At today's confirmation hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse asked Sen. Jeff Sessions if "secular" employees has "just as good a claim to understanding the truth as a person who is religious," and Sessions said, "Well, I'm not sure."
He said this with a creepy smile on his face.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse questioned Sen. Sessions quite severely on the treatment career attorneys, who have been the subject of intense criticisms from right wing groups.
Whitehouse asked, "Will you support the career attorneys against the pressure from these right wing organizations seeking to "wash them out like filth," to paraphrase the Heritage Foundation?"
(Hans A. von Spakovsky wrote this at Heritage: "Hercules had to divert two rivers to wash out the filth, and it will take a similarly massive effort at Justice to wash out the politics and progressive liberal activism that infests the agency from top to bottom.")
Sen. Sessions responded that many employees at the DOJ were "career professionals" and he gives them "the highest respect."
Sen. Whitehouse asked, "Does a secular attorney have anything to fear from an Attorney General Sessions and Department of Justice?"
Sen. Sessions has a long history of religious zealotry.
The National Law Review Journal (reg. required) reported that Sen. Sessions didn't believe Justice Sonia Sotomayor was religious enough and said, “She said there is no objectivity, just a series of perspectives.” He suggested that the problem may be that Sotomayor [sic] and other judges aren’t sufficiently religious: “If you have secularization in the world and don’t believe
Justice Sotomayor is a Roman Catholic.
Sen. Sessions responded, "Well, no and I use that word in the 90,000-foot level."
He continued, "We are not a theocracy. Nobody should be required to believe anything...and not demand any kind of religious test for holding office."
Sen. Whitehouse pushed on against Sen. Sessions rabid religious views and asked, "And a secular person has just as good a claim to understanding the truth as a person who is religious, correct?"
Sen. Sessions oddly replied, "Well, I'm not sure. in what method - is it less objectively committed to --
Sen. Whitehouse, "In the methods and an attorney would bring to bear -
Sen. Sessions, "Well, let me just say, we're going to treat anybody with different views fairly and objectively."
It was quite striking that Sen. Sessions didn't just say, 'of course, a secular person can understand the truth.'
"What method" seems to mean to me that secular employees can only be trusted to understand the truth in certain conditions.
What those conditions are is unknown.
Maybe they are in the new and improved Trump Bible, that have replaced the Gideon bibles in all Trump Hotels?
