Jesus 3 - America 0

To follow up on my esteemed colleague’s remarks, I have to concur. I don’t understand how people like MoveOn’s Eli Pariser and Harry Reid can call this a victory. All this proves is that whenever the Republicans want something, they get it. Sure, they didn’t get all of them, but they got three of their highly unqualified, comically corrupt religious zealots on the bench. I hate to agree with Scott McClelland, but in his own self-satisfied way, I think he hits the nail on the head:

"Many of these nominees have waited for quite some time to have an up-or-down vote and now they are going to get one. That's progress,"

Progress as defined by Republicans is, of course, a few more steps towards dictatorial theocracy. As I said before, I think it would have been much better to let them do their nuclear magic. Frankly, I don’t think they would have had the votes, but even if they did, it would have been electoral disaster for them in 2006, and maybe even 2008. Furthermore, we have this "extraordinary circumstances" clause hanging on the filibuster now like one of Florida’s bum chads, which will only serve to a) cow the Democrats from using the filibuster in the future, and b) open the door for Republicans to call us liars and hypocrites when we're forced to use it again, e.g. – when Bush nominates Pat Robertson or James Dobson to the Supreme Court later this year.

On the brighter side, Bill Frist does come out of this a little worse for wear. John McCain comes out a little better. And even though I think we have a better chance of beating Frist than McCain in 2008, if we can help it, I’d rather not gamble on getting Dr. Kitten Killer in the oval office.