As such, this will be my last post at Sack Sessions. At the end of the month, I’ll cancel the hosting and redirect the domain to Left in Alabama.

To all those who were kind enough to read Sack Sessions, thanks for the support. It was fun while it lasted.

-Trent

Update (June 18): I’ve been asked to join the team over at Left in Alabama, so that’s where y’all can find me in the future. I still look forward to blogging for our side, I just no longer felt it was practical to devote an entire blog to the US Senate race. And trust me, after a few months, it got a little boring writing about nothing but Jeff Sessions.

Also, thanks for all the kind remarks and thoughtful discussion in the comments.

Despite some sharp questioning of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in April about the still unexplained firing of several federal prosecutors, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions voted with most of his fellow Republicans in blocking a no-confidence vote in the U.S. Senate yesterday.Sessions, himself a former U.S. attorney in Mobile who seemed as if he was still acutely aware of the need for a Department of Justice independent of political influence, also seemed thoroughly disgusted with Gonzales’ evasions, prevarications and vacant memory as he grilled the attorney general.

This is how the Associated Press quoted Sessions on April 20:

“There are some problems that [Gonzales] hasn’t handled well, and it might just be best if he came to a conclusion that the department is better served if he’s not there.”

But Sessions did not join the seven Republicans, who were also on the record that Gonzales should go, in voting to proceed to a no-conference vote, which would have taken 60 votes, but got only 53.

[…]

Sessions has a 60 percent approval rating heading into his reelection campaign next year, where there is talk that Democratic Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries Ron Sparks and state Sen. Vivian Figures, a Mobile Democrat, are considering running against him.

Sparks would probably have a real shot at Sessions if he is able to raise enough money to offset the incumbent senator’s formidable warchest, but he has said he does not want to go through a primary contest and thus might cede the Democratic nomination to Figures, who would be a prohibitive long-shot to oust Sessions if she got the nomination.

If Alabama Democrats are serious about unseating Sessions, somebody needs to go have a long, heart-to-heart talk with Sen. Figures.

We must retool the current system of commodity payments in the federal farm bill in order to expand conservation programs suggested in the recent story on drought.

Bread for the World, an organization that I serve as a volunteer, is working with Congress on the reauthorization of the farm bill. The farm bill, introduced during the Great Depression to assist family farmers and rural Americans, has morphed into an unfair and outdated piece of legislation that gets reauthorized every five years mostly by rubber stamp. Broad reform is long overdue.

The current farm bill favors the largest commercial farms in the form of generous commodity payments, while family farmers receive little or no government assistance. Less than one-third of Alabama farmers are eligible for commodity (wheat, corn, rice, soybeans and cotton) payments, while the top 10 percent of farms in our state receive 77 percent of Alabama’s federal commodity payments. This system no longer serves those the original legislation intended to help during a difficult period in our nation.

Now, as Alabama farmers suffer from this disastrous drought, taxpayers’ dollars going to large producers of commodity crops could be redirected to alternative supports such as disaster payments and conservation programs like the captured water reservoirs being proposed by U.S. Rep. Terry Everett of Alabama. It is time we take back the farm bill from large, commercial farms and give assistance to the family farmers and rural Alabamians who need the help the most.

In a state with some of the poorest rural counties in the country, U.S. Sens. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions of Alabama should support the state’s family farmers and take the lead in making broad reforms to the 2007 farm bill.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales no longer holds the confidence of the Senate and of the American people.

Jeff Sessions just voted against the resolution, effectively condoning Gonzales’ mismanagement of the Justice Department.

As a reminder, here’s what Sessions voted in favor of continuing:

The immigration compromise collapsed on the floor of the Senate Thursday night. Many of its hard-line foes are celebrating, but their glee is vindictive and hollow. They have blocked one avenue to an immigration overhaul while offering nothing better, thwarting bipartisanship to satisfy their reflexive loathing for amnesty, which they define as anything that helps illegal immigrants get right with the law.

The tragedy is that the compromise bill was written to bring these restrictionists along, with punitive, detestable provisions that many supporters of comprehensive reform agreed to endorse for the sake of a “grand bargain.” The bill was badly flawed but fixable, as long as there was the possibility of leadership and courage in Congress.

But obstruction happened. Republican amendments, designed to shred the compromise, happened.

Jeff Sessions wanted to deprive legalized immigrants — yes, legal residents — of the earned income tax credit, a path out of poverty for millions.

[…]

The anti-immigrant hard-core — no amnesty today, no amnesty tomorrow, no amnesty forever — must not be allowed to hold the nation hostage. Like nativists of generations past, they think the country is being Latinized, and they fear it. The country is changing, but the way it always has, absorbing newcomers, shaping and being shaped by them, inexorably turning them, their children and grandchildren into Americans. Globalization has accelerated and complicated that upheaval, and decades of federal dithering have made things messy and chaotic.

Restoring order will be wrenchingly difficult, but it must be done. The country cannot leave an unlawful, chaotic system to fester, with legal immigration channels clogged, families split apart, crops rotting and state and local governments dreaming up ways to punish 12 million people whose identities are unknown to the authorities, and who aren’t leaving, no matter what Congress does. We cannot simply fortify a wall while continuing to extract cheap labor from cowering workers who risk death to get here. Inaction on immigration carries a brutally high price, but those on the phobic right are willing to mortgage their country’s future to pay it.

We’re trying to watch the War Czar’s confirmation hearing (since when do you confirm a czar?), but for the last fifteen or twenty minutes it’s been Hillary Clinton monologuing on Iraq, then saying “and I hope you’d agree, General.”

So what we know so far is that General Lute thought the troop surge wouldn’t work, and now he still thinks that but he has to say that it might work.

Also we learned this, from Jeff Sessions: “Iraq has 1/9th as many prison beds as they do in my home state of Alabama.” This is not particularly surprising, but terrifying nonetheless. And it’s a fun new yardstick for progress: Iraq will not be free until they have just as many brown people locked up as we do.

Incumbent: Jeff Sessions (first elected in 1996)

CQPolitics.com Rating: Republican Favored

The conservative views that predominate in this Deep South state have enabled Republicans — including Sessions — to predominate in most recent statewide elections.

Sessions enters his campaign for a third term coming off a 2002 victory by a solid 19 percentage-point margin over Democratic state Auditor Susan Parker. He has ample funds to start with, reporting nearly $1.9 million cash on hand as of March 31 after raising more than $550,000 in the first three months of 2007.

But Democrats point out that Sessions won a much closer race in 1996 for his first term. Some, emboldened by Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean’s “50 State Strategy” to make inroads in states that have shifted strongly to the GOP, hope to put more heat on Sessions this time.

State Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks is considering a run for the seat and has generated substantial buzz as a formidable opponent to Sessions. State Sen. Vivian Davis also is pondering the race.

But Rep. Artur Davis, who has gotten some touts as a young rising star among African-American House Democrats, announced earlier this year that he would not challenge Sessions. — Joanna Anderson