I was reading The Next Hurrah complain about Little Ricky Santorum's bad manners (read the article and you'll know why he ought to be called that, always), when I came across this passage:

[Sen. Robert Byrd has] a central role in opposing the Republican's likely resort to the "nuclear option," the elimination of the filibuster, which will prevent a minority of Senators who represent a majority of voters from blocking the actions of a majority of Senators who collectively received over 2 million fewer votes than their Democratic colleagues.

The internal link is to a New Yorker piece that provides the figures in question, but also advises that getting rid of the filibuster will help progressive causes in the long run, and is anti-democratic. That's probably true, just as getting rid of it now will undoubtedly thwart progress for dozens of years, depending on what kind of proto-hominids the GOP majority can ram onto the federal bench without a filibuster stopping them. They've already proven they're beyond shame or conscience, so this should not be taken lightly.

But what struck me most was how this idea has taken hold on the progressive side to the point that it's now just a casual bullet point: "more people voted for us than you." I think it started with the 2000 Presidential election, of course, but it's been seen in any number of places since then - continually calling Bush's first term "illegitimate" or "stolen" (which, if true, refers solely to Florida shenanigans, not a national popular vote), trying to abolish the Electoral College, trying to act in the majority without a majority of votes, etc.

That really bothers me. Many of the "peculiar" democratic institutions of this country were established for two reasons: to make sure the minority has a voice, and to keep the majority from moving too fast. The protections in the Bill of Rights make sure that the legislative and executive branches can't use popular opinion, or emotion, to silence or imprison those that disagree with them, although Tom Delay seems to indicate this week that's exactly what he wants to do.

We covered some of this last October, in Electoral Math Against Tyranny, a story that explains very well why the Electoral College is in everyone's long-term best interest. No less than James Madison himself said so, and he designed the thing expressly to prevent tyranny of the majority:

As Madison explained in The Federalist Papers (Number X), "a well-constructed Union must, above all else, break and control the violence of faction, especially the superior force of an … overbearing majority." In any democracy, a majority's power threatens minorities. It threatens their rights, their property, and sometimes their lives.

The GOP knows it doesn't have the votes to defeat filibusters on the most obnoxious of President Bush's judicial nominees, and the rest aren't threatened by filibuster at all. Even this minor defeat is unacceptable to the radical right, because they know their time in power is limited, and they have to grab as much enduring power as they can while they have the opportunity. In their zeal to stop this, though, progressives need be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The Senate functions on the slow-down plan - under rules and traditions that keep the body from doing too much too fast. If it's wrong for the radical right to throw this out to get a few unqualified judges on the bench, it's just as wrong for progressives to throw out other restraints on the power of the majority - changes that could seriously hurt people in solidly-red states if adopted nationwide. Plus, think about what happens if we remove all restraints on majority rule and another terrorist attack happens the day before an election - or something that someone can make look like a terrorist attack.

If anything, progressives should be using this data to convince the radical right what will happen to them in the not-too-distant future if they insist on removing protections for minority views, something like this:

More people voted for Democratic senators than Republican senators. More people voted for Al Gore than George W. Bush, so he might not have had judicial nominees at all. Far more people disagree with the President's job performance than agree with it, and it's the same for most of his agenda. The Republicans have no serious presidential candidates for 2008, and their power in the House depends on the corruption of Tom DeLay, who's currently engaged in trying to take as many people with him as possible when he goes down for good. Every sign indicates that within a few years, the radical right is going to be in the minority again - and, if they get their way today, they'll have no filibusters and no institutional power to make their points. They ought to be very careful.

In all fairness, though, I think the Senate should restore the original filibuster rules - instead of just saying "I filibuster this," Senators should be required to keep the floor 24/7 to prevent voting on a particular issue. The opposition to these judicial nominees could easily make it work. The only reason the Senate does it this new way is that it lets other Senate business proceed as normal while opposition holds up a single issue.

