Happy Saturday all!
I’m starting to wonder if Jeff Sessions is starting to wish that he had just stayed put in the Senate and contented himself with torturing Democrats. He’s finding out in short order that it’s much more fun to be the witch doctor than it is to be the voodoo doll. Poor baby, sucks to be him.
None of this US Attorney General shtick is going according to plan. First, the Democrats used his confirmation to gleefully get a little payback by dumping a load of shit on his head. Then, some busybody blabs that he has had conversations with the Russian Ambassador, while his boss is under investigation for colluding with the Russians. Then the flak from that little brouhaha forced Sessions to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation. Then Trump rips him a new one for recusing himself, Da Boss wanted him to hang tough, especially since his deputy who took over was an Obama holdover.
But now it appears that Sessions is channeling his inner Trump, at least as far as the judiciary is concerned. According to a STORY in Mother Jones, a measly federal court judge has just told him to go pound sand. And it’s glorious for the rest of us to hear.
A little relevant background. Since Sessions was confirmed and became AG, the Trump Justice Department has been paddlefooting away from pending actions undertaken by the Obama administration as quickly they can. In the case at hand, it involves the Baltimore police department. In 2014, following the extreme civil unrest following a scathing indictment by a Baltimore paper, and the later death of Freddie Gray while he was in police custody, the Obama Justice Department ordered a review of the Baltimore PD. The report led to a negotiation, and a consent agreement ensued. That consent decree was up for approval by the judge today. But Sessions had called for a review of all outstanding pending consent decrees to be completed within 30 days. Government lawyers asked for a delay to give them time to review the agreement. The judge was clearly not impressed with their argument. Why does that sound so familiar with the Trump Justice Department? According to the article;
But in his opinion Friday, US District Judge James Bredar said the time for reviewing the agreement had passed. "The case is no longer in a phase where any party is unilaterally entitled to reconsider the terms of the settlement; the parties are bound to each other by their prior agreement," Bredar wrote. "The time for negotiating the agreement is over. The only question now is whether the Court needs more time to consider the proposed decree. It does not."
Man, talk about a spanking! Somehow or other, I just can’t shake the feeling that the federal circuit court judges have not forgotten now President Trump’s racist smear about judge Curiel, nor of his scorn and insults against the judges and appellate court who shot down his Muslim travel bans. Fortunately for all of us, it appears that the US judiciary, both Republican and Democrat are in fact politically and ideologically unencumbered, at least where this particular dipshit administration is concerned. I just wish we could say the same thing about Neil goddamn Gorsuch.