I hate to say it, but....

So GOPpers are already making noises that there had better be no filibustering of whatever wingnut sock puppet Shrub puts up for the Supreme Court. In fact, there really shouldn't be any questions asked at all.

Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee as well, said the push for ... detailed positions was highly objectionable and suggested that Democrats might be forming a strategy of trying to derail a nomination on the ground of withholding information. ...

And Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview: "Any member of the committee can ask whatever they want, no matter how stupid. But I don't think nominees have to answer certain questions. They don't have to answer questions about how they are going to vote in the future. They don't have to answer stupid questions. They don't have to answer argumentative cases." ...

Mr. Hatch said in a later interview that he could not see "any circumstances where a filibuster would be appropriate." He warned that if Democrats tried to mount one, the Senate would most likely revert to the so-called nuclear option to bar the use of a filibuster to block judicial nominees.

said Monday's New York Times.

The nuclear option? Gee, wasn't that taken off the table by that oh-so-wonderful agreement reached in May by the so-called Gang of 14? Apparently not - it said judicial nominees should only be filibustered in "extraordinary circumstances" and to hear the GOPpers tell is, wingnuttery is not extraordinary. From Monday's Washington Post:

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of the 14 signers, noted that the accord allowed the confirmation of three Bush appellate court nominees so conservative that Democrats had successfully filibustered them for years: Janice Rogers Brown, William H. Pryor Jr. and Priscilla R. Owen. ...

"Based on what we've done in the past with Brown, Pryor and Owen," Graham said, "ideological attacks are not an 'extraordinary circumstance.' To me, it would have to be a character problem, an ethics problem, some allegation about the qualifications of the person, not an ideological bent." ...

[Majority Whip Mitch] McConnell [(R-KY)] said the agreement establishes "that there will be no filibusters except under extraordinary circumstances. And we know that judges like Janice Rogers Brown and Bill Pryor and Priscilla Owen are not an extraordinary circumstance."

I hate to have to say it, but I told you so when the deal was first announced:

While many of the news reports have said that what constitutes "extraordinary" circumstances is left to the conscience of individual Democratic senators, that's not what the agreement actually says: It says it's left to individual senators, period. The difference is significant in that it provides a convenient escape clause for the GOPpers. ...

It ... would be entirely in keeping with the letter of the deal for the GOPpers to at any useful point in the future to say of a Dem attempt at a filibuster, "This is not an extraordinary circumstance! The deal's off!" With Frist saying the nuclear option is still on the table and that he "will monitor this agreement closely," that is by no means an idle concern. ...

In all, the "compromise" thus amounts to allowing three of Shrub's radical right nominees lifetime positions on the federal bench (plus three more for who Harry Reid has pledged to "clear the way") in return for an unenforceable promise to not re-light the fuse of the nuclear option in the all-too-likely future event that a couple of the GOPpers who signed off on the deal think the Dims are getting too uppity.

In that same post, I wondered "about what will happen the next time a judge (or even some other appointment) that the White House really wants comes along." Now we know - as we actually knew already: Once again, it was warped reactionary Republicans verses wimpy dimwitted Democrats and once again the result was all but inevitable.

We are so screwed.