On Tuesday, Senate Democrats beat back Jeff Sessions’ filibuster of Obama’s first judicial nominee – Judge David Hamilton – by a reassuring margin of 70-29. Sessions lost ten of his fellow Republicans, including conservatives like Hatch, Cornyn, and Thune, and Hamilton will be confirmed Thursday afternoon to the Seventh Circuit.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the GOP is winning the battle for the federal courts.

Just a few short years ago, right-wing Senators denounced filibusters of President Bush’s nominees in the strongest possible language and threatened to employ the “nuclear option.” Sessions went even further – he claimed Democrats were violating the Constitution by blocking any Bush nominee (no matter how extreme). But some time after November 4, 2008, his interpretation of the Constitution must have changed dramatically.

Now a Democrat is in the White House, and – hypocrisy be damned! – Sessions is vehemently pro-filibuster and pro-obstruction. And the worst part is that he’s been successful. Judge Hamilton was nominated in March to general acclaim. He received the highest possible rating from the ABA, both his home-state Senators strongly endorsed him (including senior Senate Republican Dick Lugar), and even the head of the Indianapolis Federalist Society backed him. It doesn’t get much better than that.

But the nomination was dragged out for months by the GOP. As a result, Hamilton will become just the seventh Obama nominee to be confirmed to the federal bench. By contrast, nearly 30 such Bush nominees had been confirmed at the same point. We’re talking lifetime appointments to the highest courts in our land. President Obama obviously has his hands full, but he can’t afford to neglect this crucial aspect of his legacy.

But so far, Obama has been playing into the hands of the GOP obstructionists. He’s nominated fewer than half as many people as Bush had at this point. That has got to change, and quickly. The Obama administration has a window of just 4-5 months to return some semblance of balance to the federal bench before the mid-term elections. The choice is simple: act now to fill the judicial pipeline with highly qualified progressive nominees, or let Sessions and Bush win.

There literally is no end to the extent by which Republican politicians will lie, distort, and manufacture statements in their efforts to disrupt, deny, and destroy the Obama administration's attempts to govern. At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on 9/11 trial, the Fort Hood shooter, and terrorism, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) decided to flip-flop on the designation of the Gitmo detainees. Are they "unlawful enemy combatants" or are they "prisoners of war"?

SESSIONS: The enemy, who could of been obliterated on the battlefield on one day, but was captured instead does not then become a common American criminal. They are first a prisoner of war, once they're captured. The laws of war say, as did Lincoln and Grant, that the prisoners will not be released when the war - until the war ends. How absurb is it to say that we will release people who plan to attack us again?

Sessions seems to be saying that because these detainees were captured by the military, they have become prisoners of war and should not be released - even if found not guilty or after serving a prison term (assuming less than a life sentence) - until the "war on terror" is over (which, under a Republican point of view, will never be over). But on the other hand, SecDef Don Rumsfeld and the other fun-loving bunch of Bushites were very firm about NOT calling them "prisoners of war" because they were not supposed to get rights under the Geneva Convention (or any other form of legal writs - see waterboarding, justification of).

In fact, as one of the commenters at the TPM post notes, there was public law developed to explicitly designate any non-US citizen who was accused of supporting terrorism or acting against the United States as a terrorist as being eligible for military commissions.

I thought like you until I read this, from the Military Commissions Act: "‘(e) Geneva Conventions Not Establishing Private Right of Action- No alien unprivileged enemy belligerent subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a basis for a private right of action."
See: here.

This discussion becomes quickly complex with legal passages as a debate over whether the military tribunals should take KSM or if the federal court system has adequate jurisdiction. But it's just so interesting how Republican politicians adroitly jump back and forth as to the question of the detainees' status to how it best fits their argument of the day - are we talking about Geneva convention rights, or are we talking about the process of legal courts?

And because I want to give credit to the interesting comments over at TPM, I will close with the following observations by the commenters:

"I guess when the Right/GOP can say, print (Palin's myth filled book), promote anything without any accountability by the Beltway Press, the GOP has no need for intellectually honest consistency in their claims."

"When did Sessions stop playing the banjo?"

UPDATE: Clarified the guilt point.

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Rachel Maddow weighs in on the overt racism that the GOP and their counterparts in the media don't seem to be too concerned about expressing these days.

BECK: This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seed hatred for white people or the white culture.

LIMBAUGH: Here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman. I think he is genuinely revved up about race. You know me. I think he is genuinely angry in his heart and has been his whole life.

MALKIN: I think he is a racial opportunist.

