Jeff Sessions Addresses Sheriffs:
Media, loon Democrats Imply He’s a Racist for
Mentioning ‘Anglo-American’ Legal Tradition
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions addressed the National Sheriffs’ Association on combating the opioid epidemic Monday, only for the left to make headlines from his calling sheriffs “a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.”
As part of his ongoing speaking tour about the raging crisis of opioid addiction that is now one of America’s leading causes of death, Sessions joined the Sheriffs’ Association’s Winter Legislative and Technology Conference at Washington, DC’s J.W. Marriott hotel. With more than 40,000 Americans succumbing to opioid overdose in 2016 alone, efforts to bring the demographic scale carnage under control are a top priority in Sessions’s Department of Justice (DOJ).
Sessions spoke to the sheriffs and other law enforcement officials for around ten minutes, focusing on his common themes of the toll of drug abuse, its links to violent crime, and the need to reinforce the rule of law to bring rising crime rates under control. In his prepared remarks, for example, he said:
But as we all know, violent crime statistics and drug overdose rates are not numbers — we’re talking about moms, dads, daughters, spouses, friends, and neighbors.
We will not stand by and watch violence and addiction rise. Plain and simple, we will not allow the progress made by our women and men in blue over the past two decades to simply slip through our fingers. We will not cede one community, one block, or one street corner to violent thugs or poison peddlers. We will protect the poor as well as the rich.
This year alone, Sessions has delivered similar addresses on the importance of the fight against opioids to the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the hard-hit Western District of Kentucky and Western District of Pennsylvania, the Middle District of Florida, the graduating class of new agents for the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Department of Defense’s U.S. Southern Command.
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But instead of Sessions’ consistent message on the opioid crisis, the left-leaning media clamped onto an apparently off-the-cuff compliment he paid to the sheriff’s in the audience, referencing the rich tradition of the sheriff.
The concept of a “sheriff” dates back more than 1000 years to pre-Norman Conquest Anglo-Saxon England where the “shire reeve” (the origin of the term sheriff) was a representative the King who operated with great independence to do justice at the local level. The sheriff as the enforcement wing of a local court is a unique feature of the English common law tradition from which our own legal system almost entirely derives.
Only countries like the United States, who inherit their “common law” legal systems from that of England, keep the tradition of the sheriff alive. Consequentially, outside of the United Kingdom and America, there are sheriffs in the former British Colonies of Australia, Nigeria, Canada, South Africa, and even India, where the office survives as a ceremonial position of honor.
In America, sheriffs are uniquely prominent elected officials responsible for virtually all state and local courts’ enforcement and, outside of major cities, much of the policing. Honoring these modern American inheritors of this tradition, Sessions said:
I want to thank every sheriff in America. Since our founding, the independently elected sheriff has been the people’s protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and accountable to people through the elected process.The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement. We must never erode this historic office.
The political left and their allies in the press collectively stood aghast at Sessions daring utter these words.
CNN started the ball rolling, leading with “Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday brought up sheriffs’ “Anglo-American heritage.'”
If CNN’s implication that Sessions’ use of the term “Anglo-American heritage” was newsworthy because it indicated he was a racist was unclear, the network’s political fellow-travelers in elected office and the media quickly dispelled any confusion. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), apparently unfamiliar with hearing a term like “Anglo-American heritage,” quickly called it a “dog whistle” – a term for coded racist language:
Media, loon Democrats Imply He’s a Racist for
Mentioning ‘Anglo-American’ Legal Tradition
< >
Attorney General Jeff Sessions addressed the National Sheriffs’ Association on combating the opioid epidemic Monday, only for the left to make headlines from his calling sheriffs “a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.”
As part of his ongoing speaking tour about the raging crisis of opioid addiction that is now one of America’s leading causes of death, Sessions joined the Sheriffs’ Association’s Winter Legislative and Technology Conference at Washington, DC’s J.W. Marriott hotel. With more than 40,000 Americans succumbing to opioid overdose in 2016 alone, efforts to bring the demographic scale carnage under control are a top priority in Sessions’s Department of Justice (DOJ).
Sessions spoke to the sheriffs and other law enforcement officials for around ten minutes, focusing on his common themes of the toll of drug abuse, its links to violent crime, and the need to reinforce the rule of law to bring rising crime rates under control. In his prepared remarks, for example, he said:
But as we all know, violent crime statistics and drug overdose rates are not numbers — we’re talking about moms, dads, daughters, spouses, friends, and neighbors.
We will not stand by and watch violence and addiction rise. Plain and simple, we will not allow the progress made by our women and men in blue over the past two decades to simply slip through our fingers. We will not cede one community, one block, or one street corner to violent thugs or poison peddlers. We will protect the poor as well as the rich.
This year alone, Sessions has delivered similar addresses on the importance of the fight against opioids to the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the hard-hit Western District of Kentucky and Western District of Pennsylvania, the Middle District of Florida, the graduating class of new agents for the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Department of Defense’s U.S. Southern Command.
advertisement
But instead of Sessions’ consistent message on the opioid crisis, the left-leaning media clamped onto an apparently off-the-cuff compliment he paid to the sheriff’s in the audience, referencing the rich tradition of the sheriff.
The concept of a “sheriff” dates back more than 1000 years to pre-Norman Conquest Anglo-Saxon England where the “shire reeve” (the origin of the term sheriff) was a representative the King who operated with great independence to do justice at the local level. The sheriff as the enforcement wing of a local court is a unique feature of the English common law tradition from which our own legal system almost entirely derives.
Only countries like the United States, who inherit their “common law” legal systems from that of England, keep the tradition of the sheriff alive. Consequentially, outside of the United Kingdom and America, there are sheriffs in the former British Colonies of Australia, Nigeria, Canada, South Africa, and even India, where the office survives as a ceremonial position of honor.
In America, sheriffs are uniquely prominent elected officials responsible for virtually all state and local courts’ enforcement and, outside of major cities, much of the policing. Honoring these modern American inheritors of this tradition, Sessions said:
I want to thank every sheriff in America. Since our founding, the independently elected sheriff has been the people’s protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and accountable to people through the elected process.The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement. We must never erode this historic office.
The political left and their allies in the press collectively stood aghast at Sessions daring utter these words.
CNN started the ball rolling, leading with “Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday brought up sheriffs’ “Anglo-American heritage.'”
If CNN’s implication that Sessions’ use of the term “Anglo-American heritage” was newsworthy because it indicated he was a racist was unclear, the network’s political fellow-travelers in elected office and the media quickly dispelled any confusion. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), apparently unfamiliar with hearing a term like “Anglo-American heritage,” quickly called it a “dog whistle” – a term for coded racist language:
