Political Quotes

“on another, less happy, matter, this afternoon the Senate will need to go through a rare procedure to discharge a nomination from the Judiciary Committee: Ms. Vanita Gupta to serve as Associate Attorney General. The daughter of immigrants from India, Ms. Gupta is the first civil rights attorney and the first woman of color to ever be nominated for Associate Attorney General, the third ranking official at the Department of Justice. Her public track record is nothing short of exemplary. In her very first case after law school, Ms. Gupta won the release of several African Americans who had been wrongly convicted by all-White juries in Texas, clients who eventually won a pardon from Texas Governor Rick Perry. She continued her work at the ACLU, where she launched a bipartisan criminal justice reform effort, before going on to lead the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department under President Obama. Despite her sterling credentials, some of my Republican colleagues on the Judiciary Committee would have you believe that Ms. Gupta is some hair-raising, leftwing radical. In her hearing, Ms. Gupta was unfortunately subjected to a mind-numbingly repetitious line of questions about whether or not she supports the police or wants to decriminalize all drugs. A conservative judicial organization launched a national ad campaign to smear her nomination. It was disgraceful.…”