LIMBAUGH: Look, I had a dream. I had a dream that I was a slave building a sphinx in a desert that looked like Obama.

BECK: He has a problem. He has a - this guy is, I believe, a racist.

LIMBAUGH: And after that, they‘re going to go after Oreos. Might have to put that off until Obama is out of office, but they‘ll eventually go after Oreos.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Now, the racial divide in this country didn‘t disappear when Barack Obama was elected president. And no reasonable person has expected it to. But it is somewhere between eyebrow raising and breathtaking to have such blunt, unvarnished race-baiting so forward in the national discourse right now.

And the type of race baiting to which we‘re subjected is fairly specific and fairly consistent. The argument that the president hates white people, for example, which you just heard Glenn Beck make on Fox News, that it‘s he, the president, who is racist, that argument dovetails perfectly with the arguments made against Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor and the far more genteel setting of the United States Senate.

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During CNN's State of the Union, Pat Leahy tells Jeff Sessions to stop the racial politics when he attacks Sonia Sotomayor's work for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Education Fund. Given Sessions' openly racist background, I'd say Leahy went easy on him.

KING: Senator Sessions, do you have any doubt if a Roe v. Wade- type case comes before the court that she is a vote for abortion rights?

SESSIONS: Well, it does seem that way. The organization she was involved with, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, had filed a number of very aggressive briefs in the case...

KING: Now, she says she was an advocate in those days and that was her job.

SESSIONS: Well, that's all right. But they -- I mean, she voluntarily joined and was on the board and her organization advocated that the federal Constitution required that it pay for abortions and the group also opposed any parental consent laws on abortions. So I would assume that that answer was where she will be.

KING: And...

LEAHY: You know...

KING: Go ahead.

LEAHY: ... first off, let me clear up one thing. No one in the White House suggested to me what questions I should ask or I shouldn't ask. And had they done that, I would have just hung up the phone.

I made it very clear in talking to my fellow Democrats on there, you ask any questions you want. We're not there -- it's not the White House conducting this nomination hearing, it's the United States Senate. So nobody had any restrictions on what to ask.

But I would hope that people would not think we picked a Supreme Court justice on just one issue, the issue of abortion. I voted for Supreme Court justices who I'm sure totally disagree with the idea of having abortion legal, just as I voted for some who disagree with the idea of making all abortions illegal. That should not be the issue.

And the idea of trying to say, well, you know, she was on the Puerto Rican defense thing and so we have to ask some questions about that, I hope we don't go back to the day when we used to have African- Americans up for confirmation and say, yes, but you belong to the NAACP, so, you know, we're really suspicious of you.

Come on. Stop the racial politics. This is a person...

SESSIONS: Well, come on, Pat, you...

LEAHY: No, no, no, but...

SESSION: I want to disagree on that.

LEAHY: ... that's what it comes across. That's what it comes across. It comes across...

(CROSSTALK)

SESSIONS: Make them...

LEAHY: ... that if you belong to a group that tries to help Hispanics, help them in school, help them in other things, somehow you're suspicious. The same arguments were used against Thurgood Marshall and others. I think it's wrong.

The fact is, she has had more experience on the federal bench than any other nominee, and certainly, Jeff, since you and I have been...

(CROSSTALK) SESSIONS: But, Pat, I want to correct something. No Republican leader said she was a bigot. You've overstated that. There's nothing wrong with us asking about her...

LEAHY: I was talking about Newt Gingrich.

SESSIONS: Her (INAUDIBLE) views about positions -- legal positions that she took as a member of any organization. That's a normal thing to do. And I don't think that was unfair. She said that she thought she was fairly treated. Other commentators, objective leaders, civil rights leaders have said that.

We gave our absolute best to make sure this was a fair hearing, but it had to be vigorous. We had to ask about things that people cared about, her speeches, her prior pleadings that she did and some of her decisions, which are troubling.

But, Pat, you gave us a fair hearing. I appreciate that. A lot of people felt we were pretty tight on time, but you -- when the hearing came up, we had an opportunity. And I appreciate that.

KING: Gentlemen, we're about to run out of time.

When Jeff Sessions speaks, weird things happen.

He was talking to Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, about scheduling a Senate Judiciary hearing on the disparity of the penalties for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine

Sessions said he and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., had been talking about it. "Senator Leahy and I were talking during these hearings, we're going to do that crack cocaine thing you and I have talked about before," Sessions said.

The hearing room cracked up.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., looked over at Sessions. "Please rephrase it, Senator. Please rephrase," he said.

