If you're at all worried about this country, if you're concerned about the undermining of the media, if you're concerned about the right wing religious takeover of our instituions, and especailly if you're concerned about the future of our independenat judiciary you'll be paying attention to what's playing out on the floor of the Sentate (which you can watch on C-SPAN 2).

Unless you've been living in a cave you'll know about the battle over a few extreme judges that has been brewing in the Senate in the last five years. I'm not going to rehash all the details but if you want a good timeline of events, you can find it here.

The basic deal is this. President Bush has nominated something more than 200 judges to the federal bench, both to the circuit courts and the appellate courts. 95% of his nominations have been approved. A handful who have been earmarked as extreme, 7 or 10 depending on who you ask, have been blocked by the minority Democrats using the threat of a filibuster, which is their right.

However, the right wing doesn't want any of its judges blocked. They want a complete and total victory. Therefore they have been talking up what Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi had long ago dubbed the "Nuclear Option." It is called the Nuclear Option because it so explosive that it is going to rip through and destroy the comity of the Senate that was created by the framers of the Constitution as a deliberative body that respected the rights of the minority.

That same Constitution gives the Senate the role of Advice and Consent on judical nominees. The document says nothing other than that, however it gives the Senate the responsibility to make it's own rules. One of those rules is that the Senate can change its rules, but to avoid power grabs like this one that is going on, must do so with a supermajority of 67 votes. The Nuclear Option would bypass the normal rules of the Senate. The Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee who is the ring leader of this morass is going to ask Dick Cheney, in his role as the President of the Senate, to rule on the constitutionality of the filibuster. Cheney is going to deem the filibuster unconstitutional. The Senate will then vote to accept or deny Cheney's position which requires only a simple majority. This vote will change over 200 years of Senate tradition that has granted the filibuster to the minority in order to prevent exactly what is going on now, packing the court with clearly partisan and unnacceptable jurists who serve on the bench for life. For life. Forever.

I don't know what's going to happen here. I do know that the 44 Democratic Senators and Jim Jeffords, indenpendent from Vermont will vote together in a bloc. Therefore there only needs to be 6 Republican Senators to jump the aisle and vote with the Democrats to retain the filibuster. GOP Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John McCain of Arizona, Olympia Snowe of Maine, John Warner of Virginia and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island have either said they oppose changing the rules or have declined to promise to support the change. A few others like Dick Lugar of Indiana and Pat Roberts of Kansas are on the record about dangerous this move is and how uncomfortable they are with it.

In the end I don't believe it will pass, but it will serve it's purpose, empowering Bill Frist in the eyes of the religious right as he seeks the GOP nomination in 2008.