The Discerning Texan

Hugh Hewitt interviews prominent Democratic strategists regarding the coming judicial showdown; in particular he asserts that many Republicans may not understand what is really at stake here:

Thus the leaders of the left's unprecedented and extra-constitutional blockade of Bush's circuit court nominees are on record as planning to use similar tactics for any Supreme Court vacancies that arise in Bush's second term, the first of which is widely believed to be coming soon

with the expected retirement of Chief Justice Rehnquist. The short list for that vacancy, and probably the next two as well, consists of Judges Luttig, McConnell, and Roberts and a couple of other names sharing this trio's esteemed reputation for legal scholarship and temperament.

But the left doesn't want any of them to ascend to the Court, even as a replacement for one of the five generally conservative judges, much less for one of the four generally liberal judges.

This honest declaration of intention from the captains of the left's blockade is as clear a signal to the Republican leadership that now is the time to break the filibuster via a ruling from the chair that the use of the filibuster on judicial nominees is out of order, and a majority vote to uphold the rule. Both Aron and Neas concede that all of the Bush nominees have majority support. Aron goes so far as to bluntly assert the right for 41 senators to block nominees, a position that will harden into practice if it is not repudiated now.

The Editors of National Review also weighed in on the coming judicial showdown, concluding:

Politicians of both parties regularly demonstrate that folly, error, and overreach are endemic to their trade. But judges are prone to the same failings. In recent decades, their power has increased and their exercise of that increased power has become routine. Some of their decisions have been right, and others have not. We think, for example, that the Supreme Court’s restrictions on state governments’ ability to set their own policies on euthanasia — restrictions that formed a backdrop to the Schiavo case — were not grounded in the Constitution. There can, however, be legitimate differences of opinion over precisely which judicial decisions should be regarded as “activist.”

But the existence of these disagreements does not alter our conclusion that it is profoundly unhealthy for the republic to have a judiciary that effectively defines the limits of its own power and a political class that regards the rule of judges as the rule of law. On that underlying contention, Congressman DeLay and Senator Cornyn are correct. And we are for all intelligent, deliberate, and constitutional exertions to rectify the situation. Political leaders cannot subscribe to a definition of judicial “independence” that allows for no meaningful political checks on judicial power. The result of that view is, almost as a matter of necessity, judicial independence from the Constitution.