I'm not sure that's been good for anyone - it lets the GOP grumble about a filibuster without ever seeing one for real, and it keeps the Democrats from actually showing the country their strong opposition to these nominees. Plus, it benefits the Senate GOP leadership, who can get on with the rest of their goals while whining about how evil liberal Senators are preventing their God-fearing judges from executing minors like SpongeDob StickyPants says God wants.

Heck, if the Democrats respond to the "nuclear option" refusing to supply unanimous consent on everything, they're going to stop all Senate business anyway. Until just a few years ago, any filibuster did the same thing, forcing the majority to be careful about bringing up votes that they know are opposed by 40 or more Senators determined to stop everything if necessary to stop that vote - and, by God, that doesn't happen very often.

Put the old rules back - make filibusters real, and make the GOP majority let the Democrats show their opposition on the floor, for as many days or weeks as it takes. It would keep one or two Senators from stopping everything forever, but would preserve the rights of the minority if they really believed it was worth stopping everything to prevent a specific vote.

That's the kind of balance we need, so the GOP will never go for it. The thought of articulate Democrats spending a week on C-SPAN 2 explaining exactly how regressive or owned Bush's nominees are is scarier than the prospect of not getting them on the bench at all. It might prevent tyranny of the temporary majority, and they can't see past the ends of their noses long enough to realize that, in just a few years, they'll wish very much that they had those protections.

I flipped the TV over to CNN during a basketball commercial, where Aaron Brown was asking CNN's "Vatican analyst" what the late Pope John Paul II's greatest unfinished business was.

The analyst responded that he could name many things, but one that came to mind was the Pope's papacy-long dream to visit Russia, a country he never managed to see. Then he added something about "It was this Pope's dream to reawaken the Christian heart of Europe, if you will. Even in the past few years, the European Union refused to mention God in the preamble to their new Constitution."

Uh...so did our founding fathers.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

No matter how much little Ricky Santorum wants to pretend otherwise, there's no "P.S. Jesus Rulez!" anywhere in there.

There's gonna be a lot more of this subtle, non-factual crap over the next few weeks.

Remember how the GOP defended President Bush using "recess" appointments to get judges like William Pryor on the bench when the full Senate wouldn't confirm him - even though the Senate was only "recessed" for the weekend?

Now Bush has used the same "weekend recess" power to appoint people that Trent Lott is fighting tooth and nail.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, brushing aside a stall tactic by Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., appointed the nine-member commission that will determine military bases closings without waiting for Senate confirmation.

Bush made the appointments while the Senate was in recess, the White House announced Friday night. The recess appointments prevent delays as the commission prepares to make the first round of base closings in a decade.

Before it left for its spring recess the full Senate had been expected to vote on the nomination of Anthony J. Principi, former secretary of veterans affairs, as chairman of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. The other commissioners, nominated by Bush on March 15, also required Senate confirmation.

However, Lott - who opposes base closures and has pledged to protect military facilities in his home state - placed a "hold" on Principi's nomination, according to aides and lobbyists speaking on condition of anonymity. The hold delayed voting on the nomination.

Lott was expected to place holds on the other nominations as well, the aides and lobbyists told The Associated Press earlier this week. The Senate Armed Services Committee had approved Principi's nomination and planned to review the other nominations in the next few weeks.

The White House said Bush felt the recess appointments were appropriate since the full committee had already acted on Principi. Plus, the president wants no delay in the "important work for the nation" that the base closure panel will have before it, spokesman Ken Lisaius said Saturday.

"The president believes there is important work for the (commission) to start on," he said.

Lott has said the United States should not be closing bases while troops are at war. "I will try to stop it at any point and in any way I possibly can," he said in February.

Recess appointments expire when the Senate's current session ends, in this case in 2006. However, the commission probably will have concluded its work by the end of this year.

Lott's chief of staff, William Gottshall, and Lott spokesman Lee Youngblood did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

I can imagine they didn't. That's the problem with absolute power - you can't trust it in anyone but yourself, even in your allies. Maybe this will wake up the Senate.

Wait, the Senate GOP leadership is still Frist and Santorum, right?

Nah, they won't figure it out.