As everyone who's been paying attention knows already, a last minute compromise was reached in the Senate to defuse the once-looming filibuster fight. Seven Republicans and seven Democrats had been working on a plan, and at the zero hour, they finally agreed, averting the expected showdown. We've read the opinions of some of the folks on our blogroll, and they tend to vary somewhat. Our feelings are mixed.

The Deal
Here are the terms of the compromise, from an AP article carried by ABC News:

Under the terms, Democrats agreed to allow final confirmation votes for Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor, appeals court nominees they have long blocked. There is "no commitment to vote for or against" the filibuster against two other conservatives named to the appeals court, Henry Saad and William Myers.

The agreement said future judicial nominees should "only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances," with each senator presumably the Democrats holding the discretion to decide when those conditions had been met. Officials said the pact was intended to cover the Supreme Court as well as other levels of the judicary.

The Good
There is no doubt that the White House and Bill Frist were dealt a serious blow. For Frist, the radical religious right are not very forgiving, and when one of their lackeys fails to deliver on a promise, they tend to get awfully pissy. Of course, since two of the nominees who will receive a vote are themselves religious nutbags, it remains to be seen how pissy they will be. We can only hope they get pissy enough to derail Frist's presidential aspirations.

From the White House, Bush had been pretty firm in his statements that he expected a vote on all of his nominees, not just three of them. This deal is a slap in the face to him, and that's always a good thing. Somehow, though, we doubt it will make Bush more likely to seek bipartisan consultation for future nominees. Call us skeptical if you like, we're just funny that way.

The Bad
Three judges are now all but assured of being confirmed. We admit that we know very little about Priscilla Owen. Mostly what we've heard about her is that she rules in favor of big business. That's not great, but BushCo has been pushing us there for four-plus years already, and we can probably stomach a little more. If we're missing more about her, we'd love to hear it. However, we know enough about Pryor and Brown to know that they are seriously fucked in the head — we have no reservations about saying that they have no place filling in for Judge Judy, let alone as justices in the US Court of Appeals.

Here's a little snippet from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State which we've referred to before:

As noted in a 2003 report by AU, Pryor was an early defender of Alabama's "Ten Commandments" Judge Roy Moore, who spent many years fighting to keep a granite Commandments monument in the rotunda of the state Judicial Building. At a rally for Moore's crusade, Pryor declared that, "God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time, this place for all Christians — Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox — to save our country and save our courts."

Brown has also gone public with far-out views on long-established First Amendment precedent. In an Oct. 2003 letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Americans United detailed some of Brown's outlandish judicial philosophies. In a 1999 speech at Pepperdine University, Brown attacked the U.S. Supreme Court for relying too often "on a rather uninformative metaphor of the 'wall of separation' between church and state," and stated that the high court may have been wrong in 1940 to assert that the Bill of Rights is applicable to the states.

These are simply not qualified judges, and we have no problem saying that definitively. Confirming them is an awfully big price to pay for this "compromise."

The Ugly
Quite clearly, the compromise relies on a less-than-sturdy premise — that Democrats will only utilize the filibuster in "extraordinary circumstances." That's hardly rock solid, and we have a fear that the first time the Dems try to use the filibuster we'll be right back where we started, except we'll already have three of Bush's nominees on the bench. Only time (and perhaps a Supreme Court vacancy) will tell if this "compromise" will actually buy the rational people of this country anything.

Maybe someone knows something that we don't, and Pryor and Brown won't have enough support to be confirmed. While we'd love to see that outcome, we don't think that's where we'll end up. So the compromise will have preserved (for a time at least) the ability of the minority to have a say in judicial appointments, but we'll be tasting an awful lot of shit when Brown and Pryor are confirmed.

The Bottom Line
All told, we don't like this compromise. As we said, if it turns out that another deal was struck and Pryor and Brown end up getting their vote only to be voted down, we will gladly admit that we were wrong. But we just don't see that happening.

What we do see happening is both of those radical zealots being confirmed, and somewhere down the line (perhaps for a Supreme Court nomination) the Democrats will threaten to use the filibuster again, only to find Frist spouting the same bullshit rhetoric that he has temporarily stopped spouting as a result of this compromise. At that point, Bush will have shoved two (or three, depending on your views on Owen) completely inappropriate judges into lifetime appointments, and we'll once again be staring at the same standoff that has now been temporarily averted.

Let's be clear. The filibuster (along with other related delay tactics) is part of the rules of the Senate. In this case, the fact that the Democrats have been forced to employ the threat of filibusters on some of Bush's judicial nominations doesn't mean that they are abusing the rules. Given the fact that the Republicans usually vote as a block regardless of the issue being voted on, the filibuster is the only reliable way to stop the appointment of terrible judges. There is no other way. And it is the right of the Democrats to use the filibuster in cases where they feel that a terrible nominee will otherwise be confirmed.

Under this deal, the Democrats have given up this right in exchange for...what? Some humiliation for Bush and Frist? Coming as it does at the expense of Brown and Pryor being confirmed to the appellate court, we just don't understand how this "compromise" is anything more than a cave in.