ConfirmThem

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The cloture vote on the Owen nomination is scheduled for Tuesday, reports How Appealing. Sen. Frist's statement is available here.

Meantime, National Review continues to excel in filibuster coverage. NR's William F. Buckley has a column titled "Phony Apocalypse" that starts out this way:

Really, you would think the Republicans had proposed to rape the Statue of Liberty.

Buckley points out that "hesitation, after a while, comes over as irresolution," so it's a good thing the cloture motion has been filed. NR editor Rich Lowry has a column titled "Dangerous Women: The Y’s of the injudicious holdup." Lowry concludes with these observations about gender bias:

Because Democrats have used unprecedented judicial filibusters to block the nominees, they have had to apply red-hot rhetoric to justify themselves. Priscilla Owen might have been a garden-variety conservative if she had a Y chromosome, but as a woman she is deemed an "extremist" undeserving of an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. The evidence adduced to support this charge is primarily her decisions on the Texas supreme court in cases involving the state's parental-notification statute. She ruled with the majority in nine out of 12 such cases, hardly a sign of runaway judicial extremism. When it comes to Owen, Brown, or presumably other compelling conservative women appellate nominees, Democrats have a simple message: "You've come a long way, baby. Go no further."

NR's Bench Memos also continues to have great stuff on the impending opportunity for the Senate majority to assert its will.