Sessions’ session

Unless you find a white supremacist’s indignant defense of his honor interesting, Attorney General Sessions’ appearance yesterday at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing offered little:Sessions was keen to reject allegations of collusion with the Russians but refused to discuss the substance of his conversations with the President about the Russia investigation, claiming they might be subject to a future claim of executive privilege. Mostly he just doesn’t remember anything about his contacts with the Russians:

His memory problems aside, I am inclined to believe Sessions’ denial of collusion, which is for amateurs. No collusion was necessary among the pros. As candidate and president, Trump has generally agreed with Vladimir Putin. They see the world through the same lenses: power is something they wield mainly to enhance their own standing, they think of themselves and their countries as superior to the rest of the world, and they disdain knowledge and expertise. Putin and Trump share worldviews and objectives: to make themselves important and to milk their governments for as much loot as possible.

Neither Trump nor Sessions has ever shown the slightest concern about Russian interference in the US election. Why should they? As with Wikileaks, they were all for it–Trump remember invited the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails–so long as it wasn’t against them. Fortunately the Senate is now moving to block Trump from removing the sanctions on Russia without Congressional approval. If the Russians ever take up the cudgels against him, Trump will no doubt get very concerned about their interference in the electoral process. Until then, they are his BFF.

A serious Attorney General would be anxious to see the Russia probe uncover the truth and even help it to do so. Sessions is not a serious Attorney General. He is far more concerned with a 10% bump up in US murders in 2015 than with the sharp decline in the murder rate for more than four decades. He is still worrying about enforcing marijuana prohibition, when most states have already legalized marijuana in some form. He has also been busy making sure that legal settlements can’t support good causes and failing to get US attorneys appointed, to replace the ones Trump summarily dismissed.

Sessions is correct: his honor is being impugned. Some of us view him and his support for a president who doesn’t hide his affection for autocrats and disdain for democracy as dishonorable. Not so much to him as to the nation. These are people who make America small again: they return it to its not so distant racist past, when the Ku Klux Klan ruled many states, miscegenation was prohibited in the South, and blacks were treated as third class citizens (other minorities were second) not entitled to the education and public accommodations afforded to others. I bet Sessions fondly remembers all of that.