Sessions laughed along with the crowd. "I misspoke," he clarified. "We're going to reduce the burden of penalties in some of the crack cocaine cases and make them fair."

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"Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another." -- Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama

I was struck by this key sentence in Sessions' opening remarks Monday in the Sonia Sotomayor hearings, especially because he presented it as the essential logic behind their opposition to Sotomayor -- their abiding fear that when she sits on the court, she'll be ruling against every white man who crosses her path.

We know this, according to their logic, because she is Latino -- and because she emphasizes her "empathy" for other Latinos, she will be prejudiced against any non-Latinos in her courtroom.

It is, as logic goes, about as obviously faulty as syllogisms get. Normal human empathy is not exclusive -- that is, our ability to feel empathy for one party does not necessarily exclude empathy for another party (or moreover, in Sessions' formulation, necessitate an animus to any other party). Being empathetic typically means the ability to place oneself in another person's shoes regardless of background. Identifying closely with one group at the exclusion of another typically is the antithesis of empathy.

What Sessions is describing is not empathy but rather the crude tribalism that underscores and animates most racist belief systems, and has done so since time immemorial. It is, essentially, an almost astonishing confession to being racist on Sessions' part.

And it animates not just Sessions but nearly the whole of movement conservatism and the Republican Party. If you were to poll Republican senators this week and ask them if they agreed with Sessions' "logic," I'd wager the numbers would be in the vicinity of 90 percent.

Nor is it just the senators. Look at Pat Buchanan yesterday, and Rush Limbaugh every day. The same core belief -- that empathy for Latinos, or black people, or any nonwhite, equals prejudice against whites -- indeed animates nearly the entirety of the conservative movement. I'd like to find a single conservative who would repudiate Sessions' formula. I bet I won't.

Rachel Maddow provided an ample survey of how bad it is out there last night. She was especially appalled by his column calling for Republicans to indulge in nakedly racial appeals to gain the sympathy of white voters -- though of course, for Buchanan, this is nothing particularly new. Back in 1989, he was arguing to the GOP to gradually adopt David Duke's positions at the time. And you know what? They did.

Maddow says Buchanan will be on her show to explain himself tonight. That should be entertaining. She won't need to ask Buchanan if he agrees with Sessions -- I think we already know the answer.

My oh my, I don't think the Republican Party is trying very hard to disprove the widely held notion that they are the party of privileged white men. Let's look at their perhaps unintentionally revealing tactics in questioning Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor:

First, we have Sen. Jeff "I couldn't become a federal judge because of my racist tendencies" Sessions basically telling Sotomayor that he expects her judgments to fall in line with other Puerto Ricans on the bench, because they're Puerto Rican. (h/t Think Progress)

And then Sen, Jon "We don't want no stinkin' Gazan refugees" Kyl goes off on a SEVEN minute rant to Sotomayor over his out-of-context interpretation of her "wise Latina" remark (thinking and talking points courtesy of Rush Limbaugh), despite the fact that Sotomayor had already addressed this issue a number of times.

And then Sen. Lindsey "I'm going to throw a tantrum and shut down the Senate if you get to see what we enabled" Graham treated Sotomayor with such attitude that even MSNBC's Tamron Hall and Mike Viquera termed it "patronizing".

And then to really hit home how the GOP's exposure to minorities come almost exclusively from TV sitcoms, Sen. Tom "Don't Ask, Don't Tell about my fellow GOP's sordid affairs" Coburn invokes none other than Ricky Ricardo to warn Sotomayor if she--metaphorically speaking, of course--attacked him.

Really, GOP...how do you think you're gonna attract that all-important Latino bloc of voters to your side in 2010-- with fried chicken and potato salad?

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Rachel Maddow reminds of us of why the likes of Jeff Sessions is the last person who should be taken seriously when asking someone else about racial prejudices.

MADDOW: That was Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois speaking at today‘s confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama‘s pick for the Supreme Court. It is widely assumed that Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed. She will be sworn in as the first ever Latino to serve on the Supreme Court, not to mention only the court‘s third woman.

Which means Republicans in the Senate are using the Sotomayor hearings, not so much as an opportunity to block the president‘s nominee, because they know that pretty much they can‘t, but rather to demonstrate the character of themselves in opposition which, it turns out, looks a little something like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Many of Judge Sotomayor‘s public statements suggest that she may indeed allow or even embrace decision-making based on her biases and prejudices.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Already prejudiced against one of the parties.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Allow biases and personal preferences - the wise Latina woman quote.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your wise Latina -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your wise comment -

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R-AL): Justice Sotomayor has said that she accepts that her opinions, sympathies and prejudices will affect her rulings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: If your irony-sensing ulcer is spitting bile right now, let me confirm that that last guy there was Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, accusing Sonia Sotomayor of having a prejudice problem.

