ICYMI: Sen. Cruz Op-Ed in Politico: 'The Case for Jeff Sessions'
America needs an attorney general who will enforce the law
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) penned the following op-ed for Politico, outlining the case for confirming Sen. Jeff Sessions, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general.
An excerpt of the Senator's op-ed is below. Full article may be viewed here.
The Case for Jeff Sessions
Barack Obama's Justice Department is out of control. America needs an attorney general who will enforce the law.
Politico
By: Sen. Ted Cruz
January 9, 2017
Senator Jeff Sessions’ nomination to be the 84th attorney general of the United States is fantastic news for those who revere the rule of law. For the past four years, I have had the pleasure of serving alongside Sessions in the Senate, where we worked closely together on both the Judiciary and Armed Services Committees. Having witnessed his integrity and passion for law enforcement firsthand, I have confidence that Sessions will be a superb attorney general.
Senator Sessions’ credentials are impressive. A former U.S. attorney and Alabama attorney general, he has ably represented the citizens of Alabama on Capitol Hill for the past 20 years, specializing in law-enforcement issues and earning tremendous respect among the hardworking men and women in blue across our great land. Few people could be considered more qualified than Sessions for the daunting task of leading our country’s largest and most influential law-enforcement agency. But Sessions’ impressive résumé alone is not why I endorse him.
I support Senator Sessions for attorney general for the very reason that many vehemently oppose him. Namely, I—and they—know that Sessions will enforce the law. The fact that this is controversial tells you all you need to know about the sorry intellectual state of our country’s elites, especially in the legal academy and federal bureaucracies. Senator Sessions believes in the foundational idea that we are governed by objectively knowable, written rules, and that we should not be subject to the interpretive whims of unelected, power-hungry bureaucrats. Sessions will instill this belief at the Department of Justice.
That’s a welcome change from the past eight years.
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I strongly encourage my colleagues to embrace Senator Sessions as attorney general. Indeed, finding a candidate whose temperament and integrity are more suited to the job would be difficult, even if you disagree with him on what the substance of the law should be.
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Trying to taint Senator Sessions with any past votes should be an irrelevant exercise, given that he is being considered for a post that requires him to enforce existing laws, whether he supported their passage or not. Sessions undoubtedly has the integrity to enforce laws he doesn’t personally agree with and to stay within proper bounds on laws he does agree with.
But again, that’s actually what scares some people about an Attorney General Jeff Sessions: He’s a law-and-order devotee about to enter a lawless DOJ. If I were them—if I wanted to keep DOJ as a partisan agency unbound by law—I’d be scared, too.
Full article may be viewed here.
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