Sessions has gone from, in Mr. Trump’s words, “a great protector of the people” to “weak,” “disgraceful” and an “idiot.”
But Mr. Sessions is in many ways the best attorney general Mr. Trump might have hoped for. While the president rails against him in Washington, Mr. Sessions travels the country diligently pushing the conservative Trump agenda. As a former federal prosecutor who has a firm grasp of the tools of his office and the letter of the law, Mr. Sessions, 71, is the creator and chief enforcer of the tough immigration and criminal justice goals that helped propel Mr. Trump into office.
And unlike several other members of the Trump cabinet, Mr. Sessions has not sullied the administration with headlines over first-class jet travel, exorbitant office furnishings, lobbyist-furnished housing — or all of the above…When meeting with the police, border patrol officers and the victims of crime, Mr. Sessions gives Mr. Trump all of the credit for a law-and-order crackdown he has put into effect with a speed that thrills supporters and appalls critics. With Mr. Trump, he has said, Americans are getting “support for law enforcement like we haven’t seen in many years.” He leaves out the fact that Mr. Trump’s support does not extend to him…
The second Sessions gets fired for doing his legal duty by recusing himself from the Russia probe he will become the left's new Strange New Respect martyr, but let's not forget that he always was and is a crap choice for Atty General, with the wrong priorities. https://t.co/dxCQQFIfog
— Jeff B. (@EsotericCD) May 9, 2018
Jeff Sessions has chosen to put up with whatever abuse Trump hands out because they have one big goal in common: The punishment of those who are not well-to-do white men of “good character”. He may draw back from the prosecutable crimes and corruption that surround Lord Smallgloves like flies around a day-old carcase, but he gleefully promotes every authoritarian violation of mere human decency in support of the greater revanchist dream of an America ‘returned’ to its lily-white Christian masters.
And he’s not alone:
Here's John Kelly when asked about AG Sessions' "zero tolerance" policy of prosecuting migrants who cross illegally, with the express intent of separating families. pic.twitter.com/4JqNpRXvJ8
— Roque Planas (@RoqPlanas) May 11, 2018
NotMax
How much ya wanna bet the first draft read “nappy-headed?”
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.)
I can’t begin to guess how long it’s going to take to get the stink of these people out of the executive branch once they’re all gone. It’s going to take months of fumigation. Does fumigation even eradicate political and moral corruption? Or only biological corruption?
BeezusQ
Yeah, I was thinking about the residual stink and angst that will be left after this miserable administration flees…there is not enough sage to burn, priests to exorcise, Mr. Clean Magic Erasers to easily clean up the shitstain they will leave in their toxic wake…
Jager
The science that works for drug abuse is treatment, probably didn’t mention that science.
Platonailedit
The shitstain that this traitorous racist regime will leave behind is gonna take years to clean up.
Yutsano
What do I have to do to get a few myocardial infarctions around here?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jager: Republicans don’t believe in science.
sigyn
@Jager: His reference to “science” puzzled me as well. Jeff, do you mean real-world science, as in replicable experiments with consistent results? Like, maybe, what some of those European countries have done…Portugal?
Without looking, I’m thinking Sessions is one of those guys that believes “enhanced interrogation techniques” are backed by *science*.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, if the ACLU ran the police department, the police would actually be obeying the law for a fuckin’ change.
Sessions is prime tumbrel fodder.
Procopius
@Jager:
Well if they share good practices I wish they’s share them with us. I don’t know what he’s talking about. There is not, in fact, any known practice that will reliably reduce drug addiction. Rehab programs have maybe a 5% success rate, although you’ll almost never see that mentioned in the corporate media. They can’t even reduce the availability of illegal drugs. The War on Drugs has been going on continuously since Nixon and illegal drugs are now easier to obtain and cheaper than ever before. I really wish he had said what he thinks are the “scientific practices that work.”
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
#EconomicAnxiety
jl
“a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.”
Ha ha. These guys are comedians, Actually, large numbers of Hispanics, mostly Mexicans, flowed back and forth across the border in the SW US since a few decades after the Mexican War. Depending on relative economic opportunities here versus there, demand of businesses and agriculture in SW for labor, and civil unrest in Mexico, they came here, or they were here and went back. After ‘illegal immigration’ became a thing with federal legislation, whenever the federal government decided to pay attention to it and put quotas on Mexican immigration, most of it was illegal, and when they forgot about it or lifted them, it was legal. Wasn’t until the Great Depression, and resulting worry about jobs for citizens, that the powers that be deemed there was a long term Hispanic immigration problem in the SW US. Kelly is talking complete shit. But he is a Trumpster, so what do you expect?
Edit: to be clear, the first big waves of immigration quotas were aimed at Italians, Jews, Polish, Slavs and other inferior forms of humans. Quotas on Hispanics, Mexicans in particular, came and went. It wasn’t a high priority item on the immigration agenda. Demand for workers was a factor getting the quotas for Mexicans dropped of lost in the shuffle.
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
More precisely, Republicans believe in cargo cult science.
jl
And I can’t help mentioning again, that until Kelly started talking about the legalities, what he said about Hispanics is very reminiscent of what Benjamin Franklin and other English immigrants (or second or third generation English-Americans) said about Germans back in the day.
