Back to the Senate: An issue we haven't mentioned in a while -- the filibustering of Bush's judicial nominees -- is making a comeback. Jeffrey Toobin's New Yorker article this week was excellent and quite fair. It's worth the time.

I've noted before that the Dems obstruction plan was altogether dumb -- note Bush's nearly unprecedented gains in Congress in his first midterm, along with moderate coattails last fall. But the GOP's "nuclear" option (curtailing filibusters on judicial nominees) is just as self-defeating. It has always been this way: the majority can't get everything it wants with no cost whatsoever. (Every majority forgets this fact.) And soon enough, the shoe will be on the other foot. I have no doubt that senators on both sides of the aisle will begin to mouth the erstwhile arguments of their opponents, much as both sides have been for, against, and then for (again) the independent counsel statute that blessedly expired without renewal.