Jeff Sessions Earns BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award for His Duplicitous RSVP for Sotomayor Confirmation Hearing

Jeff Sessions

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Ah, Supreme Court nominations. It is the best of times; it is the most frustrating of times. You see, BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite of the Week cup runneth over lately. This is mostly thanks to the hugely hypocritical way in which congressional Republicans have responded to President Obama's nomination of Federal Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court.

Newly promoted Republican top dog on the Senate Judiciary Committee Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has been very careful to avoid sounding alarmist and accusing Sotomayor of racism in his approximation of Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court. After all, he wouldn't want to remind anyone about his own failed nomination to the bench, when he praised the straight-edge version of the Ku Klux Klan and revealed the NAACP is actually an "un-American" organization (who knew?).

Instead Sessions is insisting that Sotomayor's record is so voluminous that it's going to take just about forever to study up for the confirmation hearing he's supposed to attend. Therefore, there's just no way he could possibly endorse the White House's plan of calling committee hearings by mid-July. He and his staff are just much too busy this summer to handle it. Terribly sorry.

To be fair, the confirmation hearings will probably cut into Sessions' Club Gitmo vacation this summer. But that's beside the point; on to the hypocrisy!

BuzzFlash reader Wayne Jonas Bealer kindly pointed us to this telling excerpt from a recent Washington Post story about the Sotomayor nomination:

This is an expected role reversal from four years ago, when Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated in late July by a Republican president and the GOP controlled the Senate. Republicans such as Sessions and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) called for confirmation hearings during the August recess, after just four weeks, while Democrats demanded more time and called for more documents to be released on Roberts.

Sessions also admitted to The Washington Post writer that he has no interest in asking the judge complex legal questions or talking to her about specific rulings she's made. No, he'd rather look at the big picture, you know, really "probe broadly into issues about her outlook from the bench." He even seems to have questions in mind to ask Sotomayor already, according to the article. Still, he thinks he needs nearly twice as much study time as Democrats got to consider the appointment of Roberts to head the highest court in the land.

Sessions clearly doesn't need the time. He's just being the typical Republican lawmaker, also known as a hypocritical obstructionist who will say any old thing to avoid giving Obama what he asks for. And this is why Jeff Sessions is BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite this week. I'm sure the honor is nothing compared to being the number one conservative on the Judiciary Committee (or, say, actually being confirmed by the Judiciary Committee...), but we do what we can to tell it like it is.

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.

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This is Jeff Sessions' first GOP Hypocrite award. Welcome to the club. You can see a list of all previous nominees here.