Burnt Orange Report

Cornyn the Barbarian

By Jim Dallas

Ah, September. As the kids return for the new school year and the air fills with the sweet aroma of autumn, Congress is heading back to Washington. Incidentally some villages are missing their idiots.

The New York Times tells us that

...[i]f Congress learned anything this summer, it should be the need to become a driving force in demanding a far more candid and thoughtful Iraq reconstruction plan from the administration. The House was able to muster some independence when it came to demanding the import of lower-price prescription drugs and overruling parts of the Federal Communications Commission plan to allow big media companies to own more TV stations. We would like to see more of that kind of spirit, but it seems more likely that the majority will continue to move in lock step, as it did when members cruelly blocked working-poor families from the new Bush child-credit tax break other Americans enjoy. The president has so far failed to deliver on his vow to fight for the poor, but the opportunity is at hand if he dare resist his House majority leader, Tom DeLay.

But as Operation Iraqi Freedom slides into Operation Infinite Occupation, and as the economy remains in neutral, and as every sort of serious problem goes unsolved, Texas's intrepid junior Senator has a plan to save America...

... to wit, stand up to those derned uppity gay folks.

To quote Cornyn's press release:

...marriage is so fundamental to our culture that it is easy to forget how much depends on it.

Marriage provides the basis for the family, which remains the strongest and most important social unit. A wealth of social science research and data attest to this fact.

And as columnist Maggie Gallagher writes, quote: "When men and women fail to form stable marriages, the first result is a vast expansion of government attempts to cope with the terrible social needs that result. There is scarcely a dollar that state and federal government spends on social programs that is not driven in large part by family fragmentation: crime, poverty, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, school failure, and mental and physical health problems."

So obviously Sen. John Cornyn's War on Gay Marriage will close the budget deficit, eliminate crime, win the War on Drugs, educate our children, feed the poor, and do away with that accursed welfare state once-and-for-all!

Only months into his tenure as a U.S. Senator, Cornyn will begin subcommittee hearings on Thursday into whether the current Defense of Marriage Act is sufficient barrier to excluding homosexuals from getting hitched.

How Cornyn got to be the top dog on the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights is still beyond us.

In any case, the hearing should be a hoot; the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, Russ Feingold, was a very outspoken critic of DOMA. Both Feingold and Ted Kennedy voted against the bill in the Senate, but both then-Reps. Richard Durbin and Charles Schumer voted for it. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) of "two gay men and a shih-tzu" fame will get to hang around while fellow freshman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) hems and haws.