Cornyn Backpeddles

Senator Cornyn "clarifies" his earlier remarks connecting "judicial activism" to judicial violence. Andrew Sullivan hits it home:

"Good for him. Just ignore the blather about being taken out of context. He wasn't. He contributed to anti-judicial emotionalism; and he has retracted his inflammatory remarks."

Actually, reading Cornyn's latest remarks, I'm struck by how little he's budged. I don't think anybody actually believes Cornyn endorses attacks against the judiciary. The problem, as I saw it, is that his rhetoric is precisely that which stirs up the violence he's talking about. So when he says

"We should all be concerned that the judiciary is losing the respect that it needs to serve the American people well. We should all want judges to interpret the law fairly – not impose their own personal views on the nation. We should all want to fix our broken judicial confirmation process,"

I have to wonder if he really recognizes the problem at all.

When he says "our judiciary must not be politicized," of course, then I just die of an irony overdose.