Mr. President, the purpose for my rising is to follow up on some remarks that I made yesterday, Monday, on the floor of the Senate. A full transcript of those remarks, which has to do with judges and recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court, are available, of course in the Congressional Record, but are also available on my official website for anyone who would care to read them.

As a former judge myself for 13 years, who has a number of close personal friends who still serve on the bench today, I am outraged by recent acts of courthouse violence. I certainly hope that no one will construe my remarks on Monday otherwise. Considered in context, I don’t think a reasonable listener or reader could.

As I said on Monday, there's no possible justification for courthouse violence. Indeed, I met with a federal judge, a friend of mine, in Texas just this past week, to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to protect our judges and courthouse personnel against further acts of violence. And like my colleague from Illinois, I personally know judges and their families who have been victims of violence and have grieved with those families.

But I want to make one thing clear: I'm not aware of any evidence whatsoever linking recent acts of courthouse violence to the various controversial rulings that have captured the nation’s attention in recent years.

My point was, and is, simply this: 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. And we should all be disturbed by overheated rhetoric about the judiciary, from both sides of the aisle. I regret it 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. And our broken judicial confirmation process must be fixed, once and for all.

I wonder if it hurt when he had the ambition implants and the conscience-ectomy combined.

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