What Senator Pat Toomey Voted For (Another Day, Another Senatorial Insult)

A great deal of news yesterday was focused on this story:

The Senate has silenced Elizabeth Warren.

And by doing so, majority Republicans just handed the liberal firebrand a megaphone -- further elevating President Donald Trump's fiercest and most prominent critic in the Senate and turning her into a Democratic hero.

The rebuke of Warren came after the Massachusetts Democrat read a letter written 30 years ago by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., opposing the nomination of Jeff Sessions for a federal judgeship.

She was stopped by Senator Mitch McConnell who cited Senate Rule 19.

Incidentally, when she was stopped by McConnell, she was saying this of Senator Sessions:

IN 2013, SENATOR SESSIONS VOTED AGAINST REAUTHORIZING THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT, A ABOUT I WILL THAT EXPANDED THE PROTECTIONS AND SERVICES PROVIDED TO VICTIMS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. THERE'S A PIECE FROM THE BEDFORD MINUTEMAN THAT REALLY TELLS THE STORY OF HOW SEXUAL VIOLENCE IMPACTS MASSACHUSETTS. AND THIS IS WHAT IT SAID. "THEY ARE MOTHERS, DAUGHTERS, SISTERS, FATHERS, SONS, AND BROTHERS - "[Capitalization in the C-Span original.  This is at 49:24]

For the record, this is true.  Sessions did vote against reauthorizing.

The letter itself has an interesting history:

In 1986, Coretta Scott King wrote a letter in opposition to Jeff Sessions’ nomination to become a federal judge. It criticized Mr. Sessions’s record on civil rights and said that elevating him to higher office would demean the record of Mrs. King’s husband, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The letter resurfaced last month, when BuzzFeed News reported that Senator Strom Thurmond, a Republican from South Carolina who was then the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had failed to enter it into the Congressional Record. On the same day as BuzzFeed’s report, The Washington Post obtained the letter and published it online.

So I guess that King was herself silenced by another southern Senator a few decades ago.  Huh.  Go figure.  I mean what are the odds??

Anyway, after Senator Warren got herself Southern-mansplained by a proper Kentucky gentlemen, the Senate took a vote on whether she'd be "permitted" to continue.  The vote went party line with our own Senator Pat Toomey voting to stop Senator Elizabeth Warren from reading a letter from Coretta Scott King about Senator Jeff Sessions' past record on civil rights - and this took place during Black History Month.

Let me rephrase: A letter from Coretta Scott King, silenced by buried by Strom Thurmond 30 years ago only to be silenced again (with your help) during Black History Month. 

Let me ask you, Senator Toomey: don't these optics look really really bad for you?