Nevertheless, “Republicans handed the liberal firebrand [Senator Elizabeth Warren] 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,’ said Warren.
“Adding fuel to the backlash, supporters noted the apparent hypocrisy that Warren's male colleagues were able to read from the letter uninterrupted. Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico read the letter to enter it into the congressional record Wednesday morning and Sen. Jeff Merkley was allowed to read from King's letter Tuesday night, though he couched his remarks as only reading portions of the letter and with the context to be in line with Senate rules.
Senator Bernie Sanders, however, reads the full letter and forcefully speaks out regarding the silencing of Senator Elizabeth Warren by the Majority Leader of the Senate, Mitch O'Connell.
You gotta love Bernie!
