Jeff Sessions Smiles a Constitutional Smile at Hecklers

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

Looking back over past Gumshoe articles, I am surprised to see how many times I vouched for Jeff Sessions as a good man. “We are so lucky to have such a person as United States Attorney General” type thing. Then, for a while I fell out of love, perhaps because of the continuing imposition of SAM’s on Jahar Tsarnaev, or the foot-dragging about the arrest of any officers of the Clinton Foundation.

Well, I’m afraid I’ve fallen back in love again. Mr Sessions was the speaker at our Federalist Society meeting in Boston today (October 29, 2018), a week before the worrisome midterm elections which are being called a “referendum for Trump.”

I can only say I was thrilled by his talk.  Never heard a government person go all intellectual before. (His home state, Alabama is a very intellectual, by the way, something northerners wouldn’t imagine.)

A large crowd gathered outside the Parker House Hotel to protest the AG’s visit, one carrying a huge sign “shut Sessions down,” and large numbers of Boston Police stood around the hotel dining room to protect him.

No sooner did the Attorney General begin his speech than a protestor – one of the lunch guests — jumped up and said in a very loud voice “I was hungry and you fed me, I was naked and you clothed me. I was imprisoned and you visited me….”

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking it was Mary Maxwell having a go, especially on the “imprisoned” bit. Well, no, it wasn’t.  It was a priest, and the cops escorted him out.

No rough handling, I assure you.  Others also jumped up, even a young man who had come in in a wheelchair. He then ran around the room – apparently the wheelchair had been a way for him to sneak in, as a non-member.

None of this led to any bad atmosphere, nor to the slightest fear  It was all so constitutional. Crikey, it was nice. And Jeff thanked them for their “remarks.”

Religious Liberty

Mr Sessions’ talk had been preceded by that of a US Attorney who reminded us that, in matters of religious freedom, the Department of Justice (the “dreaded DoJ” in my usual parlance) is often the plaintiff. That is, the government rushes in to uphold the law.

Normally we think of the dreaded DoJ in its prosecutorial role. But the DoJ was the instigator of many lawsuits against wrongdoers in racial discrimination in the 1960s, recall?

Anyway, today’s talk was on religious freedom and we learned how the DoJ elbows its way in if individuals are being deprived of their First Amendment rights.  I quote the said amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Today’s lecture was about the “free exercise” clause.  Sessions said “It’s not enough that you are allowed to worship, you have to be allowed to do what your religion says.  You have to live it. No law can prohibit the free exercise by you of the moral principles of your religion.”

My mind went straight to the Temple of Set, an approved religion in the US Army (or seemingly approved, by the employment of a chaplain) which advocates horrendous occult practices, yep, Satanism.

Jeff Sessions, apparently reading my mind, said “But of course you don’t have a right to do wrong.”

Who Wins: God or the State?

Mr Sessions said two things I have never heard said before. Remember, this is the Attorney General of the United States speaking, not some dreamy-eyed theologian.

First, he said – and ascribed it to the Framers in 1787 – that the relationship between God and man stands prior to – AND TRANSCENDS – the relationship between man and the state.

You gotta problem with the law?  Check its godliness. (Sessions did not put it quite like that. I didn’t have pen and paper “on me” so am paraphrasing.)

Second, he said that we can’t just have a bunch of people running around with no religion — every life must be lived in accord with a set of guiding principles.

Holy smoke!

By the way, he quoted an oldie — possibly Edmund Burke – as saying that the American Revolution had already occurred before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington. IT OCCURRED IN THE MINDS OF THE PEOPLE.

He also noted that the basis for its occurring had a lot to do with the Bible. And he mentioned — but presumably all members of the Federalist Society would know this — that more copies of Blackstone’s Commentaries were sold in the colonies than in Mother England.

Wow.  You see why I was going out of my tree by this point?  I felt the Constitution was alive in the room.  I felt that the Attorney General WAS the Constitution.

He also said – wait for it – “Truth-seeking must always proceed.” By your leave, I’d like to repeat that matter-of-fact sentence:  “Truth seeking must always proceed.”

Don’t Give Up

Finally, one more thing, for the record. Sessions said that as far as judicial activism goes (a bugaboo to Federalists), especially the liberalist agenda: “We were beaten down in the Seventies and Eighties, we were defeated.  We lost, and didn’t realize it could turn around again, but now it has. Isn’t that wonderful!”

A man at my table told me afterwards that he helped Sessions during the Trump campaign in 2016, and that Sessions took the young volunteers aside and counselled them to keep at it and not be discouraged.

Keep at it, Jefferson Sessions. Don’t be discouraged!

— Mary W Maxwell is the author of Prosecution for Treason, and she is not on any meds