Reply #16: If I were Frist, I would

[Yupster]

Force the next filibuster about three days before the Democratic convention and keep it going until the convention is over a few days. I would use it to suck up news coverage whenever news was bad.

Much like the Texas legislators fleeing the state, I see this filibuster as a bad escalation.

I also don't like the idea that one party feels they have the right to decide who's an "extremist" in the other party. To Orrin Hatch, every Democratic nominee from now on may be declared an "extremist."

The Republicans have a one vote majority in the senate and a pretty decent group of moderate senators who are not unwilling to go against the leadership. If the Democrats can't get Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, or Lincoln Chaffee to see a judge as an extremist, perhaps they're not.

I don't know much about these judges, but I am from Texas so I've heard of Priscilla Owens for years. It's not like Bush picked her working at Burger King. She's been on the Texas Supreme Court for years, and I never heard the state Democratic Party call her an extremist until this nomination started. Also the American Bar Association gave her their top rating which is "well qualified" or something like that.

I don't see that the benefit of keeping Owens off the court is worth the establishing of new ways of fighting that are guaranteed to come back and bite us, hopefully in the near future. Justices Breyer and Ginsburg, two perfectly reliable liberal votes on the court were passed by Republicans in the senate without a whole lot of rankor. That won't happen next time I'm afraid.