Jager
@Procopius: I come from a long line of alcoholics, My grandfather, 1 of his two brothers, my mother, her brother and a couple of cousins, one of the two cousins drank himself to death in his mid 40’s. I worked in a drug infested business, rock radio from the 70’s until 5 years ago. My family success rate in treatment, 3 out of 6. Off the top of my head, the employees I convinced to get into a solid program, around 40%. My first wife’s dad was a hard drinking son of a bitch, in treatment 3 times, never quit. Meanest drunk I’ve ever been around. I had one guy working for me, he got clean (he drank, smoked, took pills, snorted coke for years) got his career back on track, got married to a super nice woman. After about three years he started smoking pot again, drank a beer from time to time. He went to a party one night and recreated the John Belushi exit in the lobby of a hotel. His wife was shocked, she told me after the funeral, “he was just smoking a little pot.” I rolled my eyes and walked away. I have over the years given myself every possible opportunity to really fuck myself up, for whatever the reason I don’t have the gene or the disease and I like a good buzz as much as anyone. During my mother’s family week, we were in a group session, one of the patients said to the counselor, “I only have one drink a day, I can’t be an alcoholic”. The guy’s wife said, “sure it’s only one drink, 16 ounces of Jack Daniels over ice in a giant plastic tumbler.” Funny but that’s drunk/druggie thinking for you. They need serious therapy after they get out of rehab and for the worst cases that doesn’t happen.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: No, they just reject science completely.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Ol’ Ben might have been on to something, ya get folk like Cole and me.
hervevillechaizelounge
Hate to intrude on Session’s dreams of racial holy war but I’m pretty sure studies have shown absolutely no correlation between stop and frisk and a diminishment of crime.
I was also under the impression opiate addiction was surging because of the over-prescription of pain meds but I’m too drained to google.
Republicans respect science when its findings support their worldview—otherwise those eggheads are CLEARLY on George Soros’ payroll.
Incidentally, I don’t understand why so many journalists seem baffled by Session’s groveling; republicans are all cowards at heart—that’s why they’re so attracted to authoritarians. Jesus Christ, I hate the media.
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Bilieving in cargo cult science doesn’t mean you believe in real science at all. It means you dress up your superstitions to look like science, in the belief that the sciency adornments — lab coats, PowerPoint, a solemn demeanour — have the power to turn superstitions into scientific fact.
J R in WV
Just watched a slender black young man who took his sister to prom, wearing most of his tux, nearly chocked to death by a bullnecked cop who first lifted the kid off the ground with his hands around the boy’s neck….
Ifn you choke them to death while they’re still skinny and light weight you won’t be harmed and they’ll be gone and can’t learn to be good pro criminals, right?That sounds like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III scientific policing…
Prom night in North Carolina, right? Less go out and kill some colored boys tonight for their tux rental prom night, OK Chief? Make some fine prom night videos!!!
What a bunch of despicable people have floated to the top of the police world over the 12 years, arresting people for napping while black, goin’ to prom with his kid sister while black, goin’ out for milk while black, shooting little kids for having a play gun while black. Who knows how all that would have worked out before video cameras came in cell phones?
Gvg
Sessions is also impractical. It angers me as a former foster mom. There are not enough people to take care of those kids he wants to remove from their parents. People don’t want to do that kind of work, taking care of other people’s kids, in large enough numbers to handle the kids removed for parental abuse or neglect. He is taking slots up for his spite that are despretly needed by other kids. And I am sure he is not offering funding for the increased load. But to him those kids aren’t real and I bet he never thinks of what happens to them.
Even increased funding isn’t a sure solution. It’s actually just hard to recruit good foster care. And orphanages don’t work well. G*D* is he a jackass. And good professionals will try to clean up after his mess.
Jack the Second
@jl: I tell everyone I can that my German ancestors moved here with a big mass of other Germans from the same town and settled down together in the US, where they continued to speak nothing but German and interact with only other Germans for three generations before “assimilating”. America survived it just fine.
Hell, we fought two wars against the Germans and it was just fine. The reason you can’t go in the Statue of Liberty’s arm is damage from a bomb set off by a German ter^H^H^Hsaboteur.
There’s literally nothing you can claim about immigrants today that wasn’t true about my German ancestors, unless you want to start talking race and religion. And hell, there were some papists among my German ancestors.
rikyrah
These folks are evil.
Period ?
gratuitous
Does Mr. Law and Order, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, have any insights for the proles about his stance on people who lie under oath to congressional committees?
ohthatguy
Sessions is not showing how to be best
Uncle Ebeneezer
@hervevillechaizelounge: Their love of Stop & Frisk is ironic considering S&F exposed two uncomfortable (for them) truths:
1.) Black/brown people are statistically more often targeted for searches. (but don’t you dare call it a racist policy!)
2.) White people are more likely to be illegaly carrying drugs/guns than minorities on their person.
But of course neither of these change their gusto for S&F because it’s not about justice or safety it’s about keeping those people under their fascist boots.
philpm
Notice how he gave this speech smack dab in the middle of redneck Tennessee, rather than Nashville or Memphis.
Chris Whitehead
No Justice. Just ICE.
boatboy_srq
@?BillinGlendaleCA: They do love their technology, though.
psycholinguist
When you hear “science” and “proves” together, that’s your sign. Science doesn’t prove anything, that’s a built-in limitation to the empirical nature of the enterprise.
Neldob
Their names should be made synonymous with evil, like Hitler.