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They've announced that the only remaining step is for Frist to give approval. At this point, it is inconcievable that Hatch and others would announce this publicly, only to back down later.

My guess is that we are at the "final warning" stage. Neither party wants to have the filibuster removed from judicial nominees, but the Republicans are not going to permit wholesale blocking of nominees. Somebody in the Senate is going to have to offer a way out of this mess, otherwise I believe the Republicans will proceed with evading the filibuster and voting approval on Estrada.

If you notice the examples cited (Fortas and Breyer), both took place in the last year of a Presidential Term (1968 and 1980, respectively). I think a reasonable Senate rule change would be to permit filibusters (i.e. 60-votes required), but only for one year after nomination. That means any nominees Dubya sends up in 2004 can be blocked by 41 Senators; if that is applied for this and all future Presidents, that would be fair IMHO.

The RATS must have a response of some kind ready if the GOP does this. If the response is only a PR campaign, the GOP needs to do this quickly, without any more announcements and then change the subject. Bush controls the topic of what is debated in the media. He should get his judges and get off the confirmation battle all in one day. Must be tons of postive information we don't know about the war in Iraq. The day Republican Senators do this, he should release it, invited somebody neat to the White House or something else which will lead the evening news and be headlines in the morning papers.