There's a new call for people to contact our Senators and let them know that eliminating the possibility of a filibuster when inappropriate legislation or nominations are being forced down the throats of conscientious and considerate Senators is a bad idea.
I have to admit that I am ambivalent about this suggestion. One thing that bothers me is that it is being couched in terms of the Religious Right having an agenda to get partisan judges into office. Now, I don't think ordinary religious folk want to have incompetent judges. In fact, I am beginning to think that religious folk are being taken for a ride by people with only one interest--power.
These people have been very good at exploiting the fears of ordinary people and making them think that various immoral trends are the fault of people they don't know very much about. In a sense, that's correct. The people who are promoting gambling, sexual license in images on TV, multiple sexual partners in addition to multiple divorces (true destroyers of traditional family values) are the very people who are passing themselves off as paragons of virtue.
Indeed, the people who put up those disgusting ads against Howard Dean during the run-up to the presidential election, are now attacking the AARP. Why? Because they hope to destroy people's confidence in that institution and sign them up with the organization being set up by their cronies, the United Seniors Association.
I'm not sure that progressives uniting in opposition to this or that strategem is going to be effective.
If incompetent people are being nominated to the federal bench, then their incompetence needs to be widely exposed. Letting Senators drone on for hour after hour about all kinds of nonsense is not going to take care of the problem.
Or to use a sports metaphor, stopping the opponents on the goal line is not going to win a game.