Darker Than a Paper Bag? Top Justice Official Thinks You're "Filth"

I honestly don't know why any repug these days is shying away from just screaming "NIGGER!" non-stop.

Charlie Pierce:

We're going to have to make a semi-regular daily feature on the doings of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, presently the Attorney General and the only man in America who thinks Birth of a Nation was a documentary. On Tuesday, he visited the border and, by way of encouraging the law-enforcement types gathered there, according to Tiger Beat On The Potomac, these were his prepared remarks:

"Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings," he said. "It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth."

Nobody I know is in favor of depravity and violence—at least outside the studios of Fox News, anyway—nor is anyone I know in favor of machete attacks and/or beheadings, although some of our staunch allies elsewhere are rather high on the latter. But when you've got the attorney general of the United States planning to refer to other human beings, no matter how criminal they are, as "filth," you've got the Department of Justice descending into the status of a Breitbart comment thread, and that is never good for anyone. When it came time for the speech, Sessions ultimately did not say "filth" out loud, but the Department of Justice doubled down on the word in a statement.

SNIP

What matters to Sessions is putting lots of "brown people" in cells. He doesn't care how many or where. Maybe it's through his idiotic revival of the "war" on drugs. Maybe it's through these E-Z-Bake cook'em-and-eat'em immigration courts he's establishing at the border. Doesn't matter. To Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, America means locking up "brown people." Period.

Nancy LeTourneau at Political Animal points out that Sessions has escalated the racist rhetoric from "illegal immigrants" to "criminal aliens" and writes:

What Sessions doesn’t want the American public to know is that the link between undocumented immigrants and violent crime is a myth. His lies are meant to fear-monger and provide cover for his racist policies.

SNIP

It would be disgraceful coming from any American — much less the Attorney General. Personally, I take this kind of thing as seriously as Sessions lying to Congress during his confirmation hearing. In a world that acknowledged equal justice for all, he would be out of a job for this speech alone.