The nuclear option

The Democrats hauled George Mitchell out of retirement yesterday to decry the horrifyingly ungentlemanly plan by Senate Republican leaders to block Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees. "Unprecedented, unfair, and unwise," the former senator complained.

The problem here is not that the Senate is politicizing judicial nominations. The problem is that the judiciary has been making policy. The Senate confirmation process for judges is now the last chance for the people of the United States, through their elected representatives, to have any voice in the making of law and policy on abortion, discrimination, gay rights, prayer in the schools, police searches, even local panhandling ordinances. Of course people are riled up about judicial nominations. Of course they're going to the barricades. No amount of clucking over the unseemly tactics of either side is going to change that.

To change it, we will have to amend the Constitution to secure the rights that judges have given us over the last eighty years. We have never amended the Constitution to ban racial or gender discrimination. We have never amended the Constitution to establish privacy rights. We have never amended the Constitution to require the states to abide by the First Amendment or the rest of the Bill of Rights. We have relied on judges to do that for us. If they've done a little more than some of us want, there's no use whining about it now. We asked for it.

Read more about it here: A Retirement Plan for Sandra Day O'Connor