Les Enfants Terrible

STILL IN SEARCH OF A BRIGHT SIDE TO THIS back room deal entered into by John McCain and Robert Byrd last night. I may have to settle for laughing at Ted Kennedy, who stood on the floor earlier this morning and preached that the deal sends a clear message to the president that "extreme" nominations will not be tolerated.

Does he mean "extreme" nominations like Owen, Brown, and Pryor?

Kennedy himself has spent the better part of the last week arguing that these three individuals are too extreme for consideration, and now allowing them to be nominated sends a clear message against extremism?

As Katheryn Jean Lopez noted this morning, he is trying to spin the "unspinnable." Kennedy's lame attempt to turn this deal into a victory for judicial principal is pretty funny, and brightens this otherwise gloomy day. Either Kennedy is not a man of principle, or he was lying about his feelings regarding the three justices. Either way, that makes him pretty slimy.

Unfortunately, that is about as good as it gets. While Kennedy might be celebrating a victory he did not win, I am fearful that the Dem's have won another victory...one that protects a minority party's ability to abuse the filubuster. Here's Matthew Franck's take:

McCain's Sanctimonious Seven...have been snookered by that old vulture Robert Byrd into a new understanding of the filibuster — that it may be legitimately used, and legitimately defended, as a form of absolute obstructionism by a party that has the votes to prevent cloture. Not the principle of measured deliberation, but the principle of minority rule — an essentially anti-republican principle — has been enshrined in this agreement. Once again in his long career, it is Byrd who has changed the rules, and without seeming to have done so.