A day after suggesting judges who are the victim of violence may have somehow brought their fate upon themselves, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) followed up yesterday with remarks that were intended to clarify his meaning. It wasn’t particularly helpful.
“My point was, and is, simply this: We should all be concerned that the judiciary is losing respect that it needs to serve the interests of the American people well. We should all want judges who interpret the law fairly — not impose their own personal views on the Nation. We should all want to fix our broken judicial confirmation process. And we should all be disturbed by overheated rhetoric about the judiciary from both sides of the aisle. I regret that my remarks have been taken out of context to create a wrong impression about my position, and possibly be construed to contribute to the problem rather than to a solution.
“Our judiciary must not be politicized. Rhetoric about the judiciary and about judicial nominees must be toned down. Our broken judicial confirmation process must be fixed once and for all.”
There’s a lot of nonsense here, but the bottom line is that Cornyn hasn’t apologized for offering a rationalization for anti-judge violence. Instead, he’s standing by his controversial remarks and accusing his critics of taking his remarks out of context.
This is simply false. If anything, the context of Cornyn’s remarks on Monday makes his thoughts on the subject sound worse. (The speech is online if you want to read it.) And for Cornyn to suggest that there’s “overheated rhetoric about the judiciary” that must be “toned down” is the height of hypocrisy — he’s the one contributing to the reckless and irresponsible talk.
As a New York Times editorial noted today, Cornyn made “excuses [for] murderous violence against judges as an understandable reaction to their decisions.” It was, the Times noted, “horrifying even by the rock-bottom standards of the campaign that Republican zealots are conducting against the nation’s judiciary…. It was sickening that an elected official would publicly offer these sociopaths as examples of any democratic value, let alone as holders of legitimate concerns about the judiciary.”
Indeed, note that even under fire for his ridiculous charges, Cornyn is still trying to use the occasion to advance his political agenda. In summarizing his “clarification,” Cornyn again concluded that the “judicial confirmation process must be fixed once and for all.” In other words, a day after providing a justification for violence against judges, the point Cornyn wants to hammer home is that he’s still right about judicial filibusters.
The man has no shame.