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Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., testified on the second day of a confirmation hearing for Attorney General-designate, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (AP Photo | Cliff Owen)

Before even hearing what Sen. Cory Booker had to say on Wed., Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), dismissed his testimony about the attorney general nomination of fellow Sen. Jeff Sessions as "a disgraceful breach of custom."



Booker is the first sitting senator to testify against a colleague in a confirmation hearing. So what?



The idea that this violates some basic protocol, that one of the few black Senators - backed by members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights icon - should mind his manners is, in a word, obnoxious.

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Particularly coming from Cotton. Don't forget, he was the one who spearheaded the letter sent by 46 Republican senators to Iran's hardline leaders, to discourage them from signing a nuclear arms control pact with President Obama.



That shameful undermining of our international negotiations led to accusations of treason. Now he attacks Booker for violating "custom"?



Here in New Jersey, we were cheering him on. Booker had every reason to speak up. Sessions has a terrible resume in Alabama and should not be Attorney General. From gay rights to voting rights to police brutality, his record is one of standing against civil rights at every turn.



Now he's being appointed to defend those rights, as head of our Justice Department. Virtually every black member of Congress opposes his confirmation. Yet Booker is being told it's rude to take a stand. What's wrong with this picture?



As Booker argued, "law and order without justice is unobtainable." Our next Attorney General must also show "a more courageous empathy than Senator Sessions' record demonstrates."



He testified to the impact of civil rights enforcement on his own life, after his family benefited from the legal fight to help blacks integrate into white neighborhoods and schools. "I am literally sitting here because of people - marchers in Alabama and volunteer lawyers in New Jersey - who saw it as their affirmative duty to pursue justice," he said.



Booker strongly praised the officers who put their lives on the line for us, but noted that even the FBI director has been speaking out against racial bias in policing.



The convenient notion, embraced by Sessions, that criticizing a police department makes officers feel threatened and less inclined to do their job leaves no room for accountability. What, then, is the solution to racial profiling or brutality?



How do we stop the well-documented, excessive use of force in Newark, or dogs and Tasers against blacks in Ferguson? Or the beatings of unarmed people by police in Cleveland? Should police be immune from all scrutiny?



President Obama's Justice Department has investigated dozens of departments and entered into 11 consent decrees mandating reform - an intervention Sessions has condemned as an abuse of federal authority.



So will we see no more of these investigations? Is there anything about that, which Sen. Tom Cotton finds "disgraceful"? Or is this just about Cory Booker's manners?

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