Jim Crow raises his ugly head once again

The long ugly battle over the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as US Attorney General has finally drawn to a close with 10 Republicans crossing over in support of Lynch. Surprisingly, Mitch McConnell himself voted for her confirmation. Yet, 43 Republican senators stood pat, and one chose to skip the vote for a private fund raiser in Texas.

Of course, Ted Cruz was quick to vent his disgust with the confirmation. I'm sure this appealed to those gathered at his event in Dallas, but if he wants to win over the nation in his bid for president he better take a few tips from those Republicans who voted for her confirmation, like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. However, Graham was the only Republican senator with presidential ambitions to vote for Lynch. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio also voted against her, althoug they weren't so outspoken as Cruz.

While Republicans have gone out of their way to disclaim racial motivations, the sticking point was her support of President Obama's executive orders on immigration, which is a highly racially charged issue. Jeff Sessions, head of the Judiciary committee, stated bluntly, "we do not have to confirm someone to the highest law enforcement position in America if that someone is publicly committed to denigrating Congress." Where that came from is anyone's guess, as all she did was state her opinion that the President's actions were legal and within the limits set by the Constitution.

It was probably her tone more than anything else that upset Republican Congressmen, as she didn't bow to their questioning. Loretta Lynch has always been a woman who stands tall, with a proud father who has supported her every step of the way.

Sessions has a history of bucking Obama nominations, notably Sonia Sotomayor. It didn't seem to matter that Lynch (or Sotomayor before) was held in high regard by her peers. The Republicans made this into another proxy fight against Obama over immigration, delaying her confirmation vote over an anti-human trafficking bill that they seemed to purposely drag out as long as possible. Cruz missed that vote as well.

In the end, it was the specter of Eric Holder hanging around two more years that seemed to spur Republicans to finally vote on Lynch. Holder had said he wouldn't step down until his replacement was confirmed, and we all know how much Republican senators loath Holder. Rob Portman, a Republican senator for Ohio, made it quite clear that was his reason for voting for Lynch.

The Republicans probably decided among themselves who would cross over to get this frustrating piece of business out of the way so that they could find new ways to challenge the President. However, few thought so many GOP senators would cross over, as all Loretta Lynch needed was a simple majority. At least three Blue State Republicans up for re-election voted for Lynch, including Senator Kelly Ayotte, who was the most effusive in her support of Lynch.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

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