It took a while (quite a while, actually), but we were finally able to stop laughing ourselves sick over today’s Washington Times op-ed by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). With one bald assertion after another, Senator Cornyn maintains -- apparently with a straight face -- that the left demands judicial nominees who will “embrac[e]" their political agenda, while the right supports only nominees who are highly qualified and will not “stooge for any radical agenda, left or right.” It is hard to believe that a senator who's been a state Supreme Court justice, even one as unabashedly partisan as Senator Cornyn, would sign his name to such a brazen distortion of what's been happening on the judicial nominations front.
Sigh. We thought we'd already covered all that nonsense about the Right's self-proclaimed commitment to "judicial restraint" (see here and here), which Senator Cornyn baselessly continues to trot out. Maybe the freshman senator from Texas is just behind in his reading. But he also seems to suffer from a serious memory lapse: mentioned nowhere in his screed is Harriet Miers. You know, the Supreme Court nominee whom the Right cannibalized because they weren't 100% positive she'd be a sure-fire vote in favor of their agenda.
Senator Cornyn concludes, unsurprisingly, by blaming Democrats for all the rancor over judicial nominations during the Bush years. Which is perhaps the biggest knee-slapper of all. Let us not forget that the Right has been engaged in a quarter-century long effort to remake the judiciary and transform existing law to reflect its own politics. It is an effort that has gone into overdrive over the past few years. If the Right were not so insistent on packing the courts, Senator, and if the White House just reached across the aisle before shoving ideologically-charged nominations down the Democrats' collective throat, then maybe we wouldn't have the supposedly "polluted" process that you decry.
No comments:
Post a Comment