The time to have mobilized support for a filibuster of Samuel Alito was in early-January, not the final weekend before the vote. If lefty bloggers seem ineffectual and whiny right now, it's their own fault for being more concerned last week with hurt feelings caused by Beltway pundits, rather than the pending approval of the swing vote on the Supreme Court. Setting priorities, then sticking to them, matter.

Filibusters aren't won by convincing a bunch of people to jam the phonelines of Senators at the last second; careerists like Landrieu and Salazar need to be shown that a political price would be paid, that putting a unreconstructed Princeton bigot like Alito on the Supreme Court would not be forgotten, just like Al "The Pal" Dixon's vote for Clarence Thomas wasn't forgotten when he lost his Senate seat in 1992. An angry fax by a non-constituent just doesn't work.

Abramoff is trivial, another D.C. crook in a town notorious for bipartisan corruption. Alito isn't trivial.

UPDATE: Filibuster quashed, 72-25.