Cornyn's position on Supreme Court nominees

Now that the Senate Judiciary Committee has sent Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination to the full Senate (with one Republican, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, placing statesmanship over partisanship by voting to approve), it's time to revisit my chastising the position of Texas's embarrassing senator John Cornyn on this subject. One commenter suggested I was lambasting Cornyn for doing the same thing Democrats did when Republican President's nominated individuals to the court.

That's not true. I criticized Cornyn because his reasons for opposing Kagan were exactly the same reasons he gave for supporting President Bush's nominees; i.e., expressing fealty to the U.S. Constitution. It turns out Cornyn is not a supporter of the entire constitution. There are parts he likes and there are parts he doesn't. If a Supreme Court nominee wants to put limits on the sections he doesn't like, that's not judicial activism in his book. However, if a nominee wants to uphold those sections he doesn't like, that is "a liberal judge."

One part of the Constitution Cornyn hates is the Commerce Clause, the one that gives Congress the right to regulate interstate commerce. At her confirmation hearings, Kagan said she supported the Commerce Clause, even agreeing with Chief Justice John Roberts (a Bush nominee) when he said the clause gave Congress the ability to confine sex offenders even after they have served their judicially-imposed sentences. The Commerce Clause has been the tool Congress has used to pass legislation that has had a tremendously positive effect on our society - the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; the Endangered Species Act; the Fair Labor Standards Act, setting a minimum wage and limiting child labor; and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing segregation in the workplace and in public accommodations - all legislation that Cornyn wishes had never passed.

Now that is the definition of being duplicitous, opposing one person for advancing the same legal positions as one Cornyn supported. That's why I criticize Cornyn: He's two-faced.