When I saw the headline above in the New York Times, my heart lept with joy. At last, we are getting serious about the war on terror!
Then I realized that the lawyers were going to Guantánamo to serve as legal representatives for the detained thugs. They weren't going as prisoners. My heart stopped leaping.
Ah, well. Maybe someday.
I would bet a bottle of gin that not one in five American adults could tell you what a "filibuster" is. Perhaps one in ten Americans think it's important, and that ten percent is scattered across the political spectrum. This is after weeks of public discussion about the proper use of the filibuster and the "nuclear option" (i.e., voting when the majority decides to vote).
But the chattering classes care about the filibuster, because it is the method by which the Democrats' dwindling minority gets to keep "religious extremists" and pro-lifers off the Federal bench. The Republicans could have given Senator "Ku Klux Klam" Byrd the smackdown he richly deserves, pleased the GOP's most fervent supporters, and made the judiciary more friendly toward economic rights, less friendly toward judge-made law, and possibly made some progress toward stopping the secular sacrament of abortion. The cost? Some nasty editorials in liberal newspapers. But those editorialists hate Republicans anyway, and would find something else nasty to say about them.
Yet a small group of Republicans managed to sell out their party, not to mention the constitutional principle that the Senate has a duty to examine and confirm judicial nominees. Even though they've been in the majority for most of the last decade, the Republicans once again demonstrate that they play like amateurs, and the Democrats play for keeps.
