I think it should go without saying that the agreement to let Owen, Brown and Pryor receive floor votes on their nominations should not be seen as setting a precedent for future Supreme Court nominations. The standard should naturally be higher for the nation's highest court than for the Court of Appeals; a judge whose politics may be acceptable in the context of an appellate court with dozens of sitting judges, and whose decisions are appealable, may be deemed too extreme in the context of a smaller court whose decisions are final and binding. And since one of the three judges (ie., Janice Rogers) may be headed for a defeat before the full Senate, it would hardly behoove the Bushies to interpret the agreement as a license to nominate Clarence Thomas for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

In addition, the agreement to maintain the filibuster against at least two other nominees is evidence that the agreement was based more on political horsetrading than on anything that could be used as binding precedent for the future. William Myers and Henry Saad are no less conservative than the Fortunate Three, and there doesn't appear to be anything in the public record that would indicate that either is personally corrupt. Their exclusion was clearly intended by the Gang of Fourteen to be a signal that the filibuster could be used in certain circumstances against judicial nominees, without defining what those circumstances might be. Pretending that this language ties the hands of any Democratic Senator when it comes to the next Supreme Court nominee reflects the stupid tendency of liberals to find defeat in any compromise.