Pete Sessions: “I thank him, first, for his insightful remarks. It is certainly appropriate and important that we distinguish between an…”

“I thank him, first, for his insightful remarks. It is certainly appropriate and important that we distinguish between an American citizen's right to speak and say things that may be on their heart at a given time and maybe later they are not so sure they agree with. But we don't want to intimidate Americans and say you can never be a Federal judge if you don't say anything but vanilla statements your entire life. I thank him for his wise insight there. It does seem we have a double standard here. It seems there has just been a deliberate effort to go back and sift through, bit by bit, line by line, speeches and statements and writings of nominees to try to take them out of context and make them appear to be extreme when her record is one of mainstream, effective service. Justice Ginsburg was not a nominee, certainly, that I would choose to nominate for the Supreme Court, but the Senate did not bar her from service on the Court, the highest court in this land, because of her extrajudicial statements that you just mentioned that are quite unusual, that she made in law review articles and such, even though her thoughts and comments were out of the mainstream. I was not there at the time and the Senator was. But was it not true that, at her confirmation hearing, Justice Ginsburg swore under oath she would follow the law, and was it not also true that during her service on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals she often voted with Judge Bork and other conservative judges?…”