<The Democrats aren't opposing nominees on racial grounds. They are opposing nominees on ideological grounds. Just like the Republicans did.

Everybody keeps saying that, and it misses the point entirely of the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party.

Ideological grounds? Do you think that's what people would be saying if the situation was reversed?

It is a dead certainty that if a Democratic president nominated a minority for a court position--a liberal one of course, as would be expected--any opposition to him from the Republicans would be immediately declared to be solely on the basis of the nominee's race, and this would be the only factor discussed by the pundits, in the media, and across the country. "The Republicans oppose our nominee because they are, as we all know, absolute racists." At the same time they would be breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for nominating a minority.

In other words, the racial background of the nominee would be the ONLY issue.

When race does come up in the current conflict, notice the grounds on which Estrada is being shot down: most of them boil down to "he's a conservative, so he CAN'T be an authentic Hispanic." The crap I have been hearing during the filibuster is unbelievable.

On top of that, I have to listen to more hypocrisy on judicial "balance" from Democrats who bemoan the idea of too many conservatives on a court causing it to become "unbalanced." These same Democrats would not blink an eye if every judge in America was a hard-core liberal.

Sorry for the hissy fit...it just gets my goat after a while. It's like watching an entire squadron of Eddie Haskells. I would like it a lot better if a Democratic Senator would just stand up once and say, "Yes. We're after total control. We want to take our opposition and smash every last wet bit of it out of existence. We don't care about consistency. We don't care about principle. We care about winning. "Fair" is anything that gets us what we want. "Unfair" is anything that doesn't. We'll say whatever it takes to get the job done. "Bipartisan" is what we want when we're losing. When we win, you can go pound sand. Reach out a hand, and you'll pull back a stump, and everyone watching will say it's your fault. And we're going to win, because we go for the throat and you just don't have what it takes to play with the big boys."