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Rich Lowry has an interesting piece titled "Sacred Obstruction" in the April 26 issue of National Review. Here’s part of it:

Democrats call the Republican proposal to block their ability to filibuster judicial nominations, the so-called nuclear option, "unprecedented." Well, it is. Since prior to Bush's election the filibuster was never used to routinely block judicial nominations, of course no one ever thought before of ending the possibility of using it for that purpose.

Former Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell has been trotted out to make the case against the proposed Republican rules change. "Neither I nor any other senator," he said the other day, recalling his time as majority leader in the early 1990s, "ever dreamed of taking the kind of drastic action now being proposed." This is laughable. Not only have various proposals to curtail the filibuster been kicked around for years, including one sponsored by Democrats in 1995, but Mitchell himself said of filibusters on CNN in 1994, "We should limit the opportunities for their use much more than is now the case."

Typical partisan hypocrisy is at play here, of course. Whichever party is in the minority will love the filibuster most. But something deeper is at work too. When you have little positive to offer and the tide of history seems to be moving against you, obstruction --- whether through opportunistic federalism or the filibuster --- becomes not just a tactic, but a kind of sacred cause. Just ask Senator Eastland.

Cal Thomas writes this in the Jewish World Review on April 26:

Some Democrats, like West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, who once favored majority rule when his party ruled the Senate, oppose it now that Republicans hold the majority. In the 1970s, Byrd and his fellow Democrats voted to end filibusters and in favor of a simple majority when it suited their political and legislative goals. Democrats, then, didn't worry about a loss of comity and what Republicans might do to them a decade or two later. They simply used the power they had to achieve their objectives, which is precisely what Republicans should do now.

Jay Ambrose has an April 26 piece that weighs the pros and cons:

A far more realistic threat than theocracy is the growing oligarchic rule by judges unaccountable to anything but themselves, and a solution is to name judges of the sort Bush wants, respecters of the basic law of the land.

And, Richard J. Florino of Windham, New Hampshire criticizes John McCain’s permissive stance toward the judicial nomination filibusters, in the Concord Monitor.