Two for Tuesday: “Repeal” and “Race Disgrace”

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1. The White House, er, “repeals” its decision to remove the word “repeal” from the official White House website statement of the Obama Administration’s plans for “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” For a while, the statement had been changed to read “supports changing” instead of “repeal.” But then people started asking, and someone told.

2. Mike Allen, in his morning Playbook, offers backhanded congratulations to Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama on his promotion to ranking leader of the Judiciary Committee by pointing out his, um, less-than-stellar record on racial sensitivity, as described in a 2002 New Republic article, for which there has been no apology or stated regret. An excerpt:

Senate Democrats tracked down a career Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit reluctantly, that in a conversation between the two men Sessions had labeled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” Hebert said Sessions had claimed these groups “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” In his confirmation hearings, Sessions sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as “un-American” when “they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions” in foreign policy. Hebert testified that the young lawyer tended to “pop off” on such topics regularly, noting that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a “disgrace to his race” for litigating voting rights cases.

UPDATE: NPR’s Ken Rudin points out that Arlen Specter was one of two Republican senators to cross party lines and vote against making Sessions a judge in 1986.