#letlizspeak

After reading a Coretta Scott King letter on Jeff Sessions, senators decided @SenWarren was impugning. #LetLizSpeak.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rose on Tuesday and objected to a speech Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was giving in opposition to the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as attorney general.

McConnell took particular issue with Warren as she quoted a letter written by Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, when Sessions was under consideration for a federal judgeship in 1986.

McConnell invoked the little-used Rule XIX, which says that “No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.” King’s letter argues that, during Sessions’ time as a prosecutor in Alabama, “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.” It was that portion of the letter that McConnell read back to the presiding officer, arguing that it was over the line.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used a parliamentary procedure to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the middle of a speech critical of Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s pick to be the next attorney general.
McConnell claimed Warren broke the rules of decorum by quoting a letter from Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, opposing Sessions’ nomination to be a federal judge in 1986.
In the letter, King wrote that Sessions “used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens.” Among other things, Sessions attempted to “intimidate and frighten elderly black voters,” King added.

McConnell said that, by quoting Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, Warren “impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama.” He then invoked Rule 19 to force Warren to stop speaking.
The rule is intended to encourage senators to be polite to each other. But McConnell used it to squelch debate about a man nominated to be the next Attorney General of the United States.

Washington (CNN)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.

Warren cited the letter during a debate on the nomination of Sessions -- now an Alabama senator -- as Donald Trump's attorney general. Reading from King's letter to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986, Warren said: "Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge."

Republicans cried foul -- charging that Warren violated Senate rules against impugning another senator. A vote along party lines upheld that decision, turning what could have been an ordinary late-night partisan floor speech for political devotees into a national story.
"They can shut me up, but they can't change the truth," Warren later told CNN's Don Lemon.