Heller should oppose nominees

By Jeff Schauer, Las Vegas

Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016 | 2 a.m.

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Sen. Jeff Sessions to be attorney general and Rep. Mike Pompeo to direct the CIA. Both of these men are unfit for their respective positions.

Sessions was rejected by his Republican colleagues for a judgeship because of his attacks on civil rights organizations and because of his racist remarks. He has opposed immigration reform and has dismissed the Voting Rights Act. He is, in other words, out of step with the needs of our country, particularly in the wake of an election defined by Trump’s racism.

Pompeo spent his time in Congress pursuing the nonscandal of Benghazi, demonstrating ignorance of diplomatic and national security structures, and wildly and dangerously misplaced priorities. He has supported the National Security Agency’s domestic spying programs, about which intelligence officials lied to senators, and advocated the death sentence for whistleblower Edward Snowden, who brought these pernicious activities to the attention of the public.

Pompeo has made Islamophobic comments and opposed exposing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to the American justice system, which amounts to a vote of nonconfidence in the constitutional structure and justice system he ultimately would serve.

Nevada Sen. Dean Heller will soon have to decide where he stands on these and other nominees. Nevadans are by turns liberal and libertarian but share concern for civil liberties and individual rights. Sessions’ racism and contempt for voting rights on the one hand and Pompeo’s support for infringements of privacy rights and his attacks on whistleblowers fly in the face of this commitment.

Pompeo’s and Sessions’ support of a campaign full of racist ideals will offend Nevadans of diverse political stripes. Heller should adamantly oppose both of these nominees in the Senate and in public.