Jeff Sessions [strike]named[/strike] Trump's pick for AG

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:Where is the satisfaction if I just tell you that you were throwing shade when you really weren't? You'd know I was faking it. And I'd know you were faking it. I think it's better we hold each other to a higher standard.

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:I'm not sure where the confusion is so I'm going to assume it's with the phrase "throwing shade." Here it is according to urban dictionary. For what it's worth.

to talk trash about a friend or aquaintance, to publicly denounce or disrespect. When throwing shade it's immediately obvious to on-lookers that the thrower, and not the throwee, is the bitcy, uncool one

Now comes a powerful character witness to take on the racism slander. He is Donald Watkins, a prominent African-American attorney from Alabama. The Washington Times reports:

Donald V. Watkins said he first encountered Mr. Sessions during their days at law school, when the future senator was the first white student to ask him to join a campus organization — the Young Republicans.

Mr. Watkins declined, but said his interactions with Mr. Sessions throughout the years have convinced him the man President-elect Donald Trump wants to make the next U.S. attorney general is a good man.

“Jeff was a conservative then, as he is now, but he was NOT a racist,” Mr. Watkins wrote in a Facebook post in May, which he reposted Friday afternoon, just hours after Mr. Trump announced Mr. Sessions as his pick.

Mr. Watkins said he wished he’d come forward in 1986, when Mr. Sessions had been nominated to be a federal judge. His appointment was derailed by Senate Democrats, including then-Sen. Joseph R. Biden and current Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary, who said Mr. Sessions had shown racist tendencies. The late Sen. Arlen Specter, who at the time was a Republican but later switched parties, also joined in opposing Mr. Sessions.

A few years later, Mr. Watkins said he ran into Mr. Sessions in Birmingham and said he was surprised Mr. Sessions didn’t call him as a witness.

“At the end of our conversation, I told Jeff that I had failed him and myself. I should have volunteered to stand by his side and tell the story of his true character at his confirmation hearing. The fact that I did not rise on my own to defend Jeff’s good name and character haunted me for years. I promised Jeff that I would never stand idly by and allow another good and decent person endure a similar character assassination if it was within my power to stop it,” Mr. Watkins writes.

Keep in mind that Watkins’ law school encounters with Jeff Sessions took place in Alabama in the early 1970s. Those of a certain age will appreciate the sterling character of a man who would reach out to a black student in that place during that time, and will understand the lasting impression it made on Watkins.