joining me now, civil rights attorney areva martin and carol swain.you look favorably on this nomination. are you saying that his earlier statements back in the era when he was a u.s. attorney are now irrelevant in light of his 20 year record as a member of the senate? >> i think that you have to judge people by their records and some of the allegations against him were hearsay and even if he did make racially insensitive jokes like many people have, i think we need to look at what people actually do. we all make mistakes. i have followed his record for many years. i respect him enormously. and i believe that he would bring back respect to the department of justice and that he is the right person at this time to have president-elect trump fulfill his campaign promises and i think he will be fair to all americans and he, again, will bring respect to the department of justice that's been lost over the past 8 years. >> has he conscientiously worked to dispel the shadows that cost him the judgeship? i lifted those words from the lead editorial in today's

and i agree with carol swain on this point, that people can change.k this nomination of jeff sessions has caused the concern in the civil rights community simply because of those statements, those racist comments he made in 1986. everyone knows about those statements. people are particularly concerned about him for just cause, but people are more concerned about what jeff sessions has done in the senate in the last 20 years. he has been the most strident opponent of every immigration law that has been presented to the u.s. senate. he has even opposed legal immigrants getting a pathway to citizenship. he opposed gay marriages and opposed criminal justice reform and he has been the biggest, biggest opposer to laws that protect the civil rights of americans in this country. and if president-elect trump, as he said in his acceptance speech when he won the president election, he said he was going to bring people together. he was going to be the president for the entire country. but to appoint as attorney general someone whose job is to protect the rights o