Just a reminder for all of you that Senator Carl Levin is not acting on principle when he opposes the nominations of judges to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. His motivation sits a little closer to home.

Senator Levin is very upset that a particular Clinton-nominee never got her bench. Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Helene White was nominated by President Clinton to fill one of the open Sixth Circuit seats but was never confirmed by the Senate. So, like every nomination of a retiring president, her nomination was returned without approval at the end of President Clinton's second term. This is neither a surprising nor an uncommon result. Indeed, John Roberts, who served as the first Bush administration's number-two lawyer before the Supreme Court, waited more than eleven years between his original nomination by President George H. W. Bush to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and his eventual confirmation by the Senate two years after being re-nominated by President George W. Bush. No Democrat — be they Levin or Leahy — fought for his re-nomination by the Clinton administration as a matter of "tradition" or "comity." It is just part of the reality of electoral politics: with the victor go the spoils.

But John Roberts was no Helene White. He didn't have the singular qualification that could bring the entire democratic and judicial process to a standstill — he wasn't Carl Levin's cousin-in-law. You see, Judge White happens to be married to Senator Levin's cousin, a fact that Senator Levin fails to emphasize whenever he rails on the Senate floor about President Bush's unacceptable tactics. The real "fundamental issue" with President Bush's judicial nominees to the Sixth Circuit, then, has nothing to do with the prerogatives of home-state senators and the grand traditions of that lofty institution. It is that none of them can make a scene at a Levin family picnic.

But the filibuster, we are told, is the cornerstone of the Republic – preserving for lynching, racial discrimination, and nepotism on behalf of the Democrats.