That would be the same Jeff Sessions whose own nomination for a federal judgeship could not make it out of the Republican-run Judiciary Committee in 1986 after testimony that he had called the NAACP un-American and communist-inspired, had joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he found out members of the Klan smoked pot, and that he agreed with another lawyer who said a Department of Justice attorney, who was white, was a disgrace to his race because he represented African-Americans.

And those are the things that he admitted to saying and tried to defend. The charges he denied included the allegation that he told a black attorney he should, quote, “Be careful about how he talked to white folks,” and that he called a black attorney “boy.”

Now Jeff Sessions is leading the charge against Sonia Sotomayor on the grounds that she has a prejudice problem. And Sen. Sessions is doing it as part of the hearing process that is basically certain to result in Judge Sotomayor‘s confirmation, which means that Sen. Sessions, specifically, and his party generally, are using this opportunity to stand on the giant media platform that is a Supreme Court nomination to proclaim themselves to the nation as opposed to the first ever nomination of a Latino to the Supreme Court, mostly on the basis of questions about race.

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You knew Jeff Sessions wouldn't be able to hold back his true feelings about race. Jeffrey Toobin calls him out for his gender/ethnicity prejudices. Really, only white, superior men are unbiased and understand the ills caused by racism and sexism because they are a blank slate. Sure thing there Jeff.

Big Tent Democrat:

Jeff Toobin captured the entire philosophy of the Republican Party, embodied by Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, only white men are oppressed. Only white men are unbiased and without prejudice.

JEFF TOOBIN: What’s worth noting about what Jeff Sessions -- the line of questioning, was that being a white man, that’s normal. Everybody else has biases and prejudices[,] . . . but the white man, they don’t have any ethnicity, they don’t have any gender, they’re just like the normal folks, and I thought that was a little jarring.

Good on Toobin

Yes, because our history shows that white men have been oh so kind to minorities and the ladies. That's what's inside of a mind like Sessions.
And let's remember what Sessions said about Roberts.

During the John Roberts confirmation hearings, when Roberts argued against applying discrimination laws in memorandum, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was adamant in defense of judges who "respected precedent"...read on

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Sen. Jeff Sessions' opening salvo against Sonia Sotomayor today was a classic right-wing exercise in obliviousness:

I feel we've reached a fork in the road, I think, and there are stark differences. I want to be clear. I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for, an individual nominated by any president who is not fully committed to fairness and impartiality toward every person who appears before them.

And I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for, an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their personal background, gender, prejudices or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of or against parties before the court.

In my view such a philosophy is disqualified. Such an approach to judging means that the umpire calling the game is not neutral, but instead feels empowered to favor one team over another. Call it empathy, call it prejudice, or call it sympathy, but whatever it is, it's not law. In truth it's more akin to politics, and politics has no place in the courtroom.

... That is, of course, the logical flaw in the empathy standard. Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another.

Aside from the dubious logic behind that last assertion -- it is, in fact, a highly revealing formulation -- the proof is always in the pudding, isn't it? One can speak high-flown phrases about color-blindness, but the test is how one actually conducts themselves both in the courtroom and in private.

And on that count, Jeff Sessions is probably one of the last people to be flinging about accusations of prejudice. The irony is, well, rich.

Steve Benen has the details:

As a U.S. Attorney in Alabama, Sessions' most notable effort was prosecuting three civil rights workers, including a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., on trumped up charges of voter fraud.

Also during his illustrious career in Alabama, Sessions called the NAACP "un-American" because it, among other groups, "forced civil rights down the throats of people." A former career Justice Department official who worked with Sessions recalled an instance when he referred to a white attorney as a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases on behalf of African Americans. Sessions later acknowledged having made many of the controversial remarks attributed to him, but claimed to have been joking.

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Sen. Jeff Sessions attacked People for the American Way on Face the Nation Sunday morning because they are exposing the right wing attacks on Judge Sonia Sotomayor by calling into question Frank Ricci's litigious nature.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just bring up something about the firefighters'case. This was the case where she ruled against the firefighters who claimed they were discriminated against because they didn't get a
promotion up here in Connecticut because minorities did not score high enough on the same test and the whole test was thrown out. Now the Supreme Court reversed her on that case. But People For The American Way, which is a liberal group that supports Sonia Sotomayor, is calling attention to what they call Frank Ricci. He's the central character in this, his litigious and background. And they say, they point out that that he has been fired from another fire department,that he claimed discrimination because he was dyslexic. Did they have a point here?

SESSIONS: No. That's just typical of the personal attacks of People For The American Way and the hard left that is supporting this nomination. These were 18 firefighters who filed this lawsuit, not just Frank Ricci, his name was the first one on the case but 18 of
them.

And when you show empathy for one party, Bob, you unnecessarily show a bias against another group. And this is the thing -- I just want to say I think Pat and I would agree on this. We need to think through how we handle these cases today. And do it in a way that is effective legally and her opinion was rejected by the Supreme Court. It was a very important opinion.

Exposing pertinent information about a man that is going in front of Congress to testify against Sonia is not a personal attack. It's called due diligence. Maybe he should read Dahlia Lithwick's piece on Mr. Ricci: The New Haven firefighter is no stranger to employment disputes.

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This is rich. Dana Bash apparently doesn't know the difference between being a blatant racist and the trumped-up, partisan charges of racism lobbed at Sonia Sotomayor by the likes of Gingrich, Tancredo, Limbaugh and Hannity. Bash gives Jeff Sessions a softball interview where he claims he can feel Sotomayor's pain over being accused of being a racist since he's gone through the same thing himsef. Bash however, fails to fully explain just why Sessions was accused of racism.

Steve Benen has more:

Characterizing these as relative equivalents is silly. The attacks on Sotomayor are baseless and easily debunked. The charges against Sessions 23 years ago were based on extensive facts, an outrageous pattern, and were bolstered by a lengthy record.

As a U.S. Attorney in Alabama, Sessions' most notable effort was prosecuting three civil rights workers, including a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., on trumped up charges of voter fraud.

Also during his illustrious career in Alabama, Sessions called the NAACP "un-American" because it, among other groups, "forced civil rights down the throats of people." A former career Justice Department official who worked with Sessions recalled an instance when he referred to a white attorney as a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases on behalf of African Americans. Sessions later acknowledged having made many of the controversial remarks attributed to him, but claimed to have been joking.

What's more, Thomas Figures, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama and an African American, later explained that during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he "used to think they [the Klan] were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers." Sessions once again acknowledged making the remark, but once again claimed to have been kidding. Figures also remembered having heard Sessions call him "boy," and once warn him to "be careful what you say to white folks."

How is this in any way similar to the attacks on Sotomayor? It's not. The CNN report, which includes extensive quotes from poor Sessions, and precious little about why he was accused of racism in the first place, is woefully incomplete.

Transcript below the fold.

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It's Sunday and you know what that means. Bring on the Bobble Heads. The common theme of the day, the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor.

Fox News Sunday: "Sens. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass."

Meet the Press: "Sens. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.; Anne Mulcahy, chairwoman and CEO of Xerox Corp.; Jim Owens, chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Inc.; Eric Schmidt, Google Inc. chairman and CEO."

This Week: "Sens. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and John Cornyn, R-Texas; Ed Gillespie, former Bush White House counselor."

Face the Nation: "Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz."

State of the Union: "Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas; Gillespie; Sameh Shoukry, Egypt's ambassador to the U.S."

Leave us your tips and comments in the thread below. We'd be lost without them.

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Sean Hannity's been trying hard to come up with some fresh ideas that could help rejuvenate movement conservatism and the Republican Party. So the other night he ran a special "6 Ideas to Save America" that he thought would be a swell way to reclaim conservatism as the movement of ideas (which it never really was in the first place, but nevermind).

No. 6 was "Illegal immigration." This had to be interesting, since the Right's naked nativism in the 2008 campaign played a not-insignificant role in its outcome, and the GOP has been grappling with how to deal with the cold reality that their longtime immigrant-bashing ways have hurt their future electoral prospects considerably.

Hannity's idea: "E-verify," a system that would require employers to electronically verify the Social Security numbers of their employers, which would indeed reduce the ability of illegal immigrants to obtain jobs in the USA. He invited Alabama Sen. Jeff Sesssions, a Republican who's been pushing this plan, on to talk about it.

There's nothing wrong with E-verify, really, except:

A) It would only resolve a limited portion of the problem with our immigration system.

B) It would punch a big hole in our federal revenues, to the tune of about $17.3 billion.

C) It doesn't work, at least not yet.

Perhaps Hannity ought to read the Wall Street Journal, who called E-Verify "The Last Thing Employers Need":

Proponents tout E-Verify as a way to curb the hiring of illegal aliens. But the program is plagued by serious problems that include misidentifying U.S. citizens as not authorized for employment.

In 2007, DHS commissioned an independent study of E-Verify, which concluded that "the database used for verification is still not sufficiently up to date to meet the requirements for accurate verification." The error rate was almost 10% for foreign-born U.S. citizens. E-Verify's vulnerability to identity fraud is also problematic. A person using a valid Social Security card that doesn't belong to him would go undetected by the system. Mandating use of E-Verify could provide a nice boon to an already thriving document-fraud industry.

... The E-Verify mandate is already part of the House stimulus, and Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama is still hoping to add it to the Senate bill before final passage.

But simply cracking down on employers isn't the answer, especially when such efforts aren't coupled with expanding the authorized work force. The best way to reduce the hiring of illegals is to put in place a guest-worker program that gives U.S. employers better access to legal foreign workers. Most U.S. employers don't have a problem with being held accountable for the workers they hire, so long as the government is providing them with the proper tools to abide by the law. E-Verify clearly doesn't meet that standard, and until it does the program ought to remain voluntary.

Illegal immigration tends to flow and ebb based on the strength of the U.S. economy. Given the recession, it's likely to decline in the short-run, and Congress might use the lull to enact some substantive policy reforms. Work-site enforcement should be part of a broader immigration debate, not something slipped into a stimulus bill to placate protectionists.

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It was only eight days ago that Republican Senator Jeff Sessions became the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, replacing Arlen Specter. This elevated a once-fierce opponent of judicial filibusters to the head of a party that will obviously embrace the filibuster in the coming weeks.

Sessions began to backtrack on his long support for the "nuclear option" only hours later:

Sessions: Democrats were filibustering successfully quite a number of [President Bush's] nominees, and the issue became joined. So, when the Gang of 14 comes along and says, "You shouldn't filibuster much, but if you do, it should only be for extraordinary circumstances," that sort of stopped it. A lot of people think that sets a new standard for the future, although I don't know that it is a concrete standard.

I haven't reached a firm moral conviction about the issue. I do think, based on our recent history, an argument could be made that a filibuster, if you think this is an extraordinary circumstance, is legitimate. I will not say I would forever oppose it at this point.

This represents an abrupt break with his long-held position. From Kirk Victor, Ready to Do the Right Thing? The National Journal May 3, 2008:

"Bill Frist worked for a year and a half," Sessions recalled in a recent interview. "He researched the history of the Senate, he studied all that--finally got the 50 votes after prodigious effort on his part. And the Gang of 14 just runs out away from the majority leader and cuts a deal out from under him. They acted like they deserved credit for this great event, but it was because Frist had diligently worked to create the dynamic to allow that kind of settlement. I didn't appreciate it, and I still don't."

From Erin P. Billings, 'Gang' Set to Meet on Judges; Parties Circle Warily on Pair, Roll Call, May 3, 2006:

With the battle lines already being drawn, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said he believes the Senate may be back to where it was a year ago when the original Gang of 14 deal was struck. Sessions questioned Democrats' rationale for opposing the confirmation of Kavanaugh and Boyle and said he expects the Senate is headed toward an encore of the 2005 judicial showdown.

"If they want to fight this issue, we're just going to have to fight it again," Sessions said. "I think they are entitled to an up-or-down vote."

From Brian Mitchell and Sean Higgins, Filibuster Deal Will Let Some Judges In; But GOP Leaders Grumbling Investor's Business Daily May 25, 2005

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., cast Monday night's deal as a rejection of the Democrats' party-led filibusters, not the constitutional option.

"It does not reflect the majority of either party, but it does reflect, in my view, a fact that a majority of this Congress does not believe that filibusters are the way to go," he said. "There has been no waiver of the right to utilize the constitutional option."

From Mark Preston, Both Parties Whip 'Nuclear' Undecideds Roll Call April 21, 2005:

Earlier in the day, several Republican freshman Senators held a news conference expressing their support for a simple majority vote to approve judicial nominees. This show of solidarity is needed, said several Republicans, who noted that if Frist is unable to convince at least 51 Republicans to support the measure, it could damage the internal comity of the GOP Conference, several senior Senators said.

"It could have a long-term effect," said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) "This is big."

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) echoed Lott's comments, saying, "It would be detrimental to the caucus if it were to fail. I think it could be damaging to our unity, no doubt."