Today, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist – in an effort to avoid the political backlash from incendiary remarks by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) – is defending the judiciary to the Associated Press:

Frist, R-Tenn., declined to join with conservatives who have complained about the federal court system in relation to the Schiavo case. ‘I believe we have a fair and independent judiciary today,’ he said.

But his March 17th battle cry to lead the charge of the Family Research Council against “activist judges” shows a totally different side:

One of the first tasks we will have is this whole confirmation of judges. This is at the top of the challenges that we must overcome in this Congress. We all know that activist judges in the past have recently cited international law written by U.N. bureaucrats. They directly undermine marriage being between a man and a woman. They struck down our partial-birth abortion bans. And these activist judges are not interpreting the Constitution. They’re rewriting it, and that’s wrong. And it’s something that I know you’re committed to, and I’m committed to…We know we’re right and we want to win. We want to protect marriage from activist judges once and for all and we will do it.

Just over the AP Wire:

“Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Tuesday that federal judges’ rejection of efforts by Congress to keep Terri Schiavo alive will not affect the escalating dispute between Democrats and Republicans over President Bush’s judicial nominees.

‘I don’t associate the two issues directly,’ Frist told reporters.

Frist, R-Tenn., declined to join with conservatives who have complained about the federal court system in relation to the Schiavo case. ‘I believe we have a fair and independent judiciary today,’ he said.
…
[C]onservatives are mounting a campaign against what they call activist federal judges. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and other conservatives who advocated for Schiavo have planned a conference on Thursday and Friday called ‘Confronting The Judicial War On Faith’ with the lawyer for Schiavo’s parents.”
…
Although the federal review ‘was not as complete as we would like,” Frist said, he still thought the courts were ‘fair and independent.’”

Apparently Sen. John Cornyn’s disrespect for members of the legal system extends beyond seemingly justifying the recent spate of violence against judges. The Next Hurrah reports that Georgetown Law Professor Susan Bloch has accused Cornyn and his conservative ally C. Boyden Gray of “seriously misrepresenting [her] views” in their wild-eyed attempts to circumvent the filibustering of President Bush’s judicial nominees by detonating the explosive nuclear option in the Senate. Though Bloch asked both Cornyn and Gray to post her response to them on their respective websites, they have yet to do so. Probably because the text of the memo isn’t particularly, well, complimentary to the two gentlemen:

“Senator John Cornyn and C. Boyden Gray have seriously misrepresented my views. In a February 28, 2005 memo to journalists on behalf of the Committee for Justice, Mr. Gray suggests that I said the Senate’s use of the filibuster against judicial nominations is unconstitutional…[and] Senator Cornyn makes the same misrepresentation of my views. In fact, I have never said such a thing. On the contrary, in the article they quote (but never cite), I said precisely the opposite, explicitly distinguishing the Senate filibuster from the House Rule that I was criticizing….The first tampers with the Constitution; the second is an internal rule of procedure. The difference is subtle, but its pedigree is long and valuable. Both sides of the aisle should respect it. Senator Cornyn and Mr. Gray are, of course, free to continue to ignore the distinction if they are so inclined. But they are not free, by means of cut-and-paste advocacy, to misrepresent my views.”

Comparing DeLay to Jim Wright isn’t exactly a subtle message:

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) says Democrats suffered major setbacks in the 1990s when an ethics-challenged leader — House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), who resigned in 1989 — became a larger symbol of his party than its platform issues. “That’s a cocktail for disaster,” Graham said. If a political leader’s personal problems are coupled with “some policy decisions that are disconnected to the public, then you’ve got an opening” for trouble, he said. “If we don’t watch it, it could happen to us.”

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels – who favored tax cuts for the wealthy over disaster relief when he was budget director for President Bush – has found a peculiar reason to raise taxes in Indiana: football.

As President Bush’s first term budget director, Daniels (aka “The Blade“) earned a reputation for being particularly aggressive about slashing federal programs to support the president’s tax cuts. For instance, Daniels recommended zeroing out the Boys and Girls Club, even though the president himself said he “believe[d] strongly” in the program. He proposed major funding cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency, including allegedly thwarting major public health warnings advocated by the agency. And he “sent his own coat-appraisal team to the wreckage of Tropical Storm Allison” to kill a Federal Emergency Management Agency request for more disaster relief in Texas.

All the while, Daniels insisted the president’s tax cuts were stimulating the economy and that deficits and funding cuts would be even worse without them. “Thank goodness for tax cuts,” Daniels liked to say.

It must come as a surprise, then, to the citizens of Indiana, that Daniels – already advocating a 1 percent income tax increase to help deal with the state’s $700 million projected deficit – is now supporting a plan that will raise their taxes to fund a new stadium for the Indianapolis Colts. Daniels’s plan, approved by a state Senate committee yesterday, calls for tax hikes that will affect Hoosiers going out to dinner, renting cars, attending concerts and staying in hotels. The money will go towards a new football stadium with a retractable roof.

The Colts have a had a tough time beating the Patriots these last couple years, but “disaster relief” this is not.

Watch the video of Cornyn’s resignation speech:

Download it. (WMV File)