This is a compromise?

With a showdown looming, a group of Senate Democrats floated a compromise on the President's judicial nominees, offering to clear five for confirmation while scuttling three others.

Under the proposal Republicans would have to pledge no change through 2006 in the Senate's rules that allow filibusters against judicial nominees. For their part, Democrats would commit not to block votes on Bush's Supreme Court or appeals court nominees during the same period, except in extreme circumstances.

Three other nominations would continue to be blocked under the offer: those of Henry Saad, Priscilla Owen and William G. Myers III.

Now that's one very strange attempt at "compromise"! As many have noted, that "except in extreme circumstances" reservation is big enough to drive an army through. Who determines what constitutes an "extreme circumstance"? What would keep an extremist Dem senator (surely there can't be any! ) from claiming "extreme conditions" existed, and starting his or her own filibuster?

The GOP should spend whatever it takes to keep running that ad that says "Three years ago, for the first time since America became a nation, Democratic senators used the filibuster to block a president's judicial nominees from a full vote, even though they had been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is unprecedented, and wrong. The Constitution explicitly names the few times when a supermajority of congressional votes is required, and confirming judicial appointees isn't one of them."

What? You say the GOP hasn't run such an ad?

Gosh, how strange.