"This latest outburst from Congressman Delay is terribly disturbing. Some people had argued, well, the emotion of the situation involving Terri Schiavo explains some of what he said. He apologized for what he said on the day Terri Schiavo finally died.

But this is a calculated effort - well after that, well after the emotion has died down - to put pressure on judges, because he doesn,t like the way they,ve decided.

And I was struck when he said that he thought it was up to Congress to define bad behavior. Unfortunately, in Mr. Delay,s case, he is defining bad behavior by example. I don,t think that,s quite the best way for Congress to carry out that responsibility.

But it is not Congress,s responsibility to do that. We have remedies for bad decisions. It,s called the appeals process. We have remedies for misbehavior. But misbehavior has always been considered to be extrajudicial abuse of power, not disagreement with a group in power.

And as Senator Schumer said, this is now a very clear pattern, whether it,s the restructuring of the House Ethics Committee to make it into a body easily bought for partisan reasons. In the House, at 3.5 hours, we are going to keep you all hear and bludgeon you until you agree to the prescription drug bill - and Mr. DeLay, remember, admits that he made offers to Congressman [Nick] Smith to try to get him to change his vote - made deals that shouldn,t have been made, whether it,s the question about whether or not you have the normal rules that apply to cloture in the Senate, there is no rule, no procedure, no norm of Democratic practice that this right-wing group is prepared to respect if it gets in their way. And that,s what,s central.

And they are doing this in the eve of a great extremism. And that,s the other point. They are going after Justice Kennedy. He is, as Senator Schumer pointed out, one of the more conservative justices. That makes clear what they are talking about.

Indeed, if you listen to their condemnation, it also includes Justices Scalia and Thomas and Chief Justice Rehnquist, because on two occasions, they joined the rest of the Supreme Court in refusing to carry out - I believe one Constitutional mandate - that Congress tried to give them in the Schiavo case.