No Victory

A bipartisan group of 14 senators struck a last-second agreement on Monday that defused - at least for now - a potentially explosive parliamentary showdown over eliminating Senate filibusters against judicial nominees.

Under a compromise reached by an assortment of moderates, mavericks and senior statesmen just as the Senate was headed into a climactic overnight debate on the filibuster, three previously blocked appeals court nominees - Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor and Priscilla R. Owen - will get floor votes. No commitment was made on the fate of two others, William Myers and Henry Saad.

In addition, the seven Democrats in the deal vowed that they would filibuster future judicial nominees only under "extraordinary" circumstances. Their Republican counterparts promised to support no changes in Senate rules that would alter the filibuster rule, effectively denying the votes it would take to enact such a rules change.

Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was a chief architect of the deal, said the negotiators had been motivated by a mutual desire to prevent lasting damage to the Senate from a rules change. Mr. McCain said the pact was hammered out in the "finest traditions of the Senate."

"We have kept the Republic," said Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, who had fought the rules change as an abuse of Senate traditions.

This was no win for the progressives, but merely a postponement of the battle while the Wrepublicans reorganize.

Bu$hCo got everything they wanted. All the judiciary is now theirs. The only possible exception might be the coming Supreme Court selections and reorganization.

Can you say Chief Justice Scalia?

All you Americans with too much liberty, watch out.

Frist ended up with pie on his face with this deal, but Bu$hCo wanted that too.

After all, he isn't part of the Kennebunkport Family.

He never put his capital into the Carlyle Group.

Bu$hCo won. The people who think Reid saved the filibuster are kidding themselves and not paying attention. This was a Lieberman deal for our side.