user: Q: How Jeff Sessions went from fringe figure to mainstream Republican

President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he will nominate Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to run the Justice Department. A few years ago, this would have a startling pick.

Sessions has always been one of the most conservative senators in the GOP, a fringe figure perhaps best known for his hard-line views on immigration. Now, if confirmed as attorney general, he will become the nation’s top law-enforcement officer.

The mainstreaming of Sessions reflects just how much politics has changed of late. His rise to prominence has as much to do with Trump as it does with his party’s recent swerves to the right.

When he was first elected to the Senate in 1997, Sessions was one of the nation’s five most hard-line Republican senators, along with James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). But ever since the tea party shook up Congress in 2010, Sessions has found himself moving closer to the center of the GOP.

His own views haven’t softened. Rather, his colleagues are getting more extreme.

This chart shows the evolution of the Republican and Democratic members of the Senate over the past century using a common measure of political polarization. Both parties have been pulling away from each other in recent decades. But during the past five years, the Republican Party took a particularly sharp right turn.

This scoring system, which was developed by a group of political scientists, assigns each lawmaker a number depending on how polarized their voting habits are. The red zone on the chart shows the range of scores for Republican senators over time, while the blue zone on the chart shows the range of scores for Democratic senators. Higher scores indicate more conservative voting patterns, while lower scores indicate more liberal voting patterns.

Republicans who lie above the red zone — like Sessions in his early career — are more conservative than 90 percent of their fellow party members. Likewise, Democrats who lie below the blue zone are more liberal than 90 percent of other Democrats. In the 1940s, there was considerable overlap between Democrats and Republicans, but since the 1980s, they have grown further and further apart.

Today, Sessions is still more conservative than about three-quarters of his GOP colleagues, but he’s no longer an outlier. He’s been flanked by people like Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

During his time in the Senate, Sessions made a name for himself as an advocate for tougher immigration laws. He has repeatedly lobbied for increased security on the Mexican border, wants to reduce legal immigration, and claims that there is “a clear nexus between immigration and terrorism.”

President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he plans to nominate Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as attorney general. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

On one hand, this nomination makes a lot of sense for Trump. Sessions was the first sitting senator to endorse Trump, and his border-hawk views align well with the Trump brand. He has been a close adviser to the campaign, a loyal surrogate and serves as vice chairman of Trump’s transition team. It was widely expected that Sessions would be rewarded with some kind of appointment.

On the other hand, Sessions carries a lot of racial baggage. As my colleagues have pointed out, Sessions was once denied a federal judgeship over allegations of racist behavior, and he has gone on record opposing the Voting Rights Act. Yet, if he is confirmed, Sessions will be the nation’s chief officer in charge of protecting civil rights and voting rights. That would be, well, interesting.

A: Today, Sessions is still more conservative than about three-quarters of his GOP colleagues, but he’s no longer an outlier.


Q: Anderson Cooper Boots 'Barbie Mom' Sarah Burge Off Show -- 'You're Dreadful'

Anderson Cooper RIPS 'Barbie Mom' 'You're Dreadful'

... HATES HER ... and made sure she knew it this week when he kicked her plastic ass off his talk show.

Cooper was trying his best to understand why the hell

-- aka the Human Barbie -- would want to Botox her 15-year-old daughter to get her to sweat less during beauty pageants.

When Burge started blathering on with some stupid explanation, Coop cut her off ... saying, "I gotta be honest, I gotta just stop. I'm sorry. I try to be really polite to all my guests, but I just think you're dreadful."

He added, "I honestly don't want to talk to you anymore."

Anderson later released a video statement saying, "I regret having her on in the first place and I regret that that's how things ended.

A: Anderson Cooper hates Barbie Mom ... HATES HER ... and made sure she knew it this week when he kicked her plastic ass off his talk show. Cooper was trying…


Q: Hedge fund chief gives Harvard $150M for undergrad scholarships, aid

updated 11:00 AM EST, Thu February 20, 2014

(CNN) -- It's the largest gift in the nearly 400-year history of Harvard College, a nine-figure sum aimed at giving hundreds of students who win admission "against long odds" the means to attend.

The $150 million donation from hedge-fund chieftain Ken Griffin, class of '89, will fund full scholarships for 200 Harvard undergraduates and provide matching funds for another 600, the university announced Wednesday.

"It's about having a chance to play a part in helping to ensure the next generation of leaders in America has access to the finest institution in the world," said Griffin, who founded the Chicago-based Citadel fund a year after graduating with a bachelor's degree in economics.

Griffin told CNN the scholarships are aimed at students who "have done really, really well in their classwork against long odds. This is their chance to go to America's greatest college."

Harvard tuition currently runs just under $39,000 a year, with total costs -- room, board and fees -- running more than $56,000. With an endowment of more than $32 billion, the famed Cambridge, Massachusetts, school isn't hurting for money and has been ramping up its financial aid in recent years.

The average student gets about $12,000 a year in aid. About 20% of the college's 6,700 undergrads come from families that earn less than $65,000 a year. They pay no expenses.

Griffin, who already has established one Harvard scholarship, said the school's commitment to "need-blind" admissions and equality of opportunity inspired his contribution.

"I think for me, as a Harvard alumnus who really did benefit tremendously from a Harvard experience, this is as a chance for me to really support a set of values and beliefs that I believe in strongly," he said.

Harvard College is the undergraduate arm of Harvard University.

"Ken Griffin's extraordinary philanthropy is opening Harvard's gates wider to the most talented students in the world, no matter their economic circumstances," Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust said in a statement announcing the gift. The scholarships Griffin's donation will fund mean "Harvard is more accessible than ever before," she said.

Also included in the gift is $10 million for an endowed professorship in business administration at the Harvard Business School, which will be named for Griffin. The university's financial aid office will also bear his name, the school announced.

A:

assistant: A $150 million gift aims to give students who win admission to Harvard College "against long odds" the means to attend.