Pray for Jeff Sessions

Everyone who believes in prayer should say some for attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions. Senator Sessions is experiencing the full wrath of the worst hateful lies that the modern Left and Democrat Party can conjure. Lies, half-truths, and smears have become the strategy to attack his nomination.

The age of Obama has seen the rise of bricks-and-mortar operations with deep cash reserves designed to permanently transform the nation, and the Justice Department has been ground zero. That’s why Jeff Sessions is the perfect pick for attorney general, and that’s why the liars on the Left are willing to smear this good man. They’ve served up all their familiar charges against him from their phobia smorgasbord: homo-, xeno-, Islamo- or trans-.

That’s why the NAACP decided to trespass and occupy his Senate office — an action far worse than the one that landed James O’Keefe in jail (banner photo above). Don’t expect Loretta Lynch to do anything. Who commits the crime is sometimes more important than what they did. O’Keefe played for the wrong team.

Sessions’ opponents hate that he understands them better than most in Washington, and understands the damage they have done transforming the nation in the last eight years.

Remember, this election saw people of faith — often rural Catholics and evangelicals — decide the election for Trump. Those same good people who voted in November should keep Mr. Sessions in their prayers. Feeling the full wrath of the ugly, hateful Left is an experience that leaves one assured that there are no coincidences. When someone experiences the soul-wrenching lies and distortions of the sort now blasting at Mr. Sessions, it provides a reassuring context to the larger constitutional fight in which we now find ourselves engaged.

There have always been enemies of individual dignity and freedom. The nastiness aimed at Mr. Sessions reminds us there always will be. The task at hand is to beat them.

Consider Deval Patrick. Mr. Patrick formerly served as assistant attorney general for Civil Rights at the Justice Department, an NAACP lawyer, and of course, governor of Massachusetts. Mr. Patrick sent this disgraceful letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee seeking to derail the Sessions nomination.

It claimed that when Mr. Sessions prosecuted a case of brazen voter fraud, he actually engaged in voter intimidation.

Sound familiar? It’s part of a larger campaign to preserve vulnerabilities in the American system of elections. It’s why they oppose voter ID and efforts to clean voter rolls. It’s why they are anxious to get felons to the ballot box. It’s why they hate Mr. Sessions — he understands the corrosive evil of voter fraud and has been willing to fight it.

The letter omits key facts and distorts others.

Deval Patrick

Mr. Patrick makes the implausible claim that the “theory of Mr. Sessions’ case was that it was a federal crime for someone to help someone else vote or to advise them how to vote.” Mr. Patrick must not have read the actual indictment very carefully in the Alabama case from the 1980s. It clearly alleged that fraudulent absentee ballots were being mailed and that alleged political operatives were casting multiple ballots in the names of absentee voters.

But Patrick’s letter is standard procedure — reframe efforts to stop voter fraud as violations of civil rights. They oppose Jeff Sessions for attorney general because he fights voter fraud, period.

Perhaps Mr. Patrick holds the view that, since the absentee voters and the ballot harvesters were of the same race, no crime occurred because the harvesters knew who the voters should (or would) support.  While this excuse might seem outlandish to sensible people, it was an excuse which I encountered frequently while I investigated these types of cases at the Department of Justice Voting Section.

It is not an excuse with a basis in law. Unfortunately, it is an excuse many believe.

I wrote in my book Injustice about this sort of absentee ballot fraud and Patrick’s reaction to it:

This argument captures the rotted evolution of the civil rights movement — any malfeasance that can be connected to Jim Crow, no matter how tenuously, should be excused. If hundreds of black voters are robbed of their vote while [harvester] Patsy Roby marks their ballot, we should avert our gaze because the deed helps blacks get elected.

If Nikki Halbert has her vote stolen by the forgery of [harvester] Carrie Kate Windham, we should temper our outrage, since the deed will help to elect a black sheriff.

If masses of voters surrender their hard-won rights to the notary’s knock at the door, why complain? The machine will elect black candidates to office, and the dreams of oppressed forefathers provide absolution for the notary’s crimes.

I have sent the Judiciary Committee a letter replying to Mr. Patrick:

The right to vote means the right to vote of the voter, not the right of a political machine to force assistance on voters or mark the ballot for them without the voter’s input. And it certainly does not mean the right to alter the ballot of a voter against the will of the voter, which was the central charge brought by Mr. Sessions in the Perry County case.

Mr. Sessions should be praised for pressing these prosecutions — not criticized.

Meanwhile, reporters like Kirsten West Savali froth forth racial paranoia about Jeff Sessions that approaches farce. She and others continue to cite foes of Sessions, such as Gerry Hebert, who was found by federal courts to exaggerate claims of racial discrimination.

This is the country we now inherit — where smears, lies and hatred are the new currency of the kingdom. Jeff Sessions could use some prayers to give him strength from everyone who loves and practices these falsehoods.