What would you say about a senator who calls the NAACP and the National Council of Churches "un-American" for their civil rights support? A US Attorney who called a fellow US Attorney - one who was black - "boy" in the 1980s? One who said in 1981 that the Klan was "OK" until he learned that some were "pot smokers?" A prosecutor who vigorously pursued voting fraud charges against three civil rights workers on flimsy evidence that 14 out of 1,700,000 ballots might not be kosher in counties where black get-out-the-vote drives were working, but ignored similar charge of suppression of black votes? A man so far to the right that the Republican-controlled senate of 1986 rejected him for a federal judge position, who has consistently earned "F" ratings from the NAACP on civil rights legislation, and who said a white civil rights lawyer was a "disgrace to his race" for prosecuting voting rights cases against black people?

Meet Senator Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama. Sarah Wildman has the scoop in the New Republic on how Trent Lott isn't even the most blatant racist in the GOP-controlled Senate.