ConfirmThem

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Peter Kirsanow has a column titled "Race, Sex & Roe: The judicial storm in the Senate" in National Review. Here's a piece of it:

[T]he most vigorous Borking is often reserved for minorities. A memo to Senator Richard Durbin unearthed during the Senate "Memogate" controversy identified Estrada as “especially dangerous" because “he is Latino." During his confirmation process, he was vilified as “inauthentic" and “Hispanic in name only." Despite impressive credentials, he was dismissed as inexperienced and unqualified....Special vituperation, however, seems to be reserved for minority nominees suspected of being pro-life. Estrada, Rogers Brown, Claude Allen, and Levanski Smith were/are among these apostates.
....
This time it’s liberals who are standing athwart history yelling “Stop!" We should know in a couple of weeks whether they’re successful.

There's an interesting pro-Pryor piece in the Birmingham News, including this:

Bush renominated Pryor in January, and the Senate Judiciary Committee once again will endorse his appointment. The question is whether the Senate will exercise its constitutional authority of "advice and consent" by giving Pryor a vote, or whether Democrats who are unhappy that they don't control the Senate will continue being disruptive.

If Democrats continue to keep clearly qualified candidates like Pryor from even getting a vote, who can blame Republicans for changing rules that are being abused?

Barry Pruett, a Valparaiso University School of Law student in Valparaiso, Indiana has a few thoughts about this whole thing:

I agree that legislation should be cooled by unlimited debate in the Senate. However, judicial nominations are an executive function.

....

The Republicans are not seeking to eliminate the checks and balances, but to enforce them. The changes to the filibuster rule would prevent the Senate from requiring a super-majority on the president's executive appointments. Constitutionally, this is a sound practice and will equally benefit the Democrats when they are in the majority.

Here's part of an open letter from Chuck Busch to Ohio's two Senators DeWine and Voinovich:

The Democrats should stop their obstructionist strategies such as threatening to shut down the government and concentrate on reforming their own policy positions so as to challenge the Republican Party on how best to protect and prosper the United States. In a survey by Rasmussen Reports, 57% percent of the public is in favor of changing Senate rules to insure a vote on every nominee. It is disturbing that the Democrat leadership should go to such extremes to reject the clear intent of the Constitution and the will of the American people. Should Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist be compelled to invoke constitutional measures to bring closure and call for an up or down vote on the candidate, I certainly hope that you be totally supportive this decision to restore the constitutional process in confirming judicial candidates.

Bruce Fein has yet another excellent piece on this subject. He points out that the Constitution grants various powers, but does not require that many of them be exercised. Thus, if the Senate refuses to vote on judicial nominees who reach the Senate floor, the House is equally entitled to stop doing what it has traditionally done in other crucial areas, like funding the courts. (Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if continued judicial filibusters undermine the House's desire to fund the courts.) Fein also writes:

Filibuster champions ... maintain that intensity should count in politics and, that an impassioned minority should prevail over a phlegmatic majority. But there is no reliable yardstick for measuring the intensity of proponents or detractors. Were congressional supporters of equal rights for blacks secured by the 1964 Civil Rights Act more intense in their support than were the filibustering resisters in opposition, for instance, Sen. Robert Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, who cherished segregation for the ages?

Kevin McCullough poses an excellent question:

If filibusters were the historical precedent that they [the Dems] say they are now, why did no one introduce a filibuster on arguably the most controversial Supreme Court nomination of my lifetime?

Liberals certainly were eager to do anything they could to stop Justice Clarence Thomas from being confirmed. The amount of verbal pornography they dragged the country through turned out largely to an invention of their own imagination. But with all the invective that they could muster - wouldn't it have been so much easier to simply filibuster?

Of course it would. But they didn't because it was not the practice, nor the intent of the legitimate use of the filibuster to be applied in such a manner. Nor should it be so now.

Last and least, the New York Times has an editorial, saying this among other things:

The Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, was right to call Senator Frist's idea "a big wet kiss to the far right." Senator Frist needs to start showing some love to mainstream Republicans and Democrats, and to the system of checks and balances.

Actually, I do agree slightly with this. Judicial nomination filibusters should be allowed for some limited amount of time beyond 100 hours (subject to supermajority cloture), provided it's a real live filibuster, in order to allow the minority to express their intensity of feeling, and in order to let them try to get their message across to the public. Also, from a PR standpoint, Sen. Frist and the GOP would be in a much better position by saying that their goal is to LIMIT judicial nomination filibusters, rather than entirely get rid of them.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has good posts today on this subject, including a post about Sen. Chuck Hagel, and also a post criticizing the Post. Additionally, Patterico and Pejmanesque criticize a pro-filibuster argument by David Greenberg in the